Three Husbands

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

26 April/4 May 2019 – Udine – Teatro Nuovo and Visionario FAR EAST FILM FESTIVAL 21 THREE HUSBANDS Sex and social satire in Fruit Chan's new film, which has its European premiere in Udine: a bold and powerful metaphor for the realities of HK. Special guest of FEFF 21 is the film's protagonist Chloe Maayan, an actress who symbolises the new generation of young Chinese. Press release for the 25th of March 2019 For immediate release UDINE – There are some bonds that just never break. One of them runs along an East-West axis and connects the Far East Film Festival with Hong Kong director Fruit Chan. It's a friendship built upon cinema: The Longest Summer was one of the titles featured in the line-up of the very first FEFF, in 1999. It's also a friendship built upon shared dreams: two years ago, the FEFF produced the 4K restoration of his anarchic, independent and (then) invisible cult movie Made in Hong Kong. And that's why presenting a Fruit Chan title is always an event. After his 2014 gem The Midnight After, Fareasters now have the chance to admire Mister Chan's powerful new film: Three Husbands, presented at the Tokyo Film Festival and coming to Udine for its European premiere. A bold and disturbing low-budget movie that brings together sex and social satire and confirms the eternally rebellious and inspired vision of its director. A director who, as always, is a witty and attentive observer of the mood of a city represented here as an insatiable nymphomaniac (let's not forget that the film concludes the Trilogy of Prostitution which begin with 2000's Durian, Durian and 2001's Hollywood, Hong Kong) and a community in continual transformation. The film's ambassador to the FEFF will be its extraordinary protagonist Chloe Maayan, the actress who has become a symbol of the new generation of young Chinese and who has already received rave reviews for her work in Summer Palace and Lost in Beijing, while the name of the director will also shine in the credits of Still Human as a producer “accompanying” one of the other most anticipated titles of this twenty-first edition. Press Office / Far East Film Festival 21 Gianmatteo Pellizzari & Ippolita Nigris Cosattini 0432/299545 - 347/0950890 [email protected] - [email protected] .

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Wendy Gan Hong Kong University Press the University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong
Wendy Gan Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.org © 2005 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-962-209-743-8 All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by Pre-Press Limited in Hong Kong, China Contents Series Preface vii Acknowledgments xi 1 Introduction 1 2 Contexts: Independent Filmmaking and Hong Kong 11 Cinema 3 Contexts: Social Realism in Hong Kong Cinema 25 4 The Representation of the Mainland Chinese Woman 43 in Durian Durian 5 Durian Adrift: The Contiguities of Identity in Durian 59 Durian ● vi CONTENTS 6 The Prostitute Trilogy So Far 81 7 Conclusion 91 Notes 97 Filmography 103 Bibliography 107 ●1 Introduction Durian Durian is not the film one immediately thinks of when the name of Hong Kong film director Fruit Chan is brought up. The stunning success, both locally and internationally, of his low-budget debut as an independent director, Made in Hong Kong, has ensured that Chan’s reputation will always be tied to that film. Yet Durian Durian has much to offer the lover of Hong Kong cinema and the admirer of Fruit Chan’s work. A post-1997 film set both in Hong Kong and mainland China, with mainland Chinese protagonists, the film is a fine example of a Hong Kong tradition of socially sensitive realist films focused on the low-caste outsider, and is the result of a maturing director’s attempt to articulate the new, often still contradictory, realities of ‘one country, two systems’ in action.
