In the Mood for Art, Film Screening in Hong Kong
On March 20, 7PM at Kino@Eaton HK the documentary about Hong Kong’s art scene will be screened, followed by a panel talk with Joseph Chen, May Fung, Michael Schindhelm and other guests.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gngvd6enpKE
Hong Kong in March 2023. Three years of pandemic-related lockdowns and a failed political revolution have left deep scars, as has a draconian security law enforced by the central government. Many people have left the city or are facing an uncertain future.
But there is also a sense of a new beginning. For example, in the art scene. The Museum of Visual Culture M+ has been opened after about ten years of construction. Designed by Basel-based star architects Herzog & de Meuron, it is one of the most important museum buildings of the 21st century. The most important collection comes from another Swiss national, entrepreneur and patron Uli Sigg, who has assembled the world’s most significant collection of contemporary Chinese art and donated a substantial part of it to the M+ museum in 2012.
The film accompanies the architects and the collector on their first visit to the city together since the museum was completed. In just 12 months since its opening, the museum has already welcomed over 2 million visitors, all of them from Hong Kong due to the lockdown.
Conversations and encounters with the director Suhanya Raffel, the chief curator Doryan Chong, as well as staff members, gallerists, artists and the intrepid journalist Enid Tsui tell a varied success story around the question of the role of this museum in the still hot debate about the future and identity of Hong Kong.
At the same time, the film provides an unusually intimate insight into the city’s newly emerging art scene. After many renowned artists left the city for political reasons and live in diaspora, a very young new generation of artists is emerging. They refuse to be discouraged by the security law and bureaucracy and are reclaiming a new voice of their own in the subcultural underground. It is on them, the artists of tomorrow, that the hope rests that the Weltmuseum M+ will continue to show exciting art from its own city in the future.
Production: Filmerei GmbH Zürich
Camera: Sven Rufer
With: Enid Tsui
Bernard Chan
Suhanya Raffel
Lars Nittve
Jacques Herzog
Pierre de Meuron
Tobias Berger
Ascan Mergenthaler
Doryun Chong
Uli Sigg
Pi-Li
Mimi Chun
Joseph Chen
May Fung
Ringo Lo
Igor Chan
Wang Tuo
Cas Wong
