One big happy family

Meet the new member of my family. His name is Buddy. Some dog lovers found him wandering around near Shing Mun Reservoir. He was smart enough to follow them home, and for two months he's been shut up in a cramped public housing apartment. I found him on a pet adoption website, and liked him immediately. He's absolutely gigantic, and reaches up to my waist standing up, but so very gentle and almost regal in bearing. I think of him as the Rolls Royce of dogs.
The people who found him belong to a group of people who regularly go out and rescue dogs from the pound. Today they paid me a visit to check up on Buddy, and I made them an apple pie, served with vanilla ice cream. It was a little too sweet, and I think I put too much nutmeg in, plus the pie top was a bit too dry. Not too shabby for a first effort, though. My guests were super nice. They brought a whole bunch of snacks for the dogs, and lots of boney treats. Both Buddy and Plato were tired out at the end of the day from all the chewing!

Perez made me cry!

And this 47 year old single unemployed women from Glasgow named Susan Boyle who appeared on the show Britain's Got talent is the reason why.

Watch it here!

This video got a million hits on Youtube in 2 days. You gotta see it to believe it.

太負面？

今天答問會後又有觀眾說我的電影對同性戀的描寫太負面，會否擔心教壞青少年，或會成為某些人抗擊同性戀的武器呢？我說：「佢地要咁樣諗係佢地嘅問題，你唔好以為你唔camp唔吸毒那些人會放過你，佢地一樣會話你係死基佬！唔好為那些人而活啦。」

Thank you fans!

那天Q&A大部分人一出字幕就蜂踴離場，心裡難免有點不是味兒，終於俾我發現部戲原來都有人鍾意架(雖然是上次G&L Film Fest 的觀眾)，所以要學傅頴講句：Thank you fans!

I am surprised but happy to learn that "愛到盡" will be shown in the coming HKIFF this year. You know, gay films seldom have chances to be shown in the local cinemas as there is barely gay director (no matter he is good or bad) in Hong Kong nor any local straight director will dare to touch the gay issues. Just hope the talent of the director and the actors of this film can reach out to more movie goers besides gay people.

I saw "愛到盡" in G & L Film Festival last year. It is a rare movie dealing with the mundane lives of the "local", not exclusively, gay people in search of love after self-hatred, betrayal and desertion. The best "Hong Kong" gay movie I have ever seen as it is truly and openly, and more than that, the director has gusts to draw the bitter portrait of a young local gay junkie, who probably lives among us, with graphic sexual details. It is a rare gay film with heart and the director deserves our commendations and encouragement to make more about gay lives which are of every one of us.

Until now, I still can't forget the last shot of this sad but honest movie. The eloquence of the director’s effort in speaking the story and the realistic performance of the actors in this film make it the most unforgettable in the years to come. To me, I guess, it is a landmark of the local gay film made about the local gay people. I highly recommend it to all of you who loves not only gay films but films.

End of Love Review

Film Review: End of Love

By Elizabeth Kerr, 三月 24, 2009 02:53 ET

Bottom Line: Imperfect but subtlely compelling drama steers clear of the cliches that define gay Asian cinema.

More Hong Kong Filmart reviews

HONG KONG -- If there was a hallmark of queer cinema in Asia, it would be its never-ending and tired focus on the angst involved in simply being gay. One more gay high school student with a crush on his straight best friend, and buckets of requisite I-wish-I-wasn't-gay agony will be one too many.

Hong Kong indie filmmaker Simon Chung ("Innocent") steers clear of that ditch and turns in his most assured film to date with "End of Love," a simple drama about a young man trying to find his own footing vis-a-vis personal morality and the capacity for emotional connection. Chung's handling of Asian homosexuality may be a little too mature and blunt for general release in Asia, but broad spectrum and niche (gay, Asian) festivals are sure to be drawn to the film.

Ming (Lee Chi-kin) is an aimless 22-year-old when he enters into his first serious relationship with Yan (Alex Wong). After he and his mother argue about him being gay, she dies and he's suddenly independent and forced to find his own way. Then conflict starts to seep into the dynamic between he and Yan; Ming falls in with the wrong drug-positive crowd, starts turning tricks and eventually winds up in a Christian rehab. There he meets Keung (Guthrie Yip), and though he may not be as open to conversion as Keung, his time in rehab brings him personal clarity.

That Ming's problems don't stem from his homosexuality is a breath of fresh air in an industry that is more comfortable using gay characters in melodramatic tragedies -- almost as cautionary tales. Ming's issues are not with being gay, but with intimacy and trust. But Chung doesn't make any attempt to sugarcoat some of the less glamorous aspects of gay life in Hong Kong. He captures the fleeting, surreptitious nature of some gay interactions with a nonjudgmental camera that makes Ming's epiphanies stark by contrast.

Lee turns in a naturalistic performance as a man coming to understand himself that is grounded in reality (Chung claims the character was based on a friend of his), and it proves to be the foundation that keeps the sporadically predictable story engaging.

Coffee with Simon Chung Tak-sing

March 20, 2009

Coffee with Simon Chung Tak-sing

By Nigel Collett

Simon Chung's latest offering End of Love - both screenings at the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival are sold out - tells the story of a gay rent boy who meets a recovering heroin addict at a Christian drug rehab centre.

It could be said, with only some exaggeration, that Simon Chung Tak-sing is a good half of the Hong Kong gay film industry (Kit Hung being the other major part), though exaggeration, as I found when I took coffee with him at Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents Club, is not something to which he is greatly prone. He is as disarmingly modest about what he has done for gay cinema in Hong Kong in the last ten years as he is about the position he is currently achieving in the industry. His most recent film, End of Love, was shown as the preview at this year's Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and he is now in the middle of directing a half hour Cantonese TV drama entitled Guilt and Repentance (a straight story, this time, his first) for Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK). Local recognition is clearly following the critical acclaim his works have won worldwide. Born in Hong Kong some few decades back – "No, I don't think I should tell you my age", he replied to my inevitable question – Chung went to school in Toronto, Canada at the age of fifteen then stayed there to major in film at the city's York University. He returned to Hong Kong to make videos for commercials and karaoke discs. In the technical department at Baptist University, he started to make his first independent short films, then took a Masters in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University. Now, when not behind the camera, he is a Research Associate in the field of interior design at a third Hong Kong university, Polytech U. Since his four shorts, he has made two feature films, the earlier being Innocent, which was released in 2004. All his films to date have had gay subjects, and I asked him whether this was a good thing. "Gay films are a niche," he replied, "but also a cage, as they limit how people see you as a director." "The expectations of gay audiences can be a bit limiting too," he added. "Most young audiences are disappointed if there is no coming out story or a slushy romance; my films don't fit this paradigm. I don't just want to celebrate gay life with pretty love stories. I want to show the darker sides of gay life, and gay audiences don't always appreciate seeing that." Though a gay man himself, and one with no hang ups about being out in any of the worlds he inhabits, Chung now feels he'd like to do some less overtly gay work. His current filming for RTHK is the start of this. Chung started making short films as far back as 1992, when he made his first short, Chiwawa Express. Since then three of Chung's short films have been released on disc, two in the collection Stanley Belovedand First Love and Other Painsin 1998 and 1999 respectively. Stanley Beloved was also included in the collection Banana Queers. Here he was in good company, the other directors being Quentin Lee, who made the Canadian film Ethan Mao, Tony Ayres (Walking on Water) of Australia and Ray Yeung, maker of the British film Cut Sleeve Boys. Stanley Beloved has been shown worldwide and has won prizes in Spain, Germany and the US. His other short, Life is Elsewhere, made in 1996, won a prize in Japan as well as the distinguished award at the Hong Kong Independent and Short Film and Video Awards, which subsequently issued it as part of a collection on DVD. Innocent, his first full length feature film, was in part autobiographical. It tells a story a bit like his own. A Chinese family emigrates to Toronto, where their gay teenage son (played by Hong Kong AIDS Concern's Tim Lee) undergoes many of the unsettling settling-in experiences Chung had gone through himself. The film was shown at Hong Kong film festivals in 2004-5, as well as gay film festivals in North America, Thessalonika and Toronto, where it won an award at the Reel Asian Film Festival in 2005. Top of page: Simon Chung (left); above: screenshots from Chung's second feature End of Love. Chung's latest film, End of Love, has yet to find a buyer and thus is not yet out on disc, so for those of you who missed it at the festival this year, I should explain that it is a study of some of the more controversial aspects of gay life, Chung once again refusing to serve up sentiment to his audience. This time Chung focuses in on issues like how to negotiate the boundaries of love and sex, the rent boy scene, and drugs and rehabilitation. The inspiration for much of the plot was the true tales told him by one of his friends, who is a rent boy but who nevertheless manages to hold onto a long term partner. There are no hard and fast judgments in this film, no heroes and no real villains (just a lot of weak willed souls like the rest of us) and life's messiness is reflected in the ambivalent way Chung treats his themes. He shows the good and bad sides of drugs – "drugs can be immensely spiritual, restorative" he comments, a view which has been unfashionable since flower-power days and one which he does not hide behind in the film, which also portrays the disaster to which addiction can lead. He is similarly ambivalent about the Christians who man the voluntary rehabilitation centres. These really do exist in some number in Hong Kong's New Territories. The Hong Kong authorities give those convicted of drugs offences the choice of incarceration in the hard government centre on the island of Heiling Chau or an easier life in centres run by Christian social workers. The downside of these is the expectation of conformity with the tenets of faith and submission to processes based on religious belief and prayer. Those who run these centres, though they see the world in the black and white terms which Chung abhors, nevertheless do achieve some good, their relapse rate, it is said, being less than that achieved by the government. All this may make End of Love sound a very serious film; it is far from being a bore, of course, at times managing to be both amusing and arousing as well as provoking. The professional cast (only one of whom, I confessed to being surprised to learn, is gay) succeed in portraying credible, some even attractive, characters and in indulging in some very raunchy and at times violent sex scenes. The film's principal lead, Lee Chi Kin, who takes the part of Ah Ming, the teenager who is ejected from his home and ends up as a prostitute, came to the film from the making of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, in which he'd taken the part of Tony Leung's stand in during practice for the film's nude scenes. Such professional actors and film crew weigh heavily on an independent film maker's budget. Until End of Love, Chung financed all his work by grants from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, clearly one part of the Hong Kong Government which is not afraid to 'sponsor' gay culture. Nowadays, though, the demand for grants exceeds supply and for his last film he was forced to finance part of the film himself. With sale and distribution of gay films being so difficult, making them is very much a labour of love, a fact of which the community, I feel, tends to remain ignorant or indifferent, but for which it is clearly in Chung's debt. So partly for commercial and partly for cultural reasons, Chung's next film is likely to have a theme at least slightly outside the gay niche he has so far dominated in Hong Kong. He is not letting slip yet what his ideas for this will be, but the twinkle in his eye while he refused to answer this, my last question, indicated that whatever it is, his next film is going to be something as challenging and interesting as those with which he has entertained and stimulated us so far. 'End of Love' (in Cantonese ) will be screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival on Mar 24 at 9.30 pm and Apr 10 at 9pm at the Hong Kong Science Museum Lecture Hall. Tickets are sold out.

「影展戲」和「娛樂片」

多栽培娛樂片新導演

文章日期：2009年3月23日

【明報專訊】香港曾經有很多娛樂片導演，做出了驕人的票房，但近年的新導演，拍娛樂片的少之又少。

新導演要成功，拍娛樂片比拍影展片機會低。作為新人，一出道就走商業路線，電影不賣座固然受批評，賣座也多半不受認同，覺得是暴發戶。

走偏門題材，目標鎖定影展，反而較易受注目。大影展不成，全世界有形形色色的小影展，不愁沒機會。

某些題材例如同性戀，能參展的機會十分高，去過影展，電影不一定賣得好，但至少導演名字有人記得。

走了影展路線，轉回拍娛樂片，並不容易。導演心態是其中一個問題。

有電影人形容去影展如吸毒一樣，會上癮的。在那種場面被厚待過，或見到拿獎的是如此地風光，很難願意媚俗拍商業片。

萬一轉拍娛樂片失敗，回頭更難。而且，拍娛樂片有另一套語言、另一種思維，甚至比拍影展片難掌握。

拍了一兩部影展片的導演，會被看成非商業導演，替投資者賺不到錢的話，再開戲會有點困難。

除非拿過大獎，不然兩三年才拍成一部藝術片是很合理的，有些影迷還認為構思籌備得愈久，愈值得期待。

幾年拍一部戲如何過活呢？娛樂片導演一年拍三幾部戲沒問題，市場絕對可以消化，生活自然也好一點。

早年走過影展路線的導演，在大市淡靜的情況下，開戲愈感困難，好幾個其實早有意願想走娛樂片路線，可惜不能話改風格便改，要投資者相信才行。

其實，電影圈應多栽培娛樂片新導演，對影市未來最有幫助。

郭繾澂

首先現在不是太多的導演一年開三幾部戲，拍娛樂片的三幾年才開一部也大有人在。

而生活好不好，除了物質外，也視乎所做的事有沒有滿足感、有沒有意義吧。

至於所謂「影展戲」和「娛樂片」的分野是由市場(包括影展市場)主導，而不是導演計算出來的。現在的商業片市場是畸型的，只容許某類型電影得以上映，才令「影展戲」和「娛樂片」兩極化。在健康和多元化的市場內，是可以讓兩種電影都找到其目標觀眾的。不過這種市場除了歐洲某些國家外已很難找到。

作者說同性戀題材參展機會十分高恐怕是他一廂情願的看法吧，既然這麼容易，不如陳慶嘉導演也拍一部同性戀電影，揚威康城為港增光吧！