Focus Hong Kong returns to The Garden Cinema in London on Saturday 24 June

Join Focus Hong Kong, the only UK film festival dedicated to celebrating the amazing cinema and filmmakers of Hong Kong, at The Garden Cinema in London on Saturday 24 June to experience two classics of contemporary Hong Kong cinema on the big screen. Going beyond the usual representations of Hong Kong productions via older genre cinema, the programme features two very different but equally fascinating and authentic looks at Hong Kong since the 1997 Handover, including Leung Ming-kai and Kate Reilly’s Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash Them Down, an anthology mixