Hong Kong protests inspire film festival organisers from Rotterdam to New York
- From a 1992 film about life in a cage-home apartment to dystopian feature Ten Years to newly shot short films, Rotterdam event aims to set protests in context
- New York’s Metrograph Cinema programme To Hong Kong With Love is billed as a series of Hong Kong New Wave films paired with documentaries about the protests
It is difficult for Hongkongers to see locally made films about the ongoing anti-government protests in Hong Kong cinemas. But interest in the demonstrations has led foreign cinemas and film festivals to programme documentaries and feature films relating to Hong Kong’s political movements.
This month, the Netherlands’ International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the world’s top-10 film festivals, is screening a programme called Ordinary Heroes: Made in Hong Kong, which comprises more than 20 documentaries, features and short films that focus on the “umbrella movement” in 2014 and the current protests. The festival opens on January 22.
In New York, the popular Metrograph Cinema on Manhattan’s Lower East Side will present a programme titled To Hong Kong With Love, which it describes as a “series of Hong Kong New Wave films paired with timely documentaries about the current protest movement”. The programme opens on February 1.
The aim of the Metrograph programme is to give Hong Kong people a voice, said the organisers in a statement. “The Hong Kong protests were in the news for the better part of 2019 and were the subject of widespread debate, much of it by outside observers with a vested interest in imposing their own narratives. To Hong Kong with Love is made up of films which show Hongkongers speaking for themselves.”
Both programmes feature Lost in the Fumes , Nora Lam Tze-wing’s popular 2017 documentary about imprisoned activist Edward Leung Tin-kei; the prophetic portmanteau film Ten Years , a surprise best picture winner at the 2016 Hong Kong Film Awards; and Chan Tze-woon’s 2016 documentary Yellowing , about the filmmaker’s growing involvement with the students he filmed during the “umbrella movement” occupation of key city arteries.
