Out & About: HKLGFF ’22
HKIFF isn’t the only game in town. One of the region’s oldest LGBTQ+ film events returns for its 33rd iteration.
The Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (HKLGFF) has had its share of drama. Founded originally in 1989 and held at the Arts Centre, it struggled to find an audience. Low ticket sales allegedly killed it after its first decade – though in fairness, it’s possible no one knew it was happening, which is another story for another time – until Fortissimo Films founder Wouter Barendrecht and current executive director Ray Yeung coaxed it back to life in 2000. It’s managed to become a regular fixture on the film calendar for anyone keen to hear voices rarely given a spotlight, in the shadow of an ongoing lack of comprehensive legal protections for LGBTQ+ people. How many LGBTQ+ people you know took off to Canada, Argentina, or New Zealand to get hitched? Yeah. We’ll wait while you count. In the meantime, it’s time to bask in some LGBTQ+ cinema, because, “In addition to entertainment, the Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival wants to make [the community] feel how proud and happy it is, and let everyone understand how vast the entire LGBTQ+ world can be.”
This year’s slate includes 28 feature films and 32 shorts, a combination of narrative and documentary, from Asia and across the globe, because, duh, despite what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ilk would like to believe, there are indeed LGBTQ+ people everywhere. Been there for ages, too, as evidenced by the pre-festival kick-off event, a free screening of Candle Leung’s short Forever Queer, a doc examining identity, policy, freedoms or lack for LGBTQ+ communities in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Singapore. It’s followed by a talk with law professor Marco Wan, producer RY Mak and some of the film’s subjects (hit the website to register for a space).
There’s no film festival in the world right now not struggling with content in the wake of production slow downs and the flight to streaming brought on by COVID, but HKLGFF has put together an impressive programme (no signs of anything as painful as Bangkok Love Story), only a few sourced from streaming outlets – chief among them Andrew Ahn’s Fire Island. Sad to say, it’s not an award-winner but what Fire Island does do right is take viewers on the carefree summer vacation you can’t, and it’s the kind of movie that could benefit from a crowd. The festival kicks off on September 17th with Angel Teng’s Fragrance of the First Flower (above, left) from Taiwan, and Israeli director Adam Kalderon’s The Swimmer (right). The former is a straight- (sorry) ahead romantic drama about love, attraction, family, perception and second chances set after same sex marriage is legalised in Taiwan. Teng doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel, but the film is sensitive and grounded, and steers clear of queer cinema tragedy. The latter is a drama dealing with the institutionalised homophobia of elite sports. Director and one-time Olympic contender Kalderon drew from experience for this engaging deconstruction of competition, rendered with intimate knowledge. It also has stellar visuals. HKLGFF ends two weeks later with Australian filmmaker Craig Boreham’s unflinching, brutally honest Lonesome (below, left), about a country boy ditching his small hometown for Sydney where a new friend forces him to realise he really just wants a boring old normal connection. And Girl Picture (right) by Alli Haapasalo uses Finland’s midnight sun as the backdrop for its entirely non-judgmental coming-of-age story about three young women getting their shit together and navigating the choppy waters of desire.
In between there’s plenty in the line-up worth seeking out, including writer-director-star Todd Flaherty’s gloriously monochrome Chrissy Judy (top), which anyone who’s been shunted off to the sidelines when a friend couples out on them will recognise. That said, the film also explores the place found families play in our lives. From Japan comes Let Me Hear It Barefoot by Riho Kudo, which pivots on the emerging, if skittish, relationship between a quietly angry man and the dreamer who works at the pool where he swims, who’s on a mission to “show” his blind grandmother his trip around the world. It’s a bit long and flounders in Act 2, but Kudo captures the simmering discontent that seems so prevalent in Japan in a truly queer film: the central relationship is never given a familiar label, emphasising the range human sexuality. In grand French cinema tradition, Marion Desseigne-Ravel Besties (below, left) spins a version of Romeo and Juliet for contemporary Paris, when romance between rival neighbourhood squad members reveals the intolerance beneath the the surface of what they both believed were their safe spaces. Taiki Sugioka’s documentary You Decide. explores how trans woman Kaede wrestles with being an accomplished architect and pageant winner with the nagging voice of a rejected son. And for anyone with flimsier attention spans, a highlight is always the short film programmes, of which HKGLFF has four this year: International Shorts: This is Me, International Queer Shorts: Party Time, International Boy Shorts: Beautiful Stranger, and International Girl Shorts: Lost and Found. A standout: the charming The Syed Family Xmas Eve Game Night (right) by Fawzia Mirza, in which a Pakistani Muslim woman invites her Puerto Rican girlfriend to game night with her family – on Christmas.
Rounding out the programme is a selection of work by the HKLGFF Director in Focus: SCUD. Love him or hate him, SCUD 雲翔 (born name Danny Cheng Wan-Cheung) has arguably been Hong Kong’s most prominent LGBTQ+ filmmaker for over a decade, as well as the one who had the fewest shits to give. SCUD’s work is loaded with casual sex, drug use, manipulation and other unsavoury aspects of the dynamics at play among gay men, and while he’s never suggested his films represent the sum total of gay life, he was one of the first to admit not everything was rosy – and put it on screen – neither condemning nor glorifying anything or anyone. Vaguely realist, a smidge impressionist (there’s a healthy dose of Peter Greenaway in SCUD), always polished, SCUD’s films are a love it or hate it affair. The line-up includes his 2009 breakout Permanent Residence (below, left), the source of much pearl clutching about a gay IT pro falling for a straight colleague; 2010’s Amphetamine, arguably SCUD’s best thanks to its visual experimentation and densely packed themes of class, addiction and coming out; Apostles, in which a scholar lures a dozen young men into a death cult; and his latest the complementing Bodyshop (right), about a ghost travelling the world getting a form of revenge. To say those are complete summaries is a reach. But you can ask him yourself: he’ll be in attendance at selected screenings.
Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 33
Where: Broadway Cinematheque; Golden Scene Cinema; MOViE MOViE Cityplaza; Palace ifc; Premiere Elements
Hours: September 17 to October 1, Various times
Closed: N/A
Details: The Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, www.hklgff.hk