Spring is coming in April! At the same time, it also ushered in the most important film event in Asia, the 45th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF)!
Last year, due to the epidemic, HKIFF's offline screening was forced to be cancelled. This year, with the epidemic under control, the 45th HKIFF was held from April 1 to 12, and for the first time, it adopted the physical + online hybrid mode to meet fans!
As an important film exchange platform in Asia, HKIFF comprehensively showcases the diversified production of Asian and global films. Fans can not only watch more than 190 movies in the cinema, but also watch nearly 60 films at home through the HKIFF online platform https://online45.hkiff.com.hk/.
The main visual poster of this year's festival, written by Hong Kong graphic designer Frank Chan, features migratory bird swallows and radio microphones commonly used in film shooting. He hopes the theme design will convey a positive energy: "Hong Kong film lovers are like birds returning home, returning to the cinema with renewed hopes after a year of confusion and depression. ”
The main visual poster of the 45th Hong Kong International Film Festival
As a gathering of Chinese films, in addition to the opening and closing films that have attracted the attention of film fans, HKIFF also has four competition units, including "Rookie Film Competition (Chinese)", "Rookie Film Competition (World)", "Documentary Competition" and "International Short Film Competition" to recognize outstanding filmmakers and outstanding works. An independent jury of renowned directors and industry experts will select 12 awards. There is also the International Film Critics Union Award.
Aaron Kwok served as the festival's ambassador, and photographer Kaon took promotional photos
This year's "Focus Filmmaker" is the director Guan Jinpeng, who is widely praised for his "women's films". The "Filmmakers in Focus" section will show 13 films he has directed. At the same time, this year marks the 100th anniversary of Shochiku's paintings, and the festival will also feature 10 classic works by masters such as Yasujiro Ozu, Hiroshi Shimizu, Masahira Imamura and Nagisa Oshima.
Not to be missed is the multiple classic restoration series from around the world. Among them, the most concerned is to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the founding of Zedong Film, Wong Kar-wai's four new 4K restoration masterpieces. At the same time, there are also selected Chinese restoration classic series such as "Goddess", "Blessing", "Butterfly Change", "Half Man" and so on. It also includes silent crime classics, the founding work of the French New Wave, and the banning of Iranian films.
"Goddess" directed by Wu Yonggang and starring Ruan Lingyu (1934)
This year's film festival is full of wonderful movies, and the following is a special compilation of 25 must-see masterpieces for everyone! Don't miss it for Hong Kong movie fans!
HKIFF
Would highly recommend
Opening film | Band of Seven
Septet: The Story of Hong Kong
Director: Hong Jinbao / Xu Anhua / Tan Jiaming / Yuan Heping / Du Qifeng / Lin Lingdong / Xu Ke
Starring: Hong Tianming / Wu Zhenyu / Marseille / Yu Xiangning / Wu Pengtao
Country/Region of Production: Hong Kong / Chinese mainland
Directed by seven Hong Kong directors, the film takes the 1950s to the 2020s as a span and tells the story of Hong Kong in different eras. From the roundness and thickness of Hong Jinbao's rooftop exercises in the 1950s, to Xu Ke's transformation from fantasy to the sharp dexterity of future profound dialogues, it is not only a remembrance of the golden songs of the past, but also a response to the excitement of "the film world is dead".
Xu Anhua's humanistic care, Tan Jiaming's youthful debauchery, Yuan Heping's sharp tricks and Du Qifeng's dark realism, the ensemble plays the depression and frustration of the changes of the times, and Lin Lingdong's posthumous work "Lost" presents the final heartfelt song to Hong Kong. Seven styles of concerted vocals compose a concerto that spans the ages of Hong Kong.
Closing film | The wheel of chance and imagination
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Starring: Kotoko Furukawa / Kiyohiko Shibukawa / Shōbe House / Nakajima Bu
Country/Region of Production: Japan
The film is composed of three short films: "Magic", "The Door Is Still Open" and "Once Again". The university professor who has just won the Wasagawa Prize is used to keeping the office "open", but the students want to take revenge on him with beauty tricks. The two women recognize each other as old acquaintances, and once again recall their memories of high school memories.
Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi was shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival for "Night and Day" (2018) and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 71st Berlin Film Festival for this film. The three stories are all about chance and imagination, continuing the contradictory emotional view of the previous work, yin and yang, chance, creation and man, imagining different endings, pretending to be different identities, and exploring multiple possibilities of creation.
Spy's Wife | Wife of a Spy
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Yu Aoi / Ichisei Takahashi / Ryuji Sakato / Yuri Tsunematsu
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 77th Venice Film Festival for the film. The film tells the story of a loving couple caught up in the political whirlpool on the eve of the Pacific War, and the death of a woman brought back from Manchukuo by a trader engaged in trade. In the face of her husband's concealment, the wife's trust collapses, and she tracks down the wife who finds herself a spy. In the tragedy of fate, Yu Aoi and Takahashi left the last tenderness for the chaotic world with the deep love and kindness of the flounder.
Turbid water rafting | Drifting
Director: Li Junshuo
Starring: Wu Zhenyu / Xie Junhao / Cai Siyun / Li Lizhen
Country/Region of Production: Hong Kong, China
A thousand words, the way of the world, agree to see you at the bottom of the bridge. Newly released from prison, Hui Ge returned to Sham Shui Po to sleep in the open, and was swept away by the FEHD, and his belongings were lost. He and his street friends found another place to live, and built a log cabin under the bridge to live with each other. Fledgling social workers make claims on behalf of street friends, but can they survive the winter before justice and compensation come?
Kill a twilight | Time
Director: Gao Zibin
Starring: Xie Xian / Feng Baobao / Lin Xue / Gu Dingxuan / Li Cansen
The killer who once played the jianghu, after retirement, made a living by sharp knife cutting, but he was unable to defeat the mechanical arm and was forced to extinguish the furnace. Suddenly receiving a secret call, the lady in charge of the intelligence song hall called him to re-emerge from the mountain, and the car king of the sixth road was patted on the side, and it was expected that the target was an old woman who bought a murder and committed suicide. The unique service of "Elder angel" came into being, focusing on not only the elderly who are plagued by diseases, but also the young girls who have been abandoned by their parents and boyfriends. Aside from heaven all the way, how do a few fallen people kill a twilight?
Rookie Film Contest
Especially recommended | Mom and seven days
Mama
Director: Li Dongmei
Country of Production: Chinese mainland
Seeing all the life and death on earth, the mountain was silent. In a small mountain village in Chongqing, the mother who has given birth to 4 daughters, because of the tradition of preferring sons to daughters, is pregnant with the fifth child, and the basin is imminent. The 12-year-old daughter Xiao Xian will experience the sudden death of her loved ones within 7 days and experience the impermanence of life. Finally, light a lamp and walk through the dense mountain forest to illuminate the way home for the ancestors. The film won the honorary best film of the 4th Pingyao International Film Exhibition Fei Mu, which is the affectionate work of director Li Dongmei dedicated to his deceased mother.
Especially recommended | Wuhai
Wu Hai
Director: Zhou Ziyang
Starring: Huang Xuan / Yang Zishan / Tu Men
The film won the International Union of Film Critics Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The upside-down world, with its materialistic desires, is bound to bring great harm. A young couple who were originally in love, the financial company that the husband and a friend co-founded failed. On this day, family, friends, debt collectors, and love-hate wives, all the things that cannot be solved peel away the dignity of his birth.
Especially recommended | Southern Witch
The Story of Southern Islet
Director: Zhang Ji'an
Cast: Xu Shishun / Cai Baozhu / Wu Lixuan / Yun Magnesium Xin
Region: Malaysia
In 1987, on the Border of Ma-Thailand, in a village under Kedah Elephant Island, the fishmonger Achan was a devout believer in the folk deity Datuk Gong. I don't know whether it is a sin in the world or a wrong in this life, the offending evil spirit faints and is sick like a human, and the blood spit out has rusty nails. His wife Ah Yan married from abroad and did not understand the worship market: Datuk Gong Faith in Malaya, Oban Summoning Spirits, Siam Witch Descending... When all the gods and demons descended, which god and demon would they call out for their names, ah yan would be able to retrieve her husband?
