The second UK Hong Kong Film Festival starts on March 18th. This year’s film festival is divided into five sections, presenting the theme of “Home Away From Home.” The documentary section “A Mirror Image: HK X Taiwan Documentaries,” in collaboration with the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, will be screened in three cities: London, Edinburgh, and Manchester. It will also feature a dialogue between Taiwanese and Hong Kong directors and a documentary forum. In addition to introducing representative productions from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the UK audience, the directors’ conversations and professional discussions by experts and scholars will explore how documentaries respond to social and environmental changes in the two regions, allowing British audiences to glimpse the development context and trajectory of the two societies.

Ching Wong, the festival’s chief curator, stated that Taiwan and Hong Kong have always been culturally interlinked. Through the “A Mirror Image: HK X Taiwan Documentaries” program, the festival hopes to explore and retrospectively view the deep-rooted connections between the two regions. The programme mirroring Taiwan and Hong Kong presents six documentaries from both areas through a curated arrangement of three mirror screenings. The three sub-sections are “Vicissitudes,” “Whispers,” and “Kindred Histories.” The “Vicissitudes” sub-section focuses on the realities of life and features the screening of Hong Kong director Tammy Cheung’s “Rice Distribution,” which tells the story of a rice distribution event during the Ghost Festival in Hong Kong in 2002. The documentary is paired with a “dialogue between the shores” event with Taiwanese director Huang Ting-fu, who directed “Nail,” a silent film that records the vicissitudes of the Longshan Temple in Taipei over a long period of time, including believers and passers-by.

The “Whispers” sub-section is about the dialogue between the individual and society. It features two films: the first is “Flowing Stories” directed by Tsui-Shan Tsang, winner of the Best New Director Award at the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards in 2012. In this film, the director shares her narration and explores family and community migration issues by visiting different corners of the village of Ho Chung and following the lives of a family who have moved overseas. The film is paired with “A Holy Family” directed by Taiwanese filmmaker Elvis A-Liang Lu, which won the Grand Prize at the 2022 Taipei Film Festival. The film follows director A-Liang’s return to his rural hometown after twenty years away, as he confronts the people and things that led him to run away and daily records the reunion with his family. Gradually, he realizes that his absence is also a wound that the family has been unable to heal.

The third sub-section, “Kindred Histories,” explores the present by tracing historical trajectories. This section showcases the work of Hong Kong director Tze-woon Chan, who won the Grand Prize “TIDF Visionary Award” at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival for his film “Blue Island.” The film depicts the memories of three real individuals who suffered injuries during their youth when they were involved in different periods of protest movements. These memories are re-enacted by young people who experienced the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests. This film converses with director Kek-huat Lau’s award-winning documentary “Taste of Wild Tomato,” which examines Taiwan’s political and social history, from colonization and authoritarian rule to its path toward democracy.

To help audiences understand the development of documentary films in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Film Festival also features a screening and online discussion with director Tammy Cheung and Taiwanese director Huang Ting-fu. Following the screening in Edinburgh, they will also discuss their respective creative paths. In London, a forum on the development of documentary films in Taiwan and Hong Kong will also be held, inviting Professor Victor Fan of the Film Department at King’s College London, director Tammy Cheung, Cinematic Hong Kong cinematographer Lin Wei-hung, former Full Shot Studio director Li Zhong-wang and director Tsai Ching-ju of Taiwan, as well as Dr. Chen Pin-chuan, the head of the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK and a film scholar, to discuss the similarities and differences in the development of documentary films in Taiwan and Hong Kong from the perspectives of film culture and industry.

The head of the Cultural Division of the Taiwan Representative Office in the UK, who collaborated with the Film Festival, also stated that documentaries could reflect various issues and aspects of different societies. He hopes that through the “A Mirror Image: HK X Taiwan Documentaries” section, more British audiences can be introduced to Taiwanese documentaries and get to know Taiwanese society and culture through these productions.

The inaugural Hong Kong Film Festival UK was held in March 2022 with the aim of bringing international attention to independent filmmaking in Hong Kong. The festival aimed to combine the expertise of Hong Kong’s creative industry professionals residing in the UK, as well as the strength of the immigrant community, to promote cultural exchange between Hong Kong and various sectors.

The screening schedule and related events of “A Mirror Image: HK X Taiwan Documentaries” can be found on the following webpage:

Screenings: https://www.hkff.uk/a-mirror-image-hk-x-taiwan-documentaries
Events: https://www.hkff.uk/events/a-mirror-image-taiwan-hong-kong-documentaries