Ann Hui’s Elegies was the two Hong Kong-made films that stood out at the Busan International Film Festival, held from Oct 4-13. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The presence of Chow Yun-fat and screening of a retrospective of his films ensured that Hong Kong cinema history was celebrated at this year’s Busan International Film Festival. However, there were two other films on the main program, offering the festival’s wide spectrum of audiences an insight into the Hong Kong film scene.
Ann Hui’s Elegies made its international premiere in Busan. Unable to attend due to business commitments in the United States, the director had sent a video message in which she hoped that audiences around the world might come to “appreciate and read more about” Hong Kong’s contemporary poets, on some of whom she had trained her camera.
Ann Hui’s Elegies was the two Hong Kong-made films that stood out at the Busan International Film Festival, held from Oct 4-13. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Ann Hui’s Elegies was the two Hong Kong-made films that stood out at the Busan International Film Festival, held from Oct 4-13. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Hui need not have worried. Elegies — one of the opening films of this year’s the Hong Kong International Film Festival — was warmly received by audiences most likely unfamiliar with or even aware of the city’s poetry scene.
Hui’s consummate skill as a natural storyteller helped, as did the charisma of the featured poets — Huang Canran and Liu Wai-tong. They come across as warm, honest and engaging. As their interlocutor, Hui allows the poets the space and freedom to quite wonderfully share how their words have, unfailingly, resonated with the ever-changing rhythms of life in the metropolis.
The Han Shuai-directed Green Night was the two Hong Kong-made films that stood out at the Busan International Film Festival, held from Oct 4-13. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The Han Shuai-directed Green Night was the two Hong Kong-made films that stood out at the Busan International Film Festival, held from Oct 4-13. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The Han Shuai-directed Green Night was the two Hong Kong-made films that stood out at the Busan International Film Festival, held from Oct 4-13. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The Han Shuai-directed thriller-romance Green Night, meanwhile, served as an example of Hong Kong cinema’s recent successes as a result of international collaboration.
Produced by Hong Kong’s Demei Holdings Ltd, the film brings together a major star each from China (Fan Bingbing) and South Korea (Lee Joo-young), and is set in and around the backstreets of the South Korean city of Incheon, where the lives of Korean and Chinese communities collide.
Han spoke on the sidelines of BIFF about the opportunities such co-productions presented, both economic — given the wider combined markets such films can reach — and also creative.
“We really pushed each other, and I think that came through sharing of experiences between people from different places,” Han said.