Classic reproduction | Wong Kar Wai
Contemporary film master Wong Kar-wai is known for his unique aesthetic of light and shadow, preferring slow and lazy scenes and contemplative images, and giving poetic elements to commercial films with a lyrical style that he wants. His works have won the Hong Kong Film Awards and the European Film Awards, and he became the first Hong Kong director to win the best director at the Cannes Film Festival with "Spring Breaks".
Wong Kar Wai
This year's festival will present wong kar-wai's four new 4K restoration masterpieces. "Fallen Angel" was screened in CinemaScope format, replying to the original intention of wanting to be released with a widescreen anamorphic lens effect, which highlighted the distance between people's hearts and places, and there were lonely souls of fallen mortals everywhere. "Spring Breaks" streamlines Liang Chaowei's monologue, and the visual style of the play with experimental colors has been comprehensively improved after restoration. Last year was the 20th anniversary of the release of "Fancy Years", and the latest 4K digital restoration version restored the graphics and mixes to the perfect state in the director's mind, feeling refreshed. "2046" returns to that familiar and unfamiliar emotional space and experiences a refreshing feast of sound and color.
Fallen Angel | Fallen Angels
Starring: Dawn / Li Jiaxin / Jin Chengwu / Yang Caini / Karen Mok
The killer went in and out of the gunfire, and the minibus re-encountered the old classmates and laughed. The killer's cold partner, whom he had never met, caressed the boundless emptiness through the fishnet stockings. Dumb young people love to sneak into other people's shops to do business, and take a camera to record the father-son relationship. The lovelorn girl vows to hunt down and kill the "Golden Retriever Ling" who snatches love with a horizontal knife. The girl who was hurt by the love dyes her hair, only for fear of being forgotten again.
Spring breaks out | Happy Together
Starring: Zhang Guorong / Liang Chaowei / Zhang Zhen
In order to have a new beginning, gay people Lai Yiu-fai and Ho Po Wing leave Hong Kong for Argentina, follow the tango rhythm of Piazzola, and fall into the rolling emotional whirlpool of the Iguazu Falls. Wong Kar-wai won the best director at the Cannes Film Festival with this film, portraying the plight of homosexuals living together on the one hand, and expressing people's nostalgia in different places on the other hand. Coinciding with the timing of the film's launch on the eve of the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, "it is better for us to start from scratch", and the choice of separation and homecoming can be called a witness of the times.
Fancy years | In the Mood for Love
Starring: Leung Chao Wai / Maggie Cheung / Pan Di Hua / Siu Bing Lin
The wife of a husband and the husband of a woman meet in the era of subtlety and introspection, and the bright cheongsam, the bright red cloth curtain in the corridor of the hotel, and the melody of Merlin Mao, highlighting the war between strong desire and suppressed emotions. Finally, the small cave where the secrets of Angkor Wat are sealed, juxtaposing the loss of personal feelings with the civilization that never returns, leaving infinite sighs.
2046
Starring: Liang Chaowei / Zhang Ziyi / Faye Wong / Takuya Kimura / Gong Li
In the enclosed emotional space, 2046 is the hotel room number and the place of Zhou Muyun's memories, as long as you take the mysterious train to 2046, you can retrieve the lost memories. Painful waiting, repeated misses, becomes a cycle of love regrets. Zhou Muyun, who had been rejected, chose to refuse, and has been cynical ever since. When he met Bai Ling, who had always been in love, his heart was still far away, and he lost the opportunity to start over.
Focus Filmmaker | Guan Jinpeng
This year's "Focus Filmmaker" is a Hong Kong director who has been in the film for many years and is known as a "female film". His works often present women's emotions and survival dilemmas through rich and delicate female perspectives. Kwan Kam Peng began working as an assistant field reporter and assistant choreographer for TVB in 1978.
Guan Jinpeng
In 1985, Guan Jinpeng independently directed his first work "Woman's Heart", which became one of the highest-grossing films of the year. His masterpiece "Rouge Buckle" won the 8th Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Film and Best Director. In 1991, she directed "Ruan Lingyu" not only won numerous reputations in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also won the best actress at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival. The Focus Filmmaker Retrospective will screen 13 works directed by Kwan Kam Peng.
