Hong Kong’s Film Festival opens with ‘Love in the Buff’

HKIFF: 36th Hong Kong International Film Festival

Opening this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, March 21-April 5, is Love in the Buff, by Hong Kong director Pang Ho-Cheung, about a couple caught up in the wave of migration to Beijing on mainland China with dialogue in Cantonese and Mandarin.

With a pan-Asian emphasis, the 36th annual event will screen 283 films from 50 countries, attracting more than a half million film fans to venues around the city.

The 16-day event includes narrative and documentary films from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and mainland China, as well as the West.

The festival's Filmmaker In Focus is Peter Chan, who will screen 12 of his films. Born in Hong Kong, Chan was raised in Thailand, studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, and now shoots in China and Hollywood (The Love Letter and The Warlords).

The Hong Kong Festival Society kicked off the event last weekend with a master class featuring Keanu Reeves who spoke about his new documentary, Side By Side, about filmmaking, 3D and digital technology. It includes Reeves interviewing A-list directors James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan.

Reeves makes his directorial debut with Man of Tai Chi, a martial-arts film which began production recently in China.

A gala screening at the festival will be Charlotte Rampling: The Look, director Angelina Maccarone's portrait of the actress intercut with her films. Rampling will be present for the premiere as well as for another film she stars in The Mill & the Cross.

The closing film, White Deer Plain, is an epic historical drama, which won the Silver Bear for cinematography at the recent Berlin International Film Festival.

Love in the Buff trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tnRggjM77A

The Look trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=totoKlkNQzU

http://www.hkiff.org.hk

RC