For Hong Kong filmmakers, politics and protests are in the spotlight, both internationally and at home
- Mainland directors are frequently bombarded with questions abroad about China’s social and political conditions
- Now their Hong Kong counterparts must prepare for similar interrogations after the city became the focus of global headlines
Chinese filmmakers who travel the world to showcase their work often spend their time answering questions about China’s political and social situation.
At film festivals, I’ve witnessed these directors being asked for their views on the damage caused by China’s rush towards capitalism, especially if their works were set in the pre-boom 1990s. I’ve also seen filmmakers being bombarded with queries about the mistreatment of ethnic minorities in China.
Some directors are eager to expand on issues they cannot bring to the screen explicitly and see this as an opportunity to provide foreign audiences with a perspective that is different from the official narrative. Others, however, told me of their frustration at seeing audiences interpret their films as political statements, thus overlooking the artistic merits.
But mainland filmmakers can perhaps breathe a collective sigh of relief. They have had their turn in the spotlight and now it is Hong Kong directors who will face the onslaught of questions about the political relevance of their work.
At the Seoul Independent Film Festival, in November, where I curated a programme of post-1997 Hong Kong films, people’s eyes lit up when I told them where I was from. That was followed by words of encouragement, with everyone offering their support for protest-hit Hong Kong. It was an unsurprising reaction, perhaps, as the unrest, and the ensuing crackdown, mirrors the massive demonstrations that triggered both the end of Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship of Korea, in 1987, and the impeachment of president Park Geun-hye, 30 years later.
The programme I took to the South Korean capital wasn’t overly political. While it did include films such as 2016’s Ten Years (which predicts a doomed, authoritarian-ruled Hong Kong in the near future), it also featured more humanist dramas, including 2011’s Big Blue Lake (about the return of a prodigal daughter to her home village in Sai Kung) and 2019’s My Prince Edward (a drama about a woman’s contemplations on the eve of her marriage).
During a talk at the festival, Ten Years executive producer Andrew Choi Lim-ming fielded questions about how the film had ushered in a new kind of politically charged cinema in Hong Kong and across the region. No surprises there, but the other panellists, including Jessey Tsang Tsui-shan (Big Blue Lake) and Fruit Chan Gor (Made in Hong Kong; 1997), were also asked to share their views on the protests, the difficulties of maintaining Hong Kong’s linguistic culture and the challenges of making films in the mainland.
At the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which ended on February 2, a section titled “Ordinary Heroes: Made in Hong Kong” was dedicated to reflect what programmer Shelly Kraicer described as the “craft and brilliance and cleverness and adaptability and a synthesising genius” of this city’s politically conscious directors.
“I’ve been following all this from abroad via mainstream news outlets and social media, especially Twitter, which has exhaustively chronicled day-to-day Hong Kong protest news,” Kraicer said. “But when I went to Hong Kong on a research trip in October and actually talked to people, I realised it was urgent that I do something with the tools at my disposal – I’m not an activist, I’m a film researcher, curator, programmer and writer – to make sure my Hong Kong friends’ situation, actions and crisis were understood comprehensively, sympathetically presented and contextualised in international forums.”
It is a sense of global solidarity that Hong Kong filmmakers would welcome, as they bring their work – and their representations of reality – to audiences far and wide.
