重慶森林
Romantic drama
Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin
Subtitles: English and Czech
Directing: Wong Kar-wai
Starring: Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Faye Wong
Distributor: Block 2 Distribution

TRAILER

In two stories told in sequence, film magician Wong Kar-wai captures the fleeting magic of memories and Hong Kong’s genius loci. This iconic film was shot during a break from Wong’s arduous work on the historical epic Ashes of Time – to rediscover his love of cinema. The result is an unbridled and heartfelt account of how easy it is to love. And how hard it can be to forget.

The nuanced narrative never lets the viewers experience the exuberant emotions of conventional romance. Instead, Wong constantly challenges the audience (and the characters) to re-evaluate what they see and – perhaps more significantly – what they feel. Cops 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and 663 (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) do not go through a conventional romantic storyline. Wong directly encourages the audience to put their emotional suffering in contrast and offers a narrative puzzle full of parallels and differences. One story relies on the conventions of crime thrillers filled with deadlines, suspense and slow motion takes. The second story involves an almost dreamlike haziness and emphasis on the mundane. In the former, love becomes part of the routine; in the latter, love and routine directly collide.

Wong is unrivalled in combining improvisational freedom, the dynamic Hong Kong style and a clear author’s vision that is simply unmatched. Chungking Express frequently appears at the top of cinephile charts and even Quentin Tarantino has repeatedly expressed his admiration for the film. And not surprisingly, because underneath the stylized aesthetics lies a story that describes our innermost feelings. Or those we may have for a can of pineapple.

墮落天使
Neo-noir
Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin
Subtitles: English and Czech
Directing: Wong Kar-wai
Starring: Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, Karen Mok
Distributor: Block 2 Distribution

TRAILER

The greatest postmodernist of Hong Kong cinema. Master of melancholic mood of loneliness and unfulfilled longing. An original stylist combining cinephilia with music video aesthetics. A chronicler of Hong Kong’s last years before the city was handed over to China in 1997. This is Wong Kar-Wai. 

From a filmmaker who was once compared by critics to both Godard and Tarantino, Filmasia presents one of the highlights of his most prolific creative period, the first half of the 1990s. Like many of the director’s other films, Fallen Angels follows several characters who meet each other only rarely, yet we find many parallels between them. A hired killer who likes to have his work set up by someone else, his companion who is obsessed with the killer’s personality even though she has hardly ever seen him, a mute young man who occupies other people’s shops at night, and a girl who longs to face the woman who seduced her ex-boyfriend – these are the protagonists and antagonists of a virtuosically constructed fragmented narrative, where there are far more internal monologues than character conversations. The film is also one of Wong’s most stylistically distinctive works – the camera alternates between colour and black-and-white images, most scenes are shot with a handheld camera using an extremely wide-angle lens that distorts the image, and the trip-hop influenced soundtrack contributes to the surreal atmosphere of the work. Again, Wong is more concerned with evoking a mood than with conventional storytelling. Fallen Angels can be seen as a film about loneliness in the modern city, an audiovisual poem about the melancholic numbness resulting from amorous longing, but also as an impression of Hong Kong itself at the time. After all, Wong himself has said of the film that its main character is the city itself, and that it is a kind of cinematic sibling to his slightly older work Chungking Express. 

莎莉
Drama
Taiwan, France
Language: Mandarin, Taiwanese, English, French
Subtitles: English and Czech
Directing: Lien Chuen-hung
Starring: Lin Po-Hung, Esther Liu, Yang Li-Yin, Lee Ying-Hung
Distributor: ArtHood Entertainment

TRAILER

The main protagonist of the Taiwanese hit Salli, Hui-Jun, is an almost 40-year-old single woman living on a farm where she takes care of her niece Xin-Ru and a flock of chickens. Her brother is about to get married and everyone around Hui-Jun pressures her to find a partner. Going to a wedding single brings bad luck! Hui-Jun eventually creates an account on an online dating site but changes a few details – her age and her name. Hui-Jun becomes Salli.

This relaxing romantic comedy portrays the comfortable atmosphere of a Taiwanese village and then changes the setting to France where Salli sets off to meet her internet love interest Martin. The film takes a critical look at internet dating and the troubling use of false identities. But love can, indeed, flourish even in a world full of mystification. Salli combines gentle humour and a relaxing mood with sensitive romance and ridicules social ills.