Through a lens, hopefully

Key figures of Hong Kong film industry share their plans for 2021 with Mathew Scott while listing a few favorites they hope will hit local cinemas soon.

Back in November, Albert Lee, the executive director of Hong Kong International Film Festival, got a chance to catch a film in a theater.

The film Lee saw was Italian master Federico Fellini's Oscar-winner Amarcord (1973), screened as part of HKIFF's Fellini 100 retrospective, held to mark the 100th anniversary of the director's birth.

The experience, Lee says, was, simply, "incredible".

"It is a film that I hadn't watched in a cinema since it first came out," says Lee. "For me it was really the highlight of the last year, especially since we have not had the chance to go into a cinema very often. And then the chance to see one of my favorite Fellini films was incredible. It reminded me of what we've all been missing, and it was a wonderful day."

Sadly, cinemas across Hong Kong have been closed since then, as the city battles the "fourth wave" of the coronavirus pandemic that has seen restrictions enforced on most public gatherings.

Globally, the film industry has been hit hard by COVID-19 and chances of getting to watch films as they were intended to be seen — up there on a big screen — have been either scarce or non-existent. While exact losses are yet to be calculated, film industry trade papers estimate that billions of dollars have been wiped out over the past 12 months, countless film productions have either been shut down or postponed, and release dates of films already "in the can" are in a constant state of flux.

Events such as the annual HKIFF have been through a cycle of postponements and cancellations but Lee and his team haven't given up hope. HKIFF's programers have been planning for brighter times ahead, including around 20 more screenings as part of the Fellini 100 program.

"We are all watching a lot of films online while very much hoping we can return to cinemas quickly, and start watching films properly," says Lee.

Despite the gloom, an exciting line-up of films have been readied for release across 2021, and Hong Kong's film festivals are expected to run on schedule, albeit with adjustments, depending on the severity of the COVID-19 situation at the time.

"We are still working towards our 45th festival, running from April 1 for 12 days," says Lee. "It will be challenging, as basically the whole eco-system has been disrupted. Films are not being completed, films are not being made. But we are still watching films and we are still programing. There are a lot of uncertainties but our fingers are crossed."

Victory at Venice

Among the most highly anticipated releases of 2021 is the Chloe Zhao-directed drama Nomadland, which stars Oscar-winner Frances McDormand as a middle-aged woman wandering the west of the US in a van as she looks for work. It has been garnering critical acclaim across its limited global release since winning the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival last September.

Clarence Tsui, director of Hong Kong's Broadway Cinematheque (BC), is among the lucky ones in Hong Kong who has watched the film.

"There's Frances McDormand's towering performance and Chloe Zhao's mise en scene, her empathy with her characters and her way of storytelling," says Tsui. "Her way of looking at marginalized groups and how they survive on the margins of society actually says a lot about how we look for truth outside the mainstream."

Tsui and his team have lived through the troughs as well as brief peaks that COVID-19 has brought in its wake. Most recently BC had to reschedule Hong Kong Asian Film Festival screenings when Hong Kong cinemas closed in December. "We are working to have cinemas open soon but we have had many challenges. It has been a horror show," says Tsui. "But if it were not for the pandemic we would not be relying on technology such as Zoom to conduct conversations with filmmakers worldwide. So the silver lining is that even though we couldn't invite them here, it is in fact easier to get them to talk to our audiences, from wherever they are. The pandemic has forced us to look for content beyond the ways in which we have done over the past 20 to 30 years."

Among the other films Tsui hopes we'll see on the big screen in 2021 is the Alexander Nanau-directed documentary Collective which looks into public healthcare fraud in Romania and was touring the world's festivals before COVID-19 struck.

"It looks at how people can help make society a better place by battling injustice," he says. "I hope it will come out in Hong Kong one way or another."

And in terms of guilty pleasures ahead, Tsui has his hopes set on the remake of the 1992 horror classic Candyman, produced this time by the multi-faceted American Jordan Peele, the man who has helped reinvent the genre with such box office hits as Get Out (2017) and Us (2019).

HKAFF is expected to go ahead as per schedule later this year. Tsui says BC will host a retrospective of the works by Belgian arthouse director Chantal Akerman, complete with talks on what goes on behind the cameras during a film shoot, and a special focus on the world of documentaries.

Keeping busy

The global turmoil has obviously impacted the distribution side of the film industry. With cinemas closed, filmmakers have had to decide whether to release new films on online platforms or simply wait it out.

Pearl Chan, international sales manager at Hong Kong sales agency Good Move Media, says among the many ongoing challenges faced by the industry, distributors now have to also "make sure films don't get lost," given the general state of flux.

"Outside the cinema, there are so many options as to how people can watch films but it seems people still don't know what to watch," she says. "There are so many great films that appear at a festival and then sort of disappear. So this is a challenge for the industry that is ongoing — how do you bring attention to these films, given all the options people now have. This is an issue that has become noticeable now more than ever and areas such as digital marketing are opening up new opportunities."

Chan has spent much of the past 12 months watching films online and points to the Olivier Godin-directed There Are No False Undertakings as a highlight.

"It's got this magical realism and it's about these women who need help, and turn to Denzel Washington, who is played by another actor," she says. "It's so wild and ridiculous but it's fun and witty. I really hope it gets more play in 2021.

"Another one I'm really excited about is Last Days At Sea, which was part of the Works-in-Progress program at the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum. It's a documentary from Venice Atienza about a boy from a small island in the Philippines who's preparing to leave to go to school. It's fantastic and hopefully that will come out this year."

Chan is currently tucked away preparing her company's list of productions to take to the Berlin International Film Festival. Taking cognizance of the current global situation, the festival is going to hold its online market first, from March 1 to 5, with hopes for a "live" event in June.

"We're really busy, which is a good sign," she says. "Things have been different over the past year for everyone but people are finding ways to keep working."