Survival of Hong Kong cinema rests with independent film makers

Survival of Hong Kong cinema rests with independent film makers
By Elizabeth Kerr

The concept of independent cinema is a difficult one to characterize. Most well-developed film industries comprise several tiers but few are as inherently mercenary - or independent - as Hong Kong's independent cinema can range from the one extreme to another. American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez became famous for financing his first feature, El Mariachi, with his Visa card and from the money he earned by volunteering as a guinea pig for pharmaceutical tests. George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - was self-financed to the tune of $115 million. By rights, it also qualifies as an indie film.

Hong Kong's industry is partially subsidized, similar to its counterparts in Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. It's common practice in most countries that don't have Hollywood's ready private capital and where filmmakers must rely heavily on publicly funded arts councils. Almost all films produced in Hong Kong are cobbled together with financing from an assortment of sources - be it governments , councils, or private business. In the wake of the first Hong Kong Asian Independent Film Festival (HKAIFF) this past November, the question arises, as to whether the independent cinema industry in Hong Kong is healthy enough to sustain, especially considering there's some doubt such industry actually exists.

In 2005, Hong Kong produced approximately 55 feature films, according to the Film Services Office - down from close to 100 a decade earlier. The way director Pang Ho-cheung (Isabella, A/V) sees it, "Since the close of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, the Hong Kong movie industry is mainly an independent film industry." Some of that is by choice, some of necessity. "I'm an indie filmmaker. It's not a choice. It's a vocation," says filmmaker Simon Chung (Innocent). "My films so far, have dealt with subjects that may not interest the mainstream industry, like homosexuality and drugs." That's an odd position for a director to find himself in when almost everything produced in Hong Kong is "independent." The few remaining big players, or "studios" - Media Asia and Emperor spring to mind - are tightening their production budgets. As Lawrence Wong, chairman of independent distributor Ying E Chi pointed out in this paper in November, "investors are very conservative, and they count on formulaic box office hits." That translates to lots of starlets and boy bands, when not already committed to co-producing big budget Mainland-targeted epics like Red Cliff or The Warlords.

But as is the case in any industry, experiences and opinions are often disparate. "Hong Kong has an indie film scene, but not really an industry," theorizes Chung. "The Arts Development Council regularly gives out small grants to filmmakers, which are often insufficient for feature length projects, and filmmakers have to seek out other funding sources, such as industry investment or, more often, their own money, to make their films."

Producer Rosa Li concurs with both Pang and Chung ... sort of. "(I'm) not sure if you can call it an 'industry' but yes there are independent films in Hong Kong. By 'independent' I mean independent development, financing and production," she explains with particular reference to Kenbiroli Films, the production house she co-founded with director Kenneth Bi (The Drummer, Rice Rhapsody). "Several directors we know work this way. They develop their own material and seek investors on a film-by-film basis."

The state of the industry - or scene - is another issue altogether. Chung sees a silver lining in the current cloud hovering over filmmaking in Hong Kong. "In a year when the mainstream industry is experiencing (yet another) downturn, there (were) about a dozen indie features made in 2008." There is support for budding Johnnie To's out there, chiefly in the form of council funding. Along with the Arts Development Council, there are public resources to keep the industry alive: The Film Development Fund, while not new, received a HK$300 million cash infusion in 2007 and the newly established Hong Kong Film Development Council was founded to shepherd the entire industry with a more focused eye, toward long-term stability.

But many artists still rely on their own legwork. With council money usually falling short, as Chung points out, filmmakers need to be willing and able to tap a lot more sources. Li sees a future in regional co-productions, and Kenbiroli always puts together all its own funding. Pang, at his company, Making Film, is more of a fly-by- the-seat-of-the-pants type of director. "Borrowing Chairman Mao's words, we are 'touching the stone to pass the river'," meaning he prefers crossing each production bridge when he comes to it. "I think a golden rule for independent movie makers is that they should not be limited by (others') requests to create. Instead, they should be proactive in developing projects ... so that they can control the entire production till the end."

When it comes down to it, though, making any film is pointless if there's no one willing to watch it and those who are willing are unable to. Whose job is it to ensure audiences get an opportunity to see indie films? Ironically the independent industry such as it is, relies on the same fundamentals as Hollywood, Bollywood, and beyond. "Cinemas have to make money to stay open - it won't help if we have a lot of art house cinemas but nobody goes to them. Ultimately the films have to be appealing to the audience," says Li. "Nowadays ... (when cinemas) put on an independent film and the tickets are not selling well in the first two days, they will cut the movie.

