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"Critics' Choice 2016 - Six Directors in Search of Playwrights" will be screened from April 4 to September 24. Six films selected by film critics Chang Wai-hung, Thomas Shin, William Lau, Matthew Cheng, Cheng Chuen-wai and Lau Yam will be shown at the Cinema of the Hong Kong Film Archive (HKFA) and the Lecture Hall of the Hong Kong Science Museum, exploring the crossover art of theatre dramas and cinematic visuals.
The series is presented by the Film Programmes Office of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and organised by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society.
Post-screening seminars will be arranged for some of the screenings. The six film critics will also host a seminar entitled "Six Film Critics in Search of Playwrights" on April 4 at 4.30pm at the Cinema of the HKFA. The seminar will be conducted in Cantonese with free admission.
Four workshops on stage and film will be held on May 29, June 4, 19 and 26 at the Lecture Hall of the Hong Kong Space Museum from 3pm to 5pm. They will be conducted in Cantonese with critic Chang Wai-hung as host and theatre practitioners Mo Lai, Vee Leong and Andrew Chan and critic Matthew Cheng as guest speakers.
Critic Chang Wai-hung said he believes that "Hamlet" (1964), based on Shakespeare's play and directed by Russia's Grigori Kozintsev, clearly demonstrates the filmmaker's own remarks. Kozintsev said, "A new aspect of history, the spirit of poetry, the sense of humanity, should be modern and absolutely lifelike for audiences today". The film script is adapted by Boris Pasternak and features distinctive music, set design and a star-studded cast. The black and white cinematography gives the film strong visual imagery that highlights Hamlet's chaotic but independent soul-searching as a symbol of inner strength. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival 1964.
"An adaptation from the play by Noël Coward, this expressionist film noir by David Lean tells a story of an intimate affair," said critic Thomas Shin of David Lean's "Brief Encounter" (1945). A Grand Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival 1946, the film is adapted from Noël Coward's one-act play "Still Life", which depicts an emotional affair between a middle-class housewife and a married doctor after their encounter on a railway platform. The film enriches the details of intimacy in the original play, while adding colour to the housewife's family and friends as well as her soliloquy. The strong expressionist visuals almost present the two married adults as criminals, while the recurring Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 echoes the emotional rollercoaster of the housewife.
"Brecht's first full-length play, with Fassbinder embodying the arrogant title character. Shelved for more than 40 years, recently unearthed," critic William Lau writes about Schlöndorff's "Baal" (1970). Adapted from Bertolt Brecht's debut, the film features German actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most illustrious turn as the gifted and arrogant poet Baal, who insults his sponsor and steals his friend's lover.
"Reprising their stage roles, Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman gave the film their liveliest performances," said critic Matthew Cheng of Richard Brooks' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958). Co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, the film is adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same title by Tennessee Williams. The story depicts a tempestuous marriage as the husband despairs over injury and struggles to inherit the family's wealth.
Critic Cheng Chuen-wai describes Shinoda Masahiro's "Double Suicide" (1969) as "shadows and dreams caught in the theatre of life". Based on Chikamatsu Monzaemon's bunraku puppet play, the film fuses Japanese tradition and modernist minimalism into a tale of doomed love between a prostitute, a married paper merchant and his wife. Iwashita Shima plays the dual roles of the wife and the prostitute to reveal the unified entity of feminine misery at the time. The film won for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress at the Kinema Junpo Award 1969.
Critic Lau Yam described "The Little Foxes" (1941) as "a heavenly masterpiece of American drama and Hollywood golden era" and "an exploration in the battlefield of love and hate", which "leaves its audience with questions of morality and justice, history and humanity, individuality and freedom." Scripted by Lillian Hellman, the renowned American writer of theatre and screen in the 1930s and 40s, the film is a crossover work that depicts the struggles of a southern aristocratic family amid the rise of capitalism and the good and evil of human nature. Hollywood diva Bette Davis embraces her role as a mother embodying both a gentlewoman and a domineering tyrant. While the original stage script is rich in set design and blocking space, director William Wyler and cinematographer Gregg Toland thoughtfully gave the film a multi-angled complexity through the aesthetics of deep focus and depth of field.
All films have Chinese and English subtitles.
Tickets for all screenings and workshops, priced at $55 and $90 respectively, are now available at URBTIX (www.urbtix.hk). For credit card telephone bookings, please call 2111 5999. For programme enquiries, please call 2734 2900 or visit www.lcsd.gov.hk/fp/en_US/web/fpo/programmes/cc2016/index.html.
Ends/Friday, March 4, 2016
Issued at HKT 12:02
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