Hong Kong 2017 Summer International Film Festival programme announced - Wilson Yip thriller Paradox is opener
Packaged as a lighter extension of the city’s main film festival, the Summer IFF offers audiences early opportunities to catch new titles - from Hong Kong, Hollywood and elsewhere - and more besides
This year’s Summer International Film Festival (Summer IFF) is set to open with a bang and close with a quiet trance. The bang comes courtesy of Hong Kong director Wilson Yip Wai-shun’s Paradox – the latest instalment in his martial arts crime thriller series SPL – and the trance in the form of late Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s meditative final film, 24 Frames. They bookend a programme of 40 new and classic films.
A still from 24 Frames, the posthumous final work of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, to be screened as the closing film of Summer IFF 2017.
Among the highlights in the full line-up announced today by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFFS) are two masterclasses led by another prominent Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who will present his films The Nights of Zayandeh-rood (1990) and Salaam Cinema (1996). This marks a return to Hong Kong for the director, who was a guest at the Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2015.
Anne Hathaway in Colossal.
Packaged as a lighter extension of the main festival, the Summer IFF offers audiences early opportunities to catch a range of new titles expected to open in Hong Kong cinemas in the following year, including the local theatre adaptation Shed Skin Papa, Japanese comedy Survival Family, Godard biopicRedoubtable, Robert Pattinson vehicle Good Time, and the Anne Hathaway monster film Colossal.
A scene from High Noon.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail gets a screening at the Summer IFF.
A still from the 1928 Buster Keaton silent comedy Steamboat Bill, Jr., which will be screened at the Summer IFF.
The retrospective sections have been a major selling point of the Summer IFF – and indeed, the Cine Fan programme throughout the year – and this year’s edition doesn’t disappoint. A six-film sidebar sampling the best of Hollywood comedies (from Buster Keaton to Jerry Lewis) is supplemented by two Monty Python classics (Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Meaning of Life) and Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy.
Rounding out the programme are screenings of restored prints of two classic Hong Kong romances, C’est la Vie, Mon Cheri (1993) and Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), and of the six remaining films – all by emerging directors – in the Paradigm Shift: Post-97 Hong Kong Cinema section: Love Battlefield, High Noon, Gallants, The Way We Dance, Port of Call , and Trivisa.
