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Hong Kong International Film Festival 2015
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The Taking of Tiger Mountain

Your online guide to the 2015 Hong Kong International Film Festival

This year's Hong Kong International Film Festival features a mix of art house dramas, big-budget crowd-pleasers, local fare and rarely seen classics

Yvonne Teh

This year's Hong Kong International Film Festival may be slightly smaller than last year's edition, but its diverse offerings - 360 screenings of 264 films from more than 50 countries - still make it the largest film event in town.

Quantity aside, this year's selection is strong on quality: the closing film, , stars popular local actor Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, while there is also Orson Welles' 1947 classic , as well as winners of prestigious awards (such as Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi's Berlin Golden Bear-winning ) to keep the film geeks satisfied.

This year's line-up certainly is a mixed bag: there are films that are known for their age, length, or sheer "gonzo" quality. Here are some that are well worth making a trip to the cinema to see.

Port of Call
The Lady From Shanghai

don't let the art house undertones of the festival intimidate you, there are screenings that are more of the popcorn entertainment variety. For example, there's over-the-top action in Tsui Hark's war epic, , while the more whimsically inclined can consider , Jean-Pierre Jeunet's adaptation of Reif Larsen's book about the titular 10-year-old boy who uses 3D as a way into a lost world of machines.

Meanwhile, those with an eye for the richly sumptuous should turn to Bernardo Bertolucci's . Already a multi-dimensional tale in its original 2D form, this Oscar-winning epic biopic about Puyi has recently been given an extra dimension that should accent the film's grand visuals.

Li'l Quinquin
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

those who thought Ann Hui On-wah's Xiao Hong biopic (178 minutes) was long, consider that there are five films with longer running times at the fest - with the 338-minute Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz's examination of his country's volatile political landscape, being the most butt-numbing festival entry of them all.

The 110-minute general release of King Hu's has been restored to its full 184-minute length. Be warned though that there are no subtitles for this restored version of the supernatural fable. The lengthier - but subtitled - (251 minutes) and (200 minutes) are also options for those with strong bladders.

Daughters, Wives and a Mother

there are plenty of these in the "Restored Classics" section. First released in 1920, is a German expressionist masterpiece that some consider to be the first horror movie. And while it is a silent movie, rest assured viewers ' ears will be utilised thanks to the fresh orchestral score by Musikhochschule Freiburg.

Born in 1920, Setsuko Hara is the oldest living person starring in films at the festival. The woman nicknamed "the Eternal Virgin" - because she never married - appears in 1951's (aka ) and (1960), two of the four featured dramas in the festival's Mikio Naruse showcase.

In his late seventies, South Korean auteur Im Kwon-taek may be the most experienced filmmaker with a film included in the festival line-up. is the director's 102nd feature film, and the seventh with superstar actor Ahn Sung-ki, who plays a top executive distracted by a beautiful woman just when his wife is dying of a brain tumour in the very contemporary tale.

Repast

despite the current political climate, there are no films that directly reference the Umbrella movement. However, political unrest elsewhere is the focus in films such as , a documentary about the protests in Taiwan in the wake of the Kuomintang government's attempt to unilaterally adopt the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement.

From further back in time, Japanese documentary giant Shinsuke Ogawa's series of films recorded the bitter, and ultimately unsuccessful, struggle by farmers and student protesters to prevent the construction of Narita International Airport.

Three series entries (1968's , 1971's and 1973's ) have been included in the festival, along with , series cameraman Koshiro Otsu and Daishama Haruhiko's 2014 weaving together of new interviews and archival footage showing the continuing battle of state power versus ordinary people.

Timbuktu
Sour Sweet

among the films I am most psyched to see on a big screen during the festival are , Mauritania's critically acclaimed nominee for this year's best foreign language Oscar, and , Kon Ichikawa's chronicle of the 1964 Summer Olympics that ranks among the greatest of all sports documentaries.

And fans of Timothy Mo, Mike Newell and Sylvia Chang Ai-chia - of which I am all three - will undoubtedly gravitate to , Newell's film adaptation of Mo's novel that stars the versatile and evergreen Chang.

 

THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

Hong Kong International Film Festival Society artistic director Li Cheuk-to picks 10 films that might fly under the radars of most festival-goers.

Horse Money: a hauntingly beautiful mix of docu-fiction and absurdist surrealism, Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s film possesses incredibly expressive high-definition images.

Horse Money

Party Girl: actor-writer-director Samuel Theis adapts the real-life story of his mother, a cabaret woman, to the screen, with family members all playing themselves and a very French ending.