Cinema owners would rather put on the same popular movie in all seven mini theatres," Pang agrees, before warning, "Of course, they can make more money but in the long run, this is not healthy." Pang's biggest issue with that line of thinking is the negative impact it has on the local industry. There's supporting evidence to be found in the 55 features made in 2005. Most of them were vehicles for moderately-talented starlets. With a shrinking industry, Pang believes content becomes a growing problem. For viewers, a clear Hong Kong cinematic voice is lost.
Chung, however, sees a larger problem, which he calls the cultural factor. "I feel that there are fewer and fewer people who seek out unusual or out of the way movies in Hong Kong," he states. Judging from the record-breaking box office numbers over Christmas, he could be right. "The cinema culture is very much about seeing the latest blockbuster hit. In other countries blockbusters also dominate, but not so much that they crowd out everything else."

Berlin Journal #3

The next day I went to the Panorama lunch. I was seated next to a British guy named Wash West, and the name didn't register with me until he mentioned that he had previously made The Fluffer. "Wait a minute, you're the Wash West who made all those prom films?" I'd never seen any of his films, porn or otherwise, but I've read enough about him to know that he was a legend in the industry for making stylized gay porn that had great lighting, camera work and even a decent storyline. This is a self-made man with no formal film school training, who taught himself how to make films by making adult films! I was all the more surprised that he was not at all what I expected of a porn director. By that I mean the man sitting next to me was not in the least sleazy or even jaded. Wash radiated positive energy; he was cheerful, and nice in the best sense of the word.

Staying true to my resolution to see films by directors I'd personally met and liked, I went to see Pedro, whose director was at the same lunch (Wash West was the producer). Another great choice. I loved the lead actor, he was so cute! My friends at m-appeal, however, disliked Pedro for being too much like TV.

Berlin Journal #2

The next day I had three interviews scheduled. One was for a gay TV channel. They made me stand in the cold to answer questions about the China gay scene. Go figure. The next was for the Teddy awards, and the third with some magazine. The reporter looked like she was about 15. I went on and on about the virtue of drugs.

Then we were off to the Panorama reception. Norman introduced me to Jackie Pang of Jettone Films. I hope she remembers me when we get back to Hong Kong. Then I met Cheng Yu-chieh, a director from Taiwan. I liked him immediately, and decided to go see his film, Yang Yang. It was one of my better decisions. The film started out as a typical Taiwanese school romance, two girls in love with the same boy and all that jazz, but it became something a lot more towards the middle. The heroine is a French-Chinese girl, played by Cheng Yung Yung, and her performance was superb, and perfectly captures the feeling of being an outsider in Taiwan. I decided to make it a policy to go and watch films by directors I have met and liked.

Berlin journal #1

I told people that I had no expectations coming to Berlin, but I must have been lying, for as I sat in the lobby of the International cinema looking out the window to the gathering dusk outside, a sense of depression came over me. Perhaps it was the austere Soviet era decor of the cinema, or the wide boulevard filled with concrete blocks outside, but the overwhelming feeling I had was: 'Is this it?' This is what I had been waiting for my entire life, the chance to show my work at one of the Big Three international film festivals, and here I was, at the world premiere of my latest film, and it hit me that it was just a festival.

Was I expecting fans? Photographers? I don't know. Soon the film ended and I went back into the cinema. The presenter called the director of the short that preceded mine on stage. After a couple of questions he called me to go on. Nobody asked any questions except the presenter's friend, who "praised" the film by saying that it is melodramatic, which is somethings Germans don't usually see on film. I was taken aback, and mumbled that my film is probably closer to Fasbinder than Ozu on the melodrama scale (whatever that means). With that inane exchange the Q&A was over and I went to have dinner with my German distributors.

Distributors act fast!

Back from Berlin. Exhausted from a week of parties and screenings. A little disappointed that I did not get as much media exposure as I had hoped. But here's something from the respectable Financial Times. I'm especially pleased because this is clearly a tough journalist.

Wackiness that’s serious
By Nigel Andrews
Published: February 15 2009 19:49 Last updated: February 15 2009 19:49

Given time or eternity, it had to happen. As surely as monkeys at typewriters will end up tapping out the works of Shakespeare, a Peruvian film about a woman with a potato in her vagina will – at some point – win the Golden Bear.

This was the year. Not that The Milk of Sorrow, the first Peruvian film entered in competition at Berlin, is artless, let alone primitive. Claudia Llosa’s film sprang into view on the penultimate day, highly wrought in its weirdness, deeply serious in its wackiness, and probably needing only a jury headed by Tilda Swinton, the brightest maverick in the screen-arts establishment, to confer the gilded grizzly.