[Show full text]
Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies
Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies On the Rooftop: A Study of Marginalized Youth Films in Hong Kong Cinema Xuelin ZHOU University of Auckland Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies. Vol. 8, No. 2 ⓒ 2008 Academy of East Asia Studies. pp.163-177 You may use content in the SJEAS back issues only for your personal, non-commercial use. Contents of each article do not represent opinions of SJEAS. Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies. Vol.8, No.2. � 2008 Academy of East Asian Studies. pp.163-177 On the Rooftop: A Study of Marginalized Youth Films in Hong Kong Cinema1 Xuelin ZHOU University of Auckland ABSTRACT Researchers of contemporary Hong Kong cinema have tended to concentrate on the monumental, metropolitan and/or historical works of such esteemed directors as Wong Kar-Wai, John Woo and Tsui Hark. This paper focuses instead on a number of low-budget films that circulated below the radar of Chinese as well as Western film scholars but were important to local young viewers, i.e. a cluster of films that feature deviant and marginalized youth as protagonists. They are very interesting as evidence of perceived social problems in contemporary Hong Kong. The paper aims to outline some main features of these marginalized youth films produced since the mid-1990s. Keywords: Hong Kong, cinema, youth culture, youth film, marginalized youth On the Rooftop A scene set on the rooftop of a skyscraper in central Hong Kong appears in New Police Story(2004), or Xin jingcha gushi, by the Hong Kong director Benny Chan, an action drama that features an aged local police officer struggling to fight a group of trouble-making, tech-savvy teenagers.2 The young people are using the rooftop for an “X-party,” an occasion for showing off their skills of skateboarding and cycling, by doing daredevil stunts along the edge of the building.
[Show full text]
Award-Winning Hong Kong Film Gallants to Premiere at Hong Kong
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Award-winning Hong Kong film Gallants to premiere at Hong Kong Film Festival 2011 in Singapore One-week festival to feature a total of 10 titles including four new and four iconic 1990s Hong Kong films of action and romance comedy genres Singapore, 30 June 2011 – Movie-goers can look forward to a retro spin at the upcoming Hong Kong Film Festival 2011 (HKFF 2011) to be held from 14 to 20 July 2011 at Cathay Cineleisure Orchard. A winner of multiple awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards 2011, Gallants, will premiere at HKFF 2011. The action comedy film will take the audience down the memory lane of classic kung fu movies. Other new Hong Kong films to premiere at the festival include action drama Rebellion, youthful romance Breakup Club and Give Love. They are joined by retrospective titles - Swordsman II, Once Upon A Time in China II, A Chinese Odyssey: Pandora’s Box and All’s Well, Ends Well. Adding variety to the lineup is Quattro Hong Kong I and II, comprising a total of eight short films by renowned Hong Kong and Asian filmmakers commissioned by Brand Hong Kong and produced by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society. The retrospective titles were selected in a voting exercise that took place via Facebook and SMS in May. Public were asked to select from a list of iconic 1990s Hong Kong films that they would like to catch on the big screen again. The list was nominated by three invited panelists, namely Randy Ang, local filmmaker; Wayne Lim, film reviewer for UW magazine; and Kenneth Kong, film reviewer for Radio 100.3.
[Show full text]
1 “Ann Hui's Allegorical Cinema” Jessica Siu-Yin Yeung to Cite This
This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong: Angles on a Coherent Imaginary published by Palgrave Macmillan https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-7766-1_6 Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/34754 “Ann Hui’s Allegorical Cinema” Jessica Siu-yin Yeung To cite this article: By Jessica Siu-yin Yeung (2018) “Ann Hui’s Allegorical Cinema”, Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong: Angles on a Coherent Imaginary, ed. Jason S. Polley, Vinton Poon, and Lian-Hee Wee, 87-104, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Allegorical cinema as a rhetorical approach in Hong Kong new cinema studies1 becomes more urgent and apt when, in 2004, the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) begins financing mainland Chinese-Hong Kong co-produced films.2 Ackbar Abbas’s discussion on “allegories of 1997” (1997, 24 and 16–62) stimulates studies on Happy Together (1997) (Tambling 2003), the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002–2003) (Marchetti 2007), Fu Bo (2003), and Isabella (2006) (Lee 2009). While the “allegories of 1997” are well- discussed, post-handover allegories remain underexamined. In this essay, I focus on allegorical strategies in Ann Hui’s post-CEPA oeuvre and interpret them as an auteurish shift from examinations of local Hong Kong issues (2008–2011) to a more allegorical mode of narration. This, however, does not mean Hui’s pre-CEPA films are not allegorical or that Hui is the only Hong Kong filmmaker making allegorical films after CEPA. Critics have interpreted Hui’s films as allegorical critiques of local geopolitics since the beginning of her career, around the time of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 (Stokes and Hoover 1999, 181 and 347 note 25), when 1997 came and went (Yau 2007, 133), and when the Umbrella Movement took place in 2014 (Ho 2017).
