By Brian Hu

APA's coverage of the 2009 Hong Kong Film Festival includes capsule reviews, a running commentary, and a photo slideshow from the Ashes of Time Redux gala red carpet.

The Hong Kong International Film Festival was even bigger than I could have ever imagined. Yes, I did read the program notes online before I flew to the Pearl City from Los Angeles. I saw that there was sidebar after sidebar, tribute after tribute, and of course tons of new and exciting works from throughout the world. But it wasn't until I arrived that I truly felt what a hefty package this was. I was most excited about the "Hong Kong Panorama 2008-2009," since this is one of the few places to see a concentrated selection of new Hong Kong films. But I quickly found myself getting distracted by the "Asian Digital Competition" and the "Young Taiwanese Cinema" selections. And the Ichikawa Jun and Tsui Hark tributes. And the restoration of Confucius and the Evan Yang retrospective.

I missed the Hans Richter films, the avant-garde collections, and the short film programs. There were only so many films I could see in one day, and even though most of the films I wanted to catch played multiple times, it was simply impossible to do the festival justice. And it kept getting bigger!

I suddenly realized there were retrospectives for Korean director Yu Hyun-mok, Italian Michelangelo Antonioni, and Swede Ingmar Bergman. And the Evan Yang retrospective was three times longer than I'd imagined. I sent in for reinforcements from my comrades-in-arm: former Asia Pacific Arts editor Chi Tung and current co-editor Ada Tseng, who photographed the breathtaking views of Hong Kong (see below).

But after a certain point, it was either get out or pass out. I chose the former, leaving dozens of Asian films unseen (to say nothing of the non-Asia ones... like Terence Davies' Of Time and the City). For some of the more noteworthy films, including the opening night films, I've written capsule reviews. I found two of the Taiwanese films (Ian Lou's A Place of One's Own and Leon Dai's No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti) worth discussing more extensively together, especially in light of recent events in Taiwan, so I wrote a separate article about them here.

Meanwhile, Chi Tung and I wax nostalgic about old times and new films (like Ning Hao's Crazy Racer, the Evan Yang series, and Fei Mu's Confucius). For all of our over-inflated ridiculousness, click here.

Here at Asia Pacific Arts, we've already covered Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux, which was the gala film at this year's HKIFF. Instead of a review, here is a slideshow of pictures I took from the red carpet, compiled by APA multimedia editor Warren Kenji Berkey:

If our coverage feels light given how massive the festival turned out to be, it's because we've covered many of HKIFF's films at previous festivals and in commercial release. You can access our past coverage here:

24 City (dir: Jia Zhang-ke)
All Around Us (dir: Hashiguchi Ryosuke)
Antique (dir: Min Kyu-dong)
Chandni Chowk to China (dir: Nikhil Advani)
Deep in the Valley (dir: Funahashi Atsushi)
End of Love (dir: Simon Chung)
Eros (dir: Wong Kar-wai, Steven Soderberg, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Love Exposure (dir: Sono Sion)
My Dear Enemy (dir: Lee Yoon-ki)
A Northern Chinese Girl (dir: Zou Peng)
Routine Holiday (dir: Li Hongqi)
Seven Swords (dir: Tsui Hark)
Sparrow (dir: Johnnie To)
Still Walking (dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Published: Friday, April 17, 2009