The 48th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF48) presents six restored contemporary classics by renowned Chinese filmmakers, including Zhang Yimou, Tsui Hark, and Tsai Ming-Liang.
A figurehead of Hong Kong’s New Wave movement, Tsui Hark shocked the establishment with his controversial Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind, which featured violence, bloodshed, and political allusions. Initially banned for public exhibition in 1980, the film was only released after significant reshoots and re-edits. The film is often regarded as a milestone in Hong Kong cinema.
Furthermore, HKIFF48 will showcase two master filmmakers from the renowned Xi’an Film Studio. Wu Tianming, a former head of the studio and a prominent Fifth Generation filmmaker, presented a new form of visual and socio-political expression in Old Well, a meticulously observed and non-ideological portrayal of the lives of impoverished villagers in their quest for water across generations. On the other hand, Huang Jianxin crafted a bureaucratic farce in Dislocation, using the science-fiction genre effectively to satirise a corrupt social system.
Zhang Yimou, another celebrated Xi’an native who remarkably shot as well as starred in Old Well, demonstrated his directing skills by employing caustic irony to dive into the theme of bureaucratic negotiations through a peasant woman’s relentless pursuit of justice in The Story of Qiu Ju, which won Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion in 1992.
To round out the six-film selection, Edward Yang‘s Mahjong and Tsai Ming-Liang‘s The Wayward Cloud offer insightful and melancholic portrayals of Taiwan’s rapidly changing capital. Mahjong is a screwball farce that exposes the manipulation and lies inherent in modern prosperity through a diverse set of characters. The Wayward Cloud, which won a Silver Bear in Berlin in 2005, is a quasi-pornographic musical that confronts the psychosexual disconnection and existential malaise of its characters, expressing their unspoken desires and yearnings.
HKIFF48 will take place from 28 March to 8 April, spanning 12 days. The festival will announce its complete programme in March.