[Show full text]
Chapter One Introduction My Attempt in This Thesis Stresses on Fruit
Yang 1 Chapter One Introduction My attempt in this thesis stresses on Fruit Chan’s consistent uses of fecal matters in his films. This scatological gimmick is greatly elaborated in his film Public Toilet, which has thus helped us to pinpoint the significance of fecal matters in his previous works. In line with Jacques Lacan’s split subject and Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection, my argument centers on the impossibility of a fixed Hong Kong identity and Fruit Chan’s emphasis on creating a new Hong Kong allegory from a more complex and mobile individual experiences. 1.1 Fruit Chan’s New Trilogy on the Subject-in-Process1 Chan is best noted for his “Hong Kong 1997 Trilogy,” Made in Hong Kong, The Longest Summer and Little Cheung. The subjects of the stories shift from the juveniles, middle-aged Chinese soldiers retiring from the British garrison, to the children in Little Cheung. Their responses to Hong Kong’s return to mainland China in 1997 form an overall anxiety among the lower class in Hong Kong society. Problematic identification becomes evident in these Hong Kong episodes. Together they give rise to a unique national allegory through Chan’s independent filmmaking. 1 Julia Kristeva makes a clear explanation of the term “the subject in process” in her article collected in The Tel Quel Reader (133-78). Yang 2 According to Ka-fai Yau, this is how the new cinema interacts with the new geo-historical situations, since the three films all deal with the changing moment of Hong Kong’s handover (545).2 However, this thesis, instead of referring to “Hong Kong 1997 Trilogy,” aims at Fruit Chan’s repetitive application of fecal matters to further create a whole new trilogy related to the formation of the subject, rather than an identity, in the psychoanalytic perspective.
[Show full text]
(Dis-)Locating the China Imaginary in Post-1997 Hong Kong Films = Éž
Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報 Volume 10 Issue 1 Vol. 10.1 十卷一期 (Summer 2010) Article 4 7-1-2010 Migrants in a strange city : (dis-)locating the China imaginary in post-1997 Hong Kong films = 陌生城市中的移民 : 後一九九七香港電影中國想像的位(錯)置 Vivian LEE City University of Hong Kong Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.ln.edu.hk/jmlc Recommended Citation Lee, V. (2010). Migrants in a strange city: (Dis-)locating the China imaginary in post-1997 Hong Kong films = 陌生城市中的移民 : 後一九九七香港電影中國想像的位(錯)置. Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, 10(1), 67-85. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Centre for Humanities Research 人文學科研究中心 at Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報 by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. but from minor personal matters, which the author often likens to leftover bits and pieces of fabric. In fact, this understanding of history undermines the treatments of history and humankind by Marx and Engels: “But life involves, before everything else, eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is a historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.”72 Whereas Marxist materialism is foremost interested in life as a collective historical trend in which the individual is considered a mere means of production, Wang is more concerned about life as a private practice against the massive political forces of history.
[Show full text]
Filmart 2014 №1
DAILY MARCH 24, FILMART 2014 №1 THR.COM/FILMART China_3D_cover_Day1.indd 1 3/21/14 3:18 PM ASIAN PREMIERE INTERNATIONAL MARKET PREMIERE Mon, 24th Mar. Mon,/ 16:00 24th /Mar. AMC / 16:00 Pacific / AMC 4 Pacific/ By Invitation4 / Market (BY INVITATION ONLY) Tue, 25th Mar. / 10:00 / AMC Pacific 1 / By Invitation Tue, 25th Mar. / 10:00 / AMC Pacific 1 / Market (BY INVITATION ONLY) Fortissimo Films HKIFF + HK Filmart Booth: 1E - B09 To set up a meeting with us, please e-mail to [email protected] HK 2014_THR_another me.indd 1 2014/3/19 �� 8:32 Fortissimo FP_Day1.indd 1 3/19/14 11:18 AM MARCH 24, 2014 THR.COM/FILMART FILMART №1 HONG KONG TODAY TOMORROW WEATHER AND HIGH 73° F 71° F TEMPS 23° C 22° C IP MAN 3 Chinese Movie Boom Boosts Filmart KICKS INTO An increased presence from the Mainland sparks optimism among dealmakers hoping to HIGH GEAR grab a larger slice of the world’s fastest-growing film marketBy Clifford Coonan and Karen Chu By Karen Chu ong Kong Filmart is already Asia’s largest wait and see. It’s a curtain raiser for Cannes and egasus Motion Pictures film market in terms of exhibitor numbers, advance showcase for upcoming projects, and it is will begin filming Ip H but coming shortly before Cannes, it is increasingly well attended.” P Man 3 in early 2015. an annual challenge to convince buyers to open But the growing allure of Chinese-language With a budget of $30 mil- their wallets in Asia, rather than wait for the bigger movies makes Filmart ever more important to lion, the finale of the trilogy, European platform.
[Show full text]
“China Factor” in Contemporary Hong Kong Genre Cinema
Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 46.1 March 2020: 11-37 DOI: 10.6240/concentric.lit.202003_46(1).0002 Re-Negotiations of the “China Factor” in Contemporary Hong Kong Genre Cinema Ting-Ying Lin Department of Information and Communication Tamkang University, Taiwan Abstract Given the long-existing and multifaceted negotiations of the “China factor” in Hong Kong film history, this article centers on the political function of genre films by exploring how contemporary Hong Kong filmmakers utilize filmmaking as a flexible strategy to re-negotiate and reflect on the China factor concerning current post-handover political dynamics. By focusing on several recent Hong Kong genre films as case studies, it examines how the China factor is negotiated in Vulgaria (低俗喜劇 Disu xiju, 2012) and The Midnight After (那夜凌晨，我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅 VAN Naye lingchen, wo zuoshang le Wangjiao kaiwang Dapu de hong van, 2014), considering the politics of languages alongside the imaginary of the disappearance of Hong Kong’s local cultures in the post-handover era. It also highlights two post-Umbrella- Revolution films, Trivisa ( 樹大招風 Shuda zhaofeng, 2016) and The Mobfathers (選老頂 Xuan lao ding, 2016), to explore how the China factor is negotiated in light of the collective anxieties of Hongkongers regarding the handover and controversies in the current electoral system of Hong Kong. By doing so, this article argues that the re-negotiations of the China factor in contemporary Hong Kong genre cinema have become more and more politically reflexive given the increasingly severe political interference of the Beijing sovereignty that has violated the autonomy of Hong Kong, while forming a discourse of resistance of Hongkongers against possible neo- colonialism from the Chinese authorities in the postcolonial city.
[Show full text]
Killing Time: the Handover and Its Afterlives
Hong Kong Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 2018), 100–115 Killing Time: The Handover and ,ts Afterlives Copyrighted Material of The Chinese University Press | AllCarlos Rights ReservedRojas Abstract This essay uses an analysis of Fruit Chan’s 2016 film Kill Time to reflect on the legacy of the Handover, and on the significance of its upcoming twentieth—and, later, fiftieth—anniversaries. Although Chan’s film is set in contemporary Beijing, is based on a novel by a Painland Chinese author, and at first glance appears to have little to do with Hong Kong, this essay argues that if we look beyond the film’s surface narrative, we find that the work explores a set of concerns relevant to the Handover and its legacies. Of particular interest is the sense of anticipation and anxiety that the Handover has generated, as well as the sense of potentiality and foreboding contained in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration’s guarantee that Hong Kong would enjoy a post-Handover moratorium of “fifty years without change.” At the same time, [the Handover] also should not become a black hole that we pretend doesn’t exist so that we don’t need to approach it or touch it. Therefore, in 1997 I resolved to write not about its present, but rather about its past while at the same time writing about its future. From a future vantage point I sought to reconstruct the past; and from a past vantage point I sought to project the future. From this deliberate interweaving of past and future, I hope that a present that is more full of possibility might gradually emerge.
[Show full text]
University of Southampton Research Repository Eprints Soton
University of Southampton Research Repository ePrints Soton Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Film Studies Hong Kong Cinema Since 1997: The Response of Filmmakers Following the Political Handover from Britain to the People’s Republic of China by Sherry Xiaorui Xu Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2012 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Film Studies Doctor of Philosophy HONG KONG CINEMA SINCE 1997: THE RESPONSE OF FILMMAKERS FOLLOWING THE POLITICAL HANDOVER FROM BRITAIN TO THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA by Sherry Xiaorui Xu This thesis was instigated through a consideration of the views held by many film scholars who predicted that the political handover that took place on the July 1 1997, whereby Hong Kong was returned to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from British colonial rule, would result in the “end” of Hong Kong cinema.
