Making Waves

Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema

Hong Kong films have an irreplaceable position in the history of global cinema. It is an endless source of indestructible stunt men and fists clenched with anger, affectionate relationship dramas and indifferent protagonists, crazy comedies, nihilistic gunfights and better tomorrows.

But the reputation of local cinema is largely based on a series of iconic films from the 1960s up to late 1980s. Every year in the past seventeen years Filmasia brought a wide selection of cinema classics, but this year we have decided to look forward. In cooperation with Create Hong Kong (Create HK) and supported by Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Berlin (HKETO Berlin) we want to introduce a program representing the present and, hopefully, also the future. The main theme of the 18^th Filmasia entitled Making Waves – Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema is to celebrate the last 25 years of Hong Kong cinema.

The selection of films is primarily intended to show the diversity and power of the new generation of filmmakers, but also more recent works of already established ones. The diverse nature of young Hong Kong is introduced in New Talents section which will present four utterly different new features: Intimate drama Mama’s Affair by the talented Kearen Pang, New Year’s crazy comedy Chili Laugh Story by Coba Cheung, Jun Li’s socio-critical drama Drifting and queer coming-of-age film The First Girl I Loved. The Contemporary Films section will introduce new works of established filmmakers like Johnnie To, Yuen Woo-ping or Cheang Pou-soi and, above all, Mabel Cheung. It is a great honour that we will welcome this prominent director here in Prague in person – she manages to connect classical and modern, iconic and fresh, past and present. We will show two of her films: her latest documentary To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self features the stories of young women in contemporary Hong Kong and with An Autumn’s Tale we want to revisit one of her most influential films from the late 1980s dealing with migration.

Hong Kong cinema is an unstoppable force, it can adapt to any circumstances and just keeps going forward. Here’s to the next 25 years!

Photo Exhibition