"Ashes of Time Redux" Red Carpet at 2009 HKIFF

What I think will be the last HKIFF blog (for the next few days at least!)

On Monday night was a big Red Carpet at the Culture Center in Tsim Sha Tsui.  They had a BIG set up for this event - it was the Red Carpet Premiere of Wong Kar Wai's 'Ashes of Time Redux' (東邪西毒：終極版) --  a recut of his 1994 film featuring Leslie Cheung (張國榮),  Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Bridgette Lin, Charlie Yeung and Jacky Cheung amongst others.

Leslie Cheung commited suicide on April 1st 2003 (at the height of the SARS outbreak).  And part of this event was to mark the anniversary of his death. 

All the famous stars from the cast were coming,  but the first beauty I saw on the red carpet was Grace Huang:

They had pretty cool memorial for Leslie set up,  it was a white heart surrounded by small pedestals.  Each guest was given a candle and asked to place it on to the wall.  By the end of the event it was full and looked quite nice.

They had a LONG red carpet with lotsof press...   actually more photographer friendly than the Festival Opening / 'Shinjuku Incident' premiere event. 

they had a reception in front of a stage too,  for a ceremony,  but we had to wait for the VVIPs to come first...

In case you didn't realize how VVIP the cast of this movie is,  they had some artwork from the movie to remind you...    really a who's whoof the Golden Era of 80s-90s HK film!

Speaking of who's who:

The beautiful Celina Jade was there too,  looking great of course!

Grace,  Celina and Desmond So.  He blogged about the premiere eventhere. 

There was a big hub-bub as the big stars were quickly ushered in:

recognize this power couple of HK Cinema?

They started the program with a video tribute to Leslie Cheung:

including video clips and quotes from many of the big stars who have worked with him over the years.  unfortunately almost entirely in Cantonese. :-(

Keep in mind that about 1/2 of the people in the audience here were Leslie Cheung fan club people who were wearing Leslie Fan Club stickers.

Then the director and cast took the stage:

The video screen made close-ups look a bit weird, but:

Wong Kar Wai,  Bridgette Lin and Tony Leung

Carina Lau,  Charlie Yeung and producer/director Andrew Lau.

She came a bit late, but managed to sneak in the back without distracting -

Miss Karen Mok! (she's also the official ambassador of the HKIFF too of course.

And of course with these types of things,  they need a big group photo op involving the sponsors:

Now let's all enjoy some of those delicious Grey Good Vodka cocktails... served by the lovely Grey Goose girls, as you saw in my recent blog from the Sniper pre-party.

oh, looks like a few super stars don't want to wait for the toast to get some of that delicious Grey Goose Vodka! ;-)

ok ok,  let's pose for the photo...

Of course I've been to enough of these that I know when to switch to  video mode:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtzABS2d-Ok

Great event!  congrats to HKIFF! Don't forget to become a fan of the HKIFF profile too!