Sundance Film Festival 2014 Preview
The Sundance Film Festival brings eight awesome films to Hong Kong in its mini-fest at The Metroplex. By Zach Hines and Evelyn Lok.
A long way from the snowy hills of Utah, the Sundance Film Festival is debuting for the first time in Asia, here in Hong Kong.
America’s biggest film festival hardly needs an introduction for film buffs, but its strategy is to offer a cautious but curated introduction to Hong Kong’s cinephiles.
In the film scene, Sundance is a force to be reckoned with, having spawned a film institute, workshops, scholarships, and a television channel. But it has so far been slow in expanding abroad. Aside from a smaller festival in London, it has no other programs. Hong Kong was selected as the first stop for a small mini-version of the festival as a test. John Cooper, the director of Sundance Film Festival, notes that Hong Kong’s rich cinematic history will connect Sundance to a wider audience. “For a long time we’ve felt like the quality of work we show has the ability to travel overseas, but doesn’t always have the chance to do so,” says Cooper. “In response to that, we created this event to connect our filmmakers to both younger audiences and audiences outside the US.”
Sundance particularly focuses on indie films, to highlight new and original talent. To be an indie filmmaker and get into Sundance is to have “made it”—It’s how legendary directors Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh were discovered.
This is one of the reasons why Hong Kong is such an exciting destination for the festival. “We also see this event as an opportunity to learn more about filmmaking in Hong Kong and how we might be able to support and incorporate that more in our programs,” says Cooper. It’s also a way of introducing a wider variety of indie cinema to Hong Kong audiences: eight films have been taken directly from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival to represent the spectrum of films on show. “Apart from cinephiles, many haven’t heard of Sundance in this part of the world. So it’s kind of an education process, saying that there are other film fests too besides Cannes or Venice,” says Bede Cheng, The Metroplex’s festival director and senior program manager. Aside from the eight highlighted film offerings, there’s also a lineup of free performances by local independent musicians from the likes of The Stay Up, Helter Skelter, and Noughts and Exes.
Hong Kong’s film scene, rife with young indie talent looking for bigger audiences now that the mainstream has pointed to the mainland, could transform the festival into a permanent feature on the film calendar. Here are our picks: