HONG KONG FILMART 2009

After traveling around the region, the “Hong Kong Film New Action” campaign was finally launched at home, during last week’s Filmart (film and TV market). I attended most of the events, including a seminar on “The Outlook of Chinese Language Films” with directors John Woo, Andrew Lau, Feng Xiaogang and Oliver Stone.John Woo started off by reiterating what a huge success “Red Cliff” was and how it has helped Chinese films attract the attention of foreign markets like US, Japan, Korea in addition to the traditional Chinese speaking territories. Andrew Lau and Feng Xiaogang talked about their recent achievements and how the China market is divided into Northern and Southern territories. Oliver Stone was here to promote “W,” which was partially financed by Hong Kong’s Emperor Motion Pictures. He talked about his love of shooting films in Asia.  A couple of the seminars focused on China offered valuable information. For example, we learned that very soon films made in Cantonese would be able to get released in Southern China without having to be dubbed into Mandarin first (Mandarin dubbing is still required for the rest of China).

This is good news for Hong Kong films that are more focused on the local audience, as culturally, Guangdong province is a big extension of Hong Kong and being able to see films in their original language will undoubtedly attract an even bigger audience.