Self-exiled filmmakers are set to launch the first edition of the Hong Kong Film Festival in the UK. Curators include artists who relocated to the United Kingdom, after Hong Kong imposed the national security law, in 2020.
Hong Kong protest films like Kiwi Chow’s Revolution of Our Times, a Golden Horse Award-winning documentary and May You Stay Forever Young will be premiered at the festival. The films will be a part of a slate of 16 titles, including six documentary features, five dramatic features and five short films.
“Overseas audiences have long associated Hong Kong cinema with Wong Kar-wai and Bruce Lee. The focus on Hong Kong’s cinema among local and international audiences has also been shifted to politics after 2019. But there’s so much more to Hong Kong’s film culture and we want to offer a fresh perspective,” filmmaker Ng Ka-leung told Variety.
The festival is organised by the Hong Kong Umbrella Community in the UK, which is co-founded by Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong lawmaker and a representative of the 2014 Umbrella Movement. While the inaugural edition is funded by private donors, event organisers hoped to raise funds from other sources for future editions.
Moreover, the festival comes as a consequence of the passage of Hong Kong’s film censorship law, aimed at content that deems to “endorse, support, glorify, encourage and incite activities that might endanger national security.”
Introduced as an amendment to the national security law, it enables Hong Kong’s chief secretary to retroactively ban films that were previously approved. Punishment for the screening or exhibition of unauthorised films include three years in prison, up from two earlier, and a fine of HK$1 million, up from HK$200,000.
Dr Kwok-kwan Kenny Ng, Associate Professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University, whose areas of research also includes film censorship, had told Silverscreen India that documentary films would be primarily impacted by the amended law.
“In the past few years, we underwent a series of movements leading to social unrest. Documentation of these kinds of events would be considered harmful to national security and would probably be prohibited under the amended censorship law,” he had said.
Chow’s Revolution of Our Times, along with other protest documentaries like Inside the Brick Wall and Ten Years were thus banned from releasing in Hong Kong.
Recommended
Despite international recognition, via a screening at the Cannes International Film Festival, Chow chose not to locally screen the film as he did not want to jeopardise the lives of his team, interviewees and cinema operators.
Further, he had to sell the rights to his film to protect himself from legal backlash.
Filmmaker Wong Ching went on to add, “We want to find a way to narrate stories of Hong Kong in turbulent times through films. It is about maintaining the Hong Kong cultural identity.”
Titled Rupture and Rebirth, the first edition will be held across cities like London, Manchester, Bristol, and Edinburgh. Film screenings will be held from March 19 to 23 in London, while it is scheduled between March 31 and April 10, in the other three cities.