Women's hearts are | Women
Starring: Zhou Runfa / Miao Qianren / Zhong Chuhong / Jin Yanling
The couple has been married for 8 years, the wife found out that her husband was having an affair, resolutely filed for divorce, and moved back to her mother's house with her young children. Join the singles club, life can be more exciting, but find that it is lonely no matter what. Men are not as heavy as stones. In a patriarchal society, how to compete for favors, wives and love enemies are suffering. The film is the personal debut of director Guan Jinpeng, satirizing the fragility of heterosexual marriage, ridiculing the naivety of big men, light and humorous and not losing delicate and unconventional, and touching on same-sex and bisexuality, the clutch of emotional relationships, filming the atmosphere of the times.
Underground | Love Unto Waste
Starring: Zhou Runfa / Jin Yanling / Cai Qin / Liang Chaowei / Wen Bixia
The singer from Taiwan was killed in his home, and the agents who were about to reach the limit did not find the murderer, but were interested in the friends of the deceased. The young master of Mipu is in love with the sunglasses girl, and at the same time, he takes a down-and-out actress, and in the city with an uncertain future, he only knows how to burn empty life.
Rouge buckle | Rouge
Starring: Mei Yanfang / Zhang Guorong / Wan Ziliang / Zhu Baoyi
Like a dream like a phantom moon, if you leave the flower, time has changed, Shitang Tsui leans on the Red Chamber has long been unrecognizable, but there are crazy women who return to the old land and want to publish the newspaper to find someone. Like a flower waiting for twelve years, thinking that it was a vow that has not changed for 50 years, it is now a smoke cloud word, and it is wrong to pay a thousand lovesicks. Li Bihua's ghostly ghost story fell into the hands of Guan Jinpeng and turned into a poignant romance. Insist on not using stunts, don't let Taoists catch ghosts, don't use female ghosts to fly in the sky, abandon the usual frightening and funny tricks of Hong Kong films at that time, focus on portraying emotions, and render the decadent beauty of Tangxi Fengyue with exquisite art and photography.
People in New York | Full Moon in New York
Starring: Zhang Aijia / Maggie Cheung / Sichen gaowa
Huang Xiongping from Taiwan is obsessed with theater performances, but because of her Chinese identity, she encounters nails everywhere; Zhao Hong married from the mainland to the United States, she knows nothing about English, and cultural differences make her miserable; Hong Kong immigrant Li Fengjiao is supreme in making money, and her father worries about her marriage, but she seems to have other ideas. People in a foreign land, toasting and drinking, singing in the cold night, occasionally telling each other about their hearts, I don't know what tomorrow will be. The film borrows the struggle and helplessness of Chinese women from the three sides of the Taiwan Strait living in New York, and reflects the fate of Chinese people who have migrated overseas.
Ruan Lingyu | Center Stage
Starring: Maggie Cheung / Leung Ka Fai / Qin Han / Liu Jialing / Wu Qihua
Guan Jinpeng's most complex and ambitious work in history, through narrating the fate of a generation of silent film actress Ruan Lingyu who died in "fearsome words", on the one hand, from the perspective of Hong Kong, reshaping the golden age of Shanghai film industry in the 30s, piecing together a portrait of the United Chinese film crowd, the contrast between the present and the past of the twin cities; on the other hand, he is also thinking about the essence of the film, and the fusion of virtual and real is false. The unique form experiment, breaking through the traditional biographical shooting method, combining drama, drama-in-play, real interview and pseudo-interview, not only enabled Maggie Cheung and Ruan Lingyu to have a dialogue between two generations of actresses, understand the female tragedy of that year with a modern eye, but also made Maggie Cheung the first Chinese actor to be sealed at the Berlin Film Festival.
Red Rose White Rose | Red Rose White Rose
Starring: Chen Chong / Ye Yuqing / Zhao Wenxuan
Tong Zhenbao had two women in his life, one was a passionate mistress and the other was a holy wife. Red roses are full of charm and vigorous, and white roses are crystal clear and sacred. Flowers, sentient and fragrant, Zhen bao was first deeply attracted by the wife of his old classmate Wang Jiaorui, but he was hindered by decency and obeyed his mother's wishes to marry the quiet and pure Meng Yanli. The more you want to play a good person, the more you can't get out of the cycle of hypocrisy.
