Take-5: M+ Film Autumn ’22
The emergent museum’s first moving images programme introduced Hongkongers to the kind of stuff they could expect from its cinema. Welcome to round 2.
Hong Kong’s Marvel-free zone, the M+ Cinema, is getting ready for its second round of film programmes with an aggressively alternative POV. Once again, the museum aims to bring a little more experimentation to local screens and so this next series includes shorts, animations, features, and docs about Rei Kawakubo (the Commes des Garçons fashion wizard profiled in Rei Kawakubo—Renegades), public installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude (Walking on Water), rediscovered wonders (Nietzchka Keene’s The Juniper Tree, starring Björk), a special presentation of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, a spotlight on Claire Denis and 96 other screenings.
Possibly the most creative, if largely spatial, is the “Stair in the Dark,” a new Friday night series whose space is outside the theatres and on M+’s Grand Stair, complete with some form of live performance beforehand. We’re still trying to figure out where we’ll all be sitting, but it kicks off with Toshio Matsumoto’s 1969 counterculture classic Funeral Parade of Roses. Finally, the “Museum Reimagined” programme delves into the appreciation and critique of museums as “ever-evolving sites of cultural production.” Given the climate for rethinking culture in some circles, we gotta say: That takes some cojones right now. Here’s our five best bets, but the full programme details are at www.mplus.org.hk.
They Say the Moon is Fuller Here
| Director: Clara Law | Section: Rediscoveries
, October 7 - December 31
Restored from its original 16mm, Macau native Clara Law Cheuk-yiu’s 1985 National Film and Television School graduation project and kind of official feature debut, They Say the Moon Is Fuller Here is premium ’80s New Wave, with Law exploring the intersection of East and West when Hong Kong stood at one of its many crossroads. The romance pivots on an art student in the UK getting invovled with a visiting Chinese man. Law would become more noted for Temptation of a Monk, Floating Life and The Goddess of 1967, but Moon offers a peek at an artist and her themes at their most nascent.
White Material
| Director: Claire Denis | Section: Fever Dreams: The Cinema of Claire Denis, November 24 - December 30
Total boss Denis has been tackling issues of race, gender and colonialism since long before it was a regular talking point, so any retrospective of one of France’s most singular voices is worth the effort. In 2009’s White Material, a white woman and coffee farmer (Isabelle Huppert, perfect) in an unnamed African country on the verge of civil war gets caught between rebels and colonial troops while trying to bring in her harvest. Denis’s exploration of colonial legacy is personal, tense and oddly beautiful, and it’s just one film on the programme (co-presented by Alliance Française). A fairly welcoming entry point to her oeuvre.
The Square
| Director: Ruben Östlund |
Section: Museum Reimagined
, October 14 - November 20
What better way to prep for Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s forthcoming Triangle of Sadness than with this Palme d’Or-winning gallery/museum satire? A little more on the nose than Östlund’s brilliant, pitch black breakout Force Majeure, The Square nonetheless takes a razor sharp scalpel to the artsy, up-its-own-ass set while simultaneously pointing a condemning finger at the entitled, contemporary elite. Starring Claes Bang before his naked sword-wielding turn in The Northman.
Red Rocket
| Director: Sean Baker | Section:
Red Rocket, November 3 - December 18
Director Sean Baker has been an indie favourite since he hit with the ultra-Sundance-y Starlet in 2012, and followed with the iPhone-shot Tangerine (2015), and Oscar-nominated The Florida Project (2017). He’s long held a soft, non-judgmental spot for sex workers, poor underclasses and other marginalised people, and Red Rocket seamlessly blends all his favourite themes. One-time MTV and porn-adjacent personality Simon Rex proves himself a stellar actor in this frequently hilarious tale of a charming hanger-on trying to hang on. Yeah, you can stream it. But Baker’s loving, joyful images are best appreciated on a real screen.
The Sex Warriors and the Samurai
| Director: Nick Deocampo | Section: Nick Deocampo: A Counter Cinema, November 4 - December 11
Historian, author, queer cinema agitator and Fulbright Scholar Deocampo is among the Philippines most vocal, radical and vibrant artists from the country’s cultural alternative. Since the 1980s he’s been a model of fury, glee, and advocacy for marginalised groups and social change. In The Sex Warriors and the Samurai Deocampo spins a tale about a trans Filipina prostitute in Tokyo supporting her family of 18, a story in which poverty, drug abuse, violence, and the weight of history all come to bear. Screens in Part II, with The Philippines: A Legacy of Violence.