‘71: set in the war zone of Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1971, this superb thriller from first-time feature director Yann Demange marked one of the most auspicious directorial debuts of last year.

In the Basement: veteran filmmaker Ulrich Seidl’s “documentary” on suburban Austrians and their relationships with their cellars is in turns shocking, amusing and disturbing.

Goodnight Mommy

Goodnight Mommy: stylised, creepy and frightening, this small Ulrich Seidl-produced gem about two boys who suspect that a woman, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, is not their mother as she claims, is art house psycho-horror at its best.

Victoria: surpassing Birdman in its audacious stylistic experiment, this heist thriller was shot across 22 locations in a single long take in real time on the streets of Berlin.

Pride: Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton star in this inspiring crowd-pleaser that tells the story of lesbians and gay activists coming out to support the miners’ movement in 1980s Britain. A film that follows in the footsteps of The Full Monty and Billy Elliot.

1001Grams: a perfect match of Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer’s minimal yet precise style with content, this drama about a woman scientist’s emotional awakening is quietly moving.

Amour Fou

Amour Fou: Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner’s analysis of German Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist’s double suicide pact is formalist filmmaking at its most wryly amusing.

The Tales of Hoffmann: a more daring follow-up to their The Red Shoes, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s dazzling take on the Jacques Offenbach opera about a melancholy poet’s reflection on three women he’s loved and lost in his life contains previously unseen footage in this sparkling 4K digital restoration of the 1961celluloid classic.

 

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Hong Kong International Film Festival Society executive director Roger Garcia chooses 12 films rarely seen on the big screen – “a good reason for attending the festival,” he says.

Museum documentaries: films about art can be dry and academic, but all three offerings in our “Portraits of Museums” section are insightful and great observational documentaries on that most important art institution. Johannes Holzhausen’s The Great Museum looks at the work of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum; National Gallery is an amazing work about one of the world’s greatest museums by master documentarian Frederick Wiseman; and Oeke Hoogendijk’s The New Rijksmuseum shows the 10-year struggle that ensues while renovating the Amsterdam home to some of the most iconic works of Western civilisation – Rembrandts and Vermeers, among others.

How to Win at Checkers (Every Time).

Indie crossover: among the indie films at the festival are Dax Phelan’s Jasmine. Shot in Hong Kong with some great Asian-American talent, it shows that, even with a limited budget, imagination is what you really need to make interesting movies. I also recommend How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) shot in Thailand by Korean-American filmmaker Josh Kim.

The Salt of the Earth

Documenting great talents: I am a fan of Ridley Scott’s Alien, a groundbreaking film largely because of the “look” it was given by H.R. Giger, a Swiss artist and all-round “imagineer” of the dark side. Dark Star – H.R. Giger’s World is as informative as it is fascinating in its portrait of one of the great artists of our time. Some of the landscapes and peoples in The Salt of the Earth also seem otherworldly. A film about Sebastião Salgado, the great Brazilian photographer of the environment and peoples largely untouched by modernity, it was made by Wim Wenders and co-directed by Juliano Salgado (the subject’s son), and is a celebration of the nomadic artist and the grand vision of the world as an endless horizon.

Lengthy eccentricity: originally a TV series, Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin has been cut into a long movie. It’s an eccentric French police procedural that is completely off the wall with a deadpan satirical detective that’s reminiscent of Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther, but shot under the sign of David Lynch. Think Twin Peaks crossed with Fargo and you get some of the flavour.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Swedish surrealist: Roy Andersson has been quietly making his sharp-edged works for many years. His Songs from the Second Floor was a winner at Cannes in 2000, and he was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice last year with A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Andersson has occasionally been described as a satirical Bergman, or a Swedish Fellini. This showcase section of his works constitutes a rare chance to watch his oeuvre.

Filmmaker in focus: writer-directorproducer and now chairwoman of the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, Sylvia Chang Ai-chia is a major multi-hyphenate talent. We are showing a great selection of her films (and opening the festival with her latest, Murmur of the Hearts). I am particularly fond of 1983’s That Day, on the Beach, which she produced and starred in. It was the first feature film by Taiwanese cinema master Edward Yang De-chang, who was a personal friend (I met him in Hong Kong when he was travelling from the US to Taiwan to start his career in cinema). Shot by Christopher Doyle, the film takes the form of various flashbacks and shows Yang’s innovative approach to narrative construction. A film to see, and see again.

Murmur of the Hearts

The Hong Kong International Film Festival runs from March 23-April 6. For more information, visit www.hkiff.org.hk

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: THE REEL DEAL
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