The film’s Spanish title is La Teta Asustada (The Poisoned Teat), denoting a Peruvian superstition that raped or abused women in strife-ridden times pass the sickness of fear to their suckling babes. The heroine (Magaly Solier), thus infected, keeps a tuber in her pudenda to ward off violation. “Magic realism” doesn’t quite catch Llosa’s style. It is more nutty-as-a-fruitcake naturalism, sometimes deliberately funny, as when a doctor tries to persuade Solier that there are right and wrong places to store root vegetables, sometimes rich with a droll, wise, deadpan all-seeingness. The photographic style is in the best sense faux naïf. The acting, as the story marches towards apocalypse, is neither faux nor naïf but intense, bold, level-gazing.
For most of this Berlinale, anxious bookies had walked the Potsdamerstrasse trying to coax bets on Iran’s About Elly (drowned woman’s death catalyses insights into despotic society), Germany’s Everyone Else (sex-war study) or the Anglo-French London River (races find amity in the terrorist aftermath of July 7 2005), all noted in my last dispatch. No careful person would have put a punt on any for Golden Bear. At the same time, we all knew that each film would win something.

Iran’s Asghar Farhadi was duly named Best Director. London River put Best Actor prize in the hands of Mali-born star Sotigui Kouyate, his quiet grace preferred to the full-steam emoting of co-star Brenda Blethyn. Everyone Else was a double success for the host country, earning Best Actress prize for Birgit Minichmayr and sharing the runner-up Grand Jury Prize with Spain’s Gigante (Giant)), a tender whimsy about a super-sized security guard finding love in a supermarket.

These films at least looked comfortable in a festival competition: more than could be said for Peter Strickland’s bafflingly lauded (by some) Katalin Varga, a sort of Cold Comfort Tundra working up rape-and-revenge shenanigans in Romania; or the trite comedy, The One and Only, dramatising the boyhood memoirs of actor George Hamilton, with Renee Zellweger doing her best as eccentric, toujours gai mum.

Even Theo Angelopoulos and Chen Kaige, those godfathers of modern art cinema, made us offers too easy to refuse. The Greek director’s The Dust of Time has a poly-accented cast – Bruno Ganz, Irène Jacob, Willem Dafoe – slogging through a symbol-laden seminar on human migration in a xenophobic world. The Chinese director’s Forever Enthralled is a lacklustre clone of Farewell, My Concubine, its spectacle and drama resembling yesterday’s stage sets.

No, the festival fringe, as often at Berlin, was the place to be. Distributors, please act fast to acquire Simon Chung’s End of Love, a bold, compelling tale of drugs and bisexual love, proving that little has changed for filmmaking in Hong Kong thankfully since the handover. The place clearly is a “special administrative region”. Now will the Chinese government let the rest of China catch up?

And I saw again, because my admiration for Henrik Hellström and Fredrik Wenzel’s 75-minute gem grew through invidious comparison with other films, Sweden’s extraordinary Burrowing. In a tale of the suburban versus the sylvan, prologued by a Thoreau quote, a new kind of cinema grows before our eyes. There is barely a plot, merely the movements and voice-overs of three or four vari-aged characters, choreographed near-abstractly as “children of life” midway between nature and nurture. It is lyrical, mysterious, dazzlingly photographed and, in every sense that cinema can bear, poetic.

搵笨鬧鬼廣告

93年的KCR 鬧鬼廣告，大家講到似層層，有說被鬼"疊住"的小孩死左，有說全部都活不過X歲，當年全城起哄，街頭巷尾都有人談論，結果KCR要抽起廣告唔播。關鍵在於第27秒肥仔後面有個低著頭的女仔壘住佢，但到左end shot 肥仔是最後面嗰個，咁壘住佢嘅係...好驚呀！

其實只不過係唔連戲，這情況一開始已經有。比如在14秒可看見戴帽男孩後面是女仔，到20秒他後面又變了男仔，到了迎面shot又變返"男女男女男女"的次序，尾shot導演可能覺得吊帶褲得意D咪又叫肥仔企最後咯。就咁俾個廣告呃左咁多年，真係唔抵。

人面桃花

昨天剛巧是《愛到盡》殺科一周年，想不到一班演員和工作人員還有機會聚首一堂。一年後大家各有發展，志健做了空少，Connie和Clifton轉了工，Ben組織了新跳舞組合，Gutherie繼續一劇接一劇，Jessey找到了愛情，而我就實現了一個很重要的夢想...