Loading Events

Screening & Talk | Letter to the Young Intellectuals of Hong Kong & Cheers

Date
Nov 7, 2019
Time
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Venue

Para Site
22/F, Wing Wah Ind. Building, 677 King's Road
Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

Films in Cantonese with English subtitles

Discussion in Cantonese, with English translations

Letter to the Young Intellectuals of Hong Kong
1978

14’00”
Directed by Mok Chiu Yu
Cantonese with English subtitles 

Cheers
1998

58’58”
Directed by Grace Ma Lai Wah
Produced by Mok Chiu Yu
Cantonese with English subtitles 

The director’s first-person perspective is prominent in both Mok Chiu Yu’s 1978 experimental essay film Letter to the Young Intellectuals of Hong Kong, and Grace Ma’s 1998 docudrama Cheers. Their gazes flicker across Hong Kong’s cityscape in the ’70s, nights at Club 64, the theatres, galleries and coffee shops that young intellectuals frequent, as well as clips of news, films and journals. In Letter to the Young Intellectuals of Hong Kong, Mok sarcastically reminds young people to break free from the invisible yet indulgent shackles of capitalism and to bring the energy of revolution and criticism back into art and film. In Cheers, Ma watches and accompanies the diverse clientele of Club 64. In her eyes, this legendary bar is at times vulgar and at times intellectual, but always a place where stories of individuals mirror a larger society. When experiencing social turmoil, Ma suggests at the end of the film, ‘why not care more about things around us?’

Both Mok Chiu Yu and Ma Lai Wah will join an after screening discussion.

Mok Chiu Yu is a social activist and the co-founder of ’70s Biweekly magazine. He is currently the the Chief Executive of the Centre for Community Cultural, the chairman of the Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society, and a hearing coordinator of the Hong Kong International Deaf Film Festival.

Grace Ma Lai Wah is the owner of Club 71 in Central, Hong Kong.