[Show full text]
Newsletter Berlinale 2014 {09015536-2938-E411-944A
BERLINBERLIN 20142014 BERLIN 2014 LINE-UP OFFICIAL SELECTION - COMPETITION BLACK COAL, THIN ICE by Diao Yinan - WORLD PREMIERE OFFICIAL SELECTION - PANORAMA LOVE IS STRANGE by Ira Sachs - INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE THE MIDNIGHT AFTER by Fruit Chan - WORLD PREMIERE UNFRIEND by Joselito Altarejos - WORLD PREMIERE OFFICIAL SELECTION - CULINARY CINEMA FINAL RECIPE by Gina Kim EUROPEAN FILM MARKET DJINN by Tobe Hooper iNUMBER NUMBER by Donovan Marsh RIGOR MORTIS by Juno Mak SIDDHARTH by Richie Mehta UPCOMING FILMS CAMERA by James Leong DRIVING BACK FROM DUBBO by Sue Brooks FOODIES by Thomas Joackson, Charlotte Landelius, Henrik Stockare HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES by John Cameron Mitchell NED RIFLE by Hal Hartley SUNSET SONG by Terence Davies CURRENT FILMS BORGMAN by Alex van Warmerdam KISS THE WATER by Eric Steel LINSANITY by Evan Jackson Leong WORLD PREMIERE Sun 9-FEB 5:30 PM Zoo Palast 3 Market (private) Mon 10-FEB 9:30 AM Zoo Palast 3 Market (private) Wed 12-FEB 10:00 PM Berlinale Palast World Premiere Thu 13-FEB 9:30 AM Friedrichstadspalast Festival Thu 13-FEB 6:00 PM Friedrichstadspalast Festival BLACK COAL, THIN ICE Diao Yinan China, Hong Kong / 2014 / 106’ / Mandarin / Crime Thriller, Drama CAST: LIAO Fan, GWEI Lun Mei, WANG Xuebing, Now five years have passed and the killer strikes again. WANG Jingchun, YU Ailei, NI Jingyang Zhang, now a miserable factory security guard is determined to redeem himself and solve the case on DIRECTOR'S FILMOGRAPHY: his own. After his investigation, he discovers that all of BLACK COAL, THIN ICE (2014) the victims seem to be related to a mysterious woman NIGHT TRAIN (2007) named Wu Zhizhen who works in a laundrette.
[Show full text]
Hong Kong Cinema and the 1997 Return of the Colony to Mainland China
Hong Kong Cinema and the 1997 Return of the Colony to Mainland China: The Tensions and the Consequences Mengyang Cui DISSERTATION.COM Boca Raton Hong Kong Cinema and the 1997 Return of the Colony to Mainland China: The Tensions and the Consequences Copyright © 2007 Mengyang Cui All rights reserved. Dissertation.com Boca Raton, Florida USA • 2007 ISBN: 1-58112- 381-7 ISBN 13: 978-1-58112-381-4 HONG KONG CINEMA AND THE 1997 RETURN OF THE COLONY TO MAINLAND CHINA: THE TENSIONS AND THE CONSEQUENCES Mengyang Cui (MA) International Cinema University Of Bedfordshire 2007 Abstract In this paper, I aimed to explore deeply the Hong Kong ‘1997 handover’ theme films by comparison and summary in order to discover the history and cultural meaning of this incident from a human perspective. 1997 is a turning point for Hong Kong people, society and the film industry. The city confronted a historical turning point under an experimental ‘one country, two systems’ convention without precedent in history. This led many Hong Kong people to lose confidence about their future. In addition, this historical incident brought a series of social issues to Hong Kong people, such as confusion about their identity and uncertainty about the future. Therefore I chose four films from two directors with different viewpoints reveal Hong Kong society and people’s life and spirit. Those films are Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), Golden Chicken (2000), and Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong (1997), The Longest Summer (1997). Also, I will give a brief introduction about the aspects of the past of Hong Kong politically (colonial rule), economically and with respect of Hong Kong identity to understand its cinema and the possible effects of the 1997 handover.
[Show full text]