Boys and Girls: Gender in Chinese Films
Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema
Starring: Zhang Che / Chen Kaige / Zhang Guorong / Jiao Xiongping
On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the film, at the invitation of the British Film Association, reviewing the film history of the two sides of the strait and the three places, Guan Jinpeng was ingenious, abandoning the traditional chronicle model, and choosing to use personal self-statement to explore the gender issue of Chinese films. Starting from his father's absence, he visited Wu Yusen, Zhang Guorong, Xu Ke, Chen Kaige, Yang Dechang, Ang Lee, Cai Mingliang and other filmmakers, spied the male friendship in masculine films, traced the frank and open attitude of Shanghai films in the 30s to sex, and identified the gender transgression tradition of Chinese film history. Returning to itself from the movie and talking to my mother about gay identity has become a loud footnote.
念你如昔 | Still Love You After All These
Starring: Zhang Zifu / Lin Xiumei / Cai Zhiqiang
The sequel to "Boys and Girls" talks about personal growth and sexual enlightenment experiences in Tokyo Street, childhood memories of watching Cantonese dramas with his mother, and then talks about immigrants to stay and choose. In the face of the sadness of the transfer of sovereignty, the famous sentence of "Emperor Girl Flower" "Do not recognize or recognize but must also recognize", which is not only an exploration of identity, but also a sentiment of the times.
The happier the more depraved | Hold You Tight
Starring: Qiu Shuzhen / Chen Jinhong / Zeng Zhiwei / Ke Yulun / Wu Junru
Qiu Shuzhen is a two-life flower, the airport passes by, one died unexpectedly, and the other continued to live in a different place. The three men have their own concerns, Mr. Tang and Xiao Zhe both look at the married Feng Wei, and Feng Zheng is experiencing the pain of bereavement. The intricate pentagonal relationship is the impermanence of life and the flow of multiple love desires.
Sometimes dancing | The Island Tales
Starring: Li Jiaxin / Shu Qi / Zhang Zhilin / Takao Osawa / Momoi Fumi
Suspected viruses raided the island, under the quarantine order, it was a night of common suffering. Japanese journalists are recuperating on the island; strong women who have returned from the United States are trying to forget the past and play here with Japanese friends; lying girls are waiting to date their new boyfriends; male stars who shoot erotic films come to relax... The millennium catastrophe is like a dream, love when the plague spreads, no one is an island, but everyone's heart is an island.
Lan Yu | Lan Yu
Starring: Hu Jun / Liu Ye / Su Jin / Li Huatong
Originally a pure flesh transaction, Chen Handong, a veteran of the shopping mall and love field, met Lan Yu, a young college student, and was greedy for a while, and then he knew that he met his favorite. Ten years of division and integration, after all, is not forgotten.
Long Hate Song | Everlasting Regret
Starring: Zheng Xiuwen / Leung Ka Fai / Hu Jun / Wu Yanzu / Huang Jue
Wang Qiyao was born in a chaotic world, and in the wrong era, he always encountered the wrong people. Director Li, who holds the power of the military and government, the rich man who is mercurial, the impulsive and reckless teenager, and the vicissitudes of several love affairs. And Mr. Cheng, who is silently waiting, witnesses the birth and destruction of the goddess, and is an obsessive lover who leaves memories for the city.
Eight women in one play | First Night Nerves
Starring: Zheng Xiuwen / Liang Yongqi / Bai Baihe / Zhao Yazhi / Qi Xi
The two sisters of the world, not the wrongdoers do not gather, and they always meet in the mountains and rivers. The internationally renowned director concocted a stage play, and the two heroines clashed, from the front of the stage to the backstage. Seven days before the premiere, the rehearsal opened up the intricate interpersonal relationships and gradually exposed the enmity and hatred of the eight women on and offstage.
reference:
Official website of the Hong Kong International Film Festival
Douban Movie, IMDB
Text: Fore Magic Song
Editors: Fore Magic Song, Batam