Worth the wait

The 46th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) opened with due fanfare on Monday. After getting bumped (again — HKIFF was canceled in 2020) from its traditional March-April spot because of the omicron wave, no one would blame festival organizers for launching a leaner event. However, as the festival’s executive director, Albert Lee proudly points out, the 2022 edition has 10 more films, more total screenings, and spans more days compared with 2021 — even if this had to come at the expense of HKIFF’s summer program, the Cine Fan Summer International Film Festival. Plus, Lee and Co are on track for a return to the usual time slot for HKIFF 47.

This year’s festival faces unique challenges, chiefly a lack of available Leisure and Cultural Services Department venues like the Hong Kong Cultural Centre — traditionally home to the opening- and closing-night galas and other major premieres. Lee laments the lack of a home for HKIFF, on the lines of the Berlinale Palast or Toronto’s Bell Lightbox. “This is something I keep coming back to,” he says. “We’re at the mercy of venues, and having our own would certainly make it easy to juggle screenings and sell tickets.”

From hybrid to hologram

Contrary to popular belief, people are going to the movies. Lee estimates that roughly 80 of this year’s presentations sold out shortly after tickets went on sale in early August, and though the festival sees demand, finding space for extra screenings remains a bugbear.

On tap this year are the latest from David Cronenberg (Crimes of the Future), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (festival- closing film Tori and Lokita), Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th District), Sean Baker (Red Rocket), Hong Sang-soo (The Novelist’s Film), Albert Serra (Pacifiction), and five new films from Hong Kong: Where the Wind Blows, Warriors of Future, The Sparring Partner, To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self and the horror anthology Tales from the Occult.

Once again, this year, the festival is in a hybrid format, the only changes to the platform being what Lee calls “under-the-hood tweaks”. He’s quick to concede that online was crucial to staying connected to HKIFF’s audience during lockdowns, and that the hybrid format is probably entrenched.

“I’m old school. I believe in watching films in the cinema,” he says. “But younger viewers are used to Netflix and the online environment, so moving ahead, I think the online virtual section is here to stay.”

Also part of HKIFF 46 is a local version of HKIFF’s traveling Making Waves — Navigators of Hong Kong Cinema series. Curated to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Making Waves was supposed to kick off in March, but instead opened at Udine’s Far East Film Festival in April. Scheduled to travel around the world for the rest of the year, this Hong Kong selection boasts 10 films that Lee thinks are “representative of the outstanding work from the last 25 years”.

“Any collection like this is debatable,” he admits. “Why this and not that? Everyone has an opinion. It’s difficult because we’re not doing 100 films. But this is a cross section of the most notable films from the period.”

The free program includes Philip Yung’s cut of gritty crime drama Port of Call (2015), realist dramas by Ann Hui (A Simple Life, 2011) and Fruit Chan (Little Cheung, 1999), and Toe Yuen’s animated cult classic My Life as McDull (2001). Some of the screenings come with an introduction by or a Q&A with the directors. For the overseas events, travel restrictions have been overcome by Toronto-based ARHT Media’s HoloPresence technology.

“We’d love to be sending the filmmakers with the program, but with restrictions, we can’t do that,” observes Lee. “So we talked with ARHT when the option came up. It’s intriguing and cutting edge and very Star Trek. It’s not cheap, but Making Waves has its own budget,” he adds. “The team is working hard to see how we can work (the technology) into HKIFF.”

Beaming stars

In a nutshell, HoloPresence is 3D, display-based, 130-degree hologram technology, wherein the subject is photographed in one location and broadcast at another. “It allows your presenter to be ‘captured’ (in a) studio; once we’ve done that in real time, they can be transmitted to a corresponding display site,” explains Karine Koh, ARHT Media managing director for Asia and Oceania.

“The latency is only 0.3 seconds. When we talk on Google or Zoom, you see me from the chest up. With our solution, you see me life-sized, interacting with you, and it’s as lifelike as can be.”

Most recently, HKIFF ambassador Aaron Kwok was beamed into Beijing for a session the weekend before the festival opening. Plans are afoot to hold more holo meetings in Copenhagen, Seoul, Honolulu, Tokyo and Prague, among other cities.

And lifelike it is. Koh describes a London event with director-producer Peter Chan. The audience expected a regular Zoom meeting or video presentation: “But when the moderator started asking questions — and Chan (as a hologram) replied — they were shocked. Everyone felt like he was there.

“We do these Q&As before the screenings so they impact how people watch the films, which is exactly the purpose of a festival: to share knowledge and culture.”

HKIFF is hosting director’s master classes and Q&As online, but the festival proper isn’t quite ready for HoloPresence just yet. Though its capture process is less expensive — and considerably less creepy — than that used at the controversial Tupac Shakur hologram concert in 2012, and despite the tech’s portability, location can be an issue. ARHT has a studio in Hong Kong (and 13 other cities around the world), making it easy for a local director to pop in, but farther-flung locations could pose hurdles. Lee isn’t ruling out the technology for the future.

However, it will never be a substitute for live. “As you know, a very important ingredient for any film festival is the interaction between filmmaker and audience,” says Lee. “We’ll keep the online master classes and Q&As for international filmmakers for now, but if there were no restrictions on traveling, I’d rather have the filmmakers come here.”

Koh agrees that in-person interaction is still the best way to connect, for corporate clients and artists alike. “There’s something magical about face-to-face meetings, and we’re not trying to replace them,” she says. “We’re just trying to improve the quality of communications.”