M+ Cinema unveils Winter Edition featuring a highlight on a captivating era in Chinese cinema
M+ Cinema unveils Winter Edition featuring a highlight on a captivating era in Chinese cinema
- Thematic programme ‘Once Upon a Time in Beijing’ explores the many facets of Beijing as a city, its cultures, and the dynamic lives of its residents
- ‘Previews’ include Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall; Tsang Tsui-shan’s Winter Chants, a sentimental look at Tai Ping Ching Chiu festival in Sai Kung; and Norris Wong’s semi-autobiographical comedy The Lyricist Wannabe
- Celebrate Lunar New Year with a screening of Now You See Love, Now You Don’t
- Connect with otherworldly creatures through ‘Fresh Eyes’ screenings of A Letter to Momo and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is pleased to announce the M+ Cinema Winter Edition, to be presented from January to March 2024. Tickets of major programmes will go on sale from Monday, 11 December 2023. M+ Patrons, Affiliates, and Members can enjoy Priority Booking with a twenty per cent discount from Friday, 8 December to Sunday, 10 December 2023.
Winter Edition Highlights
M+ Cinema offers diverse viewing experiences and enriching encounters with visual culture. ‘Once Upon a Time in Beijing’ presents blockbusters and independent films that bring the dynamic city to life with dramatic epics and personal stories. This edition’s ‘Previews’ features Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall (2023) by Justine Triet alongside two local films: Winter Chants (2023) by Tsang Tsui-shan, which takes a sentimental look at the Tai Ping Ching Chiu festival, and Norris Wong’s semi-autobiographical comedy The Lyricist Wannabe (2023). For the Lunar New Year, M+ Cinema will have a special screening of Now You See Love, Now You Don’t (1992) at the Grand Stair, while this season’s ‘Fresh Eyes’ focuses on heartwarming, otherworldly creatures.
Details of the M+ Cinema Winter Edition are as follows:
In dialogue with the Special Exhibition Madame Song: Pioneering Art and Fashion in China, the thematic programme ‘Once Upon a Time in Beijing’ explores the many facets of Beijing as a city, its cultures, and the dynamic lives of its residents. The programme highlights Beijing as an inspiration for some of the most important filmmakers and a prism reflecting different aspects of Chinese society.
Iconic blockbusters such as The Last Emperor (1987) by Bernardo Bertolucci and Farewell to My Concubine (1993) by Chen Kaige will be shown alongside independent films that tell lesser-known and more personal narratives of a Chinese society in transition. They include the comedy The Troubleshooters (1989) by Mi Jiashan, one of the first independently produced Chinese films, A Film by Zhang Yuan (1993), and For Fun (1993) by Ning Ying. David Cronenberg’s screen adaptation of M. Butterfly (1993) presents a tragic romance between a Frenchman and a Beijing opera singer with a secret identity.
- Previews: Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Winter Chants (2023), and The Lyricist Wannabe (2023)
M+ Cinema is showcasing long-awaited previews of local and foreign films. Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall is a thrilling trial drama about a writer suspected of murdering her husband. Tsang Tsui-shan’s Winter Chants takes a look at the tribulations faced by a Sai Kung village when preparing for the once-in-a-decade Tai Ping Ching Chiu festival during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. My Prince Edward director Norris Wong depicts an aspiring lyricist in the semi-autobiographical The Lyricist Wannabe, starring emerging actress Chung Suet-ying. Tickets for The Lyricist Wannabe will be on sale starting from 15 January 2024.
- Special Screening
This edition’s special screening programme highlights filmmakers Hu Bo and Sarah Morris. Hu Bo graduated from the Beijing Film Academy and penned two novels before ending his life at the age of twenty-nine. His four-hour film An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) was released posthumously and widely acclaimed, demonstrating his precocious talent and incredible vision. Four selected short films, made during his student years, provide a further taste of his singular, all-consuming cinematic style.
The films of Sarah Morris highlight the interplay between the economies that simultaneously exist within each metropolis. Her latest film ETC (2023), co-commissioned by M+ and Tai Kwun Contemporary, is a cinematic portrait of Hong Kong that will be displayed on the M+ Facade at night from 26 January to 17 March 2024. M+ Cinema is also presenting two of Morris’s previous city portraits: Strange Magic (2014), which probes the materials and processes associated with commercial production; and Abu Dhabi (2017), which captures the architectural and geographical grandeur of the city.
This season’s ‘Afterimage’ offers a selection of investigative documentaries and self-reflective essay films that blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction. Riar Rizaldi’s ‘earth trilogy’ considers the intricate relationship between capital, technology, and extractivism in Indonesia, while the short films by Ayoung Kim present speculative narratives of indigenous tales and the social milieu of Korea with fantastical digital imagery. Köken Ergun’s Binibining Promised Land (2010) portrays a community of Filippino migrant workers in Tel Aviv, who host a beauty contest that looks beyond the physical.
Featuring intimate and insightful documentaries, ‘Makers and Making’ taps into some of the most inspiring creative minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As another complement to Madame Song: Pioneering Art and Fashion in China, this season’s ‘Makers and Making’ spotlights the fashion industry. House of Cardin (2019) pays homage to Pierre Cardin, a trailblazing designer whose vision ventured into all forms of creative expression on the runway and beyond. Jia Zhangke’s Useless (2007) presents a poignant and humanistic three-part story about the Chinese garment industry.
This season’s ‘Fresh Eyes’ provides a handy guide on how to bond with supernatural and extraterrestrial beings. Viewers are invited to explore the enchanting world of animation with Hiroyuki Okiura’s A Letter to Momo (2011), in which eleven-year-old Momo encounters three goblins while coping with the loss of her father, or connect with the gentle alien in Steven Spielberg’s family classic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Selected sessions are offered as ‘relaxed screenings’, a new mode of viewing at M+ Cinema with child-friendly lighting and audio. Concession tickets are priced at only HKD 25.
The recurring series ‘Rediscoveries’ brings back forgotten gems and restored classics. Lars von Trier’s classic The Idiots (1998) shocks audiences by centring on youths who debase social order by releasing their ‘inner idiots’ and is presented in a new uncut 4K restoration. Allen Fong’s innovative docudrama Just Like Weather (1986) chronicles the marital crisis of a Hong Kong couple who face the hardships of leaving home for a new country.
‘Stair in the Dark’ presents ‘Eye Tunes’, an ongoing film series featuring musical films amplified by unforgettable melodies and captivating scores. In Blue Velvet (1986) by David Lynch, a young man is lured into the dark underbelly of an American small town by a severed ear and a mysterious lounge singer. The fictitious documentary 20,000 Days on Earth (2014) enters the mind of the brooding rockstar Nick Cave as he muses on life and craft. Two teen delinquents are caught up in a violent plot of gang vengeance in Dust of Angels (1992), whose theme song kickstarted Wu Bai’s music career.
- Lunar New Year at the Grand Stair
Following last year’s screening of Johnnie To’s Fat Choi Spirit (2002), M+ Cinema brings local classic Now You See Love, Now You Don’t (1992) back to the big screen for 2024. This screening will take place on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, in commemoration of the late director Alex Law.
‘Afterimage’ and ‘Rediscoveries’ are supported by CHANEL, M+’s Major Partner. For M+ Cinema’s details and ticketing and programme information, please visit the M+ website.
About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, it is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. M+ is a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.
About the West Kowloon Cultural District
The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.