Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Martin Scorsese's remake,
The Departed
.
Election
(2005) and
Election 2
(2006), by master
of Hong Kong noir Johnnie To, also enjoyed immense critical and box-office success.
Echoes of the Rainbow
(2010), a rather maudlin tale about the battling spirit of Hong
Kong people in the turbulent 1960s, won a Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Mean-
while, veteran thespian Deanie Ip won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival
for her role as a traditional housemaid in Ann Hui's
A Simple Life
(2011), an elegant drama
about ageing and loneliness.
The past few years have also seen a string of big-budget Hong Kong-China collabora-
tions, most notably the
Ip Man
series and
Bodyguards and Assassins
(2009), a story of anti-
Qing intrigue set in 1905 Hong Kong. The trend of growing cooperation with the wealthy -
and lucrative - Chinese market looks set to take hold as local filmmakers seek new ways to
finance their celluloid (or digital) fantasies.
The Warlords(2007), directed by Peter Chan, is a period war film about sworn brothers
forced to betray one another by the realities of war - showing it's possible to please both
Hong Kong and mainland audiences.
Film Festivals & Awards
The Hong Kong International Film Festival (every March/April), now in its third decade, is
the best in Asia and boasts a laudable if precarious balance of art-house choices and titles
offering red-carpet opportunities. The Hong Kong Film Awards is also among the most re-
spected in this part of the world. The Hong Kong Film Archive is a treasure trove of Hong
Kong films and resources on them.
Days of Being Wild(1990), set in the 1960s, is a star-studded piece directed by Wong Kar-
wai and steered along by the characters' accounts of seemingly mundane events. It won
Best Picture at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards.
Hong Kong in Film
Hong Kong has been the setting of many Western-made films, including
Love is a Many-
Splendored Thing
(1955), starring William Holden, and Jennifer Jones as his Eurasian doc-
tor paramour, with great shots on and from Victoria Peak;
The World of Suzie Wong
(1960),
with Holden again and Nancy Kwan as the pouting bar girl from Wan Chai; and
The Man
with the Golden Gun
(1974), with Roger Moore as James Bond and filmed partly in a Tsim
Sha Tsui topless bar. More recently, in
The Dark Knight
(2008), Christian Bale's Batman
