Outtakes

The 25th annual Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is taking aim at Russia's anti-gay laws by centring its programme on the film Campaign of Hate: Russia and Gay Propaganda.

"We just couldn't turn away when we saw the anti-gay propaganda that Russia has been spouting," wrote HKLGFF director Joe Lam in a press statement. The US film documents the lives of gay men and women in Russia after it enacted an anti-LGBT law in June 2013. "It is our duty to understand what is happening to all our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world," says Lam.

The festival runs from September 13 to 26, and includes more than 35 films from the Philippines, Brazil, Greece, Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, and Sri Lanka, among others.

Many film buffs would consider watching a movie in Mong Kok something akin to cinematic hell — the area's influx of mainland tourists and rowdy twenty-something locals (dubbed "the MK crowd") often make for an unsophisticated, disruptive audience, so goes the thinking.

Still, the Mong Kok moviegoing experience will seem staid compared to what's happening over the border. This month a chain of mainland theatres introduced an experience called danmu (meaning "bullet screen"), which gives audience members the ability to provide real-time commentary for a film through text messages that are sent to a number and then projected on the screen as the movie is being shown. Let's hope this is one Chinese innovation that doesn't make it to Hong Kong.

Canto-pop star Anthony Wong Yiu-ming has put together a girl band, but it's not the type we're used to. He's brought together three female musicians from different backgrounds for the project. The trio are local pianist Vincy Chan, American-born Chinese singer Wynne Lo and Fujian-born songwriter Tang Yi. Not only does each bring a specific skill set, they'll also bring a language — Cantonese, English and Putonghua.