Editor

“It's exciting to be celebrating such fresh talent in this year's program," said SFFILM’s Senior Programmer Rod Armstrong. “With a record number of debut features that delve into social realism, action-packed thrills, and other exciting arenas, the 2018 line-up not only demonstrates a regional shift of support for the next generation of filmmakers, but also an impressively broad range of subject matter.”
 
“We welcome the continued partnership with SFFILM and their recognition of our young film talents, whose first features are in the 2018 lineup,” said Ivanhoe Chang, Director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office. “Kicking off this year's Hong Kong Cinema is an award-winning film, Tomorrow is Another Day, the directorial debut of Chan tai-lee.”
 
Hong Kong Cinema continues the Bay Area’s celebration of work from one of the most exciting eastern filmmaking centers and renews its tradition of offering a wild mix of genres and iconic performances. This year’s program offers a remarkable quartet of first features, with the debuts themselves running the gamut in tone and style from hard-hitting drama to social realism to pulse-pounding action. Other program highlights include a toe-tapping musical biopic, a documentary portrait of an artist, and a horror-comedy about a ramshackle group of vampire hunters.
 
For complete program information visit sffilm.org/presents
 
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 28

6:30 pm – Opening Night: Tomorrow Is Another Day
Chan Tai-lee, Hong Kong, 2018, 91 min
Tackling familial conflict with honesty and powerful performances, Chan Tai-lee’s debut film tells the story of Kwong, a young man with autism spectrum disorder, and the two parents struggling to look after him while dealing with fractures in their own marriage. Kwong’s mother Mrs. Wong (Teresa Mo, who deservedly won Best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards for the role) bears the brunt of her son’s care, remaining unflappable in the face of neighborhood busybodies who gossip and stare at his unpredictable behavior.

9:00 pm – Vampire Cleanup Department
Wing Yan-pak and Hang Chiu-sin, Hong Kong, 2017, 94 min
Harking back to playful horror comedies of yore, this memorably titled film features young protagonist Tim Cheung (aka Rubbish Bin) who is inducted into a secret organization devoted to eradicating a specific breed of Hong Kong vampires who have acrobatic jumping skills, among other more standard characteristics of the breed. A forbidden relationship with a female bloodsucker creates numerous amusing and gory complications for the new recruit as the film ramps up to an over-the-top climax in a Hong Kong mall.
 
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 29

2:00 pm – I’ve got the blues
Angie Chen, Hong Kong, 2017, 91 min
Yank Wong is a renaissance man—preferring to be called a painter, he is also a poet, blues musician, philosopher, and cantankerous drinker. He meets his match in director Angie Chen, an old friend who decides to make a film about him to try and uncover what drives him. The result is this funny, offbeat, riff-filled portrait that tracks Wong’s life from Paris to Macao to Hong Kong, his fraught relationship with his now-adult daughters, and how he perceives his work. Watching these two strong personalities argue about what the documentary is and should be brings up fascinating questions about control and representation.

4:00 pm – Distinction
Jevons Au, Hong Kong, 2018, 98 min – Director Jevons Au expected in person
Ambitiously tackling the frailties of the Hong Kong educational system, Jevons Au’s moving and nuanced drama depicts the attempt of a special needs school to collaborate with students from other schools to put on a musical. Using a diverse array of characters and a storyline based on true events, Distinction demonstrates how separating kids with disabilities leads to stigmatization and ignorance while institutions designated for high-performing kids can sometimes neglect those students’ interests in artistic pursuits. 

6:30 pm – House of the Rising Sons
Antony Chan, Hong Kong/China, 2018, 100 min
Based on the story of the beloved Hong Kong pop band The Wynners—and directed by its drummer, Antony Chan—this jubilant biopic is suffused with period style and rousing musical numbers. It’s the early 1970s, and a quartet of Hong Kong kids is dreaming of making music. Practicing above a tailor shop belonging to one of the boys’ fathers (Simon Yam, at his most exasperated), the group develops its sound, performing pop songs like “Hey Jude” and “The House of the Rising Sun” in English. Though conflicts, hiatuses, and shake-ups ensue, the film focuses on the group’s camaraderie that has kept them performing to this day.

9:00 pm – Somewhere Beyond the Mist
Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong, 2017, 88 min
After her parents’ bodies are discovered near a local reservoir, young Connie confesses without emotion to the crime. Thus, the question at the heart of this hard-hitting debut becomes not who did it, but why. Carefully and without being exploitative, the film depicts the backstory of Connie’s impoverished and abusive home life, the manner in which she manipulates a school chum into becoming her accomplice, as well as the investigating policewoman whose own personal life starts to be affected by her involvement in the case.
 
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 30

2:30 pm – Tomorrow Is Another Day
See September 28

5:00 pm – Somewhere Beyond the Mist
See September 29

7:00 pm – The Brink
Jonathan Li, Hong Kong/China, 2017, 100 min
With remarkable underwater sequences and a femme fatale with a penchant for setting explosive booby traps, Jonathan Li’s pulse-pounding thriller is an immediate Hong Kong action classic. After the accidental killing of a fellow officer, detective Chang (Zhang Jin, bleached blonde) is on a short leash with his superiors. He keeps stretching it nevertheless, using a variety of increasingly reckless methods to track a group of gold smugglers including the malevolent Jiang (Shawn Yue) and his nameless, bomb-happy henchwoman memorably played by Janice Man.
 
Film tickets are $13 for SFFILM members, $16 general; box office now open online at sffilm.org.
 
Hong Kong Cinema is presented in partnership with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, San Francisco. The series receives special support from Penelope Wong and Tim Kochis and SFFILM Lead Sponsor, First Republic Bank. 
 
For general information visit sffilm.org
To request interviews or screeners, contact lmolinari@sffilm.org

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