WITH 13 categories this year, the 17th Hongkong International Film Festival will be an arthouse filmgoer's delight.
Festival manager Ms Angela Tong, who announced this year's programme on Friday, said this year's screenings focus on independent film-makers whose work might otherwise never be shown outside their home countries.
Hongkong's alternative film audience generally gets a good dose of high quality ''art'' films at the festival - ''usually good movies and prize winners with big names'' - but special categories were needed ''to promote unknowns'', Ms Tong said.
Director John Cassavetes, a seminal figure in American independent cinema, has been allotted a special tribute.
His 1978 film Opening Night, featuring wife Gena Rowlands, is one of the festival's opening films while eight more of his highly original and critically acclaimed works complete the retrospective.
The category entitled The Zone will be particularly challenging to a Hongkon g audience reared on a mainstream diet.
The eight offerings in this category take on the accepted modes of film presentation and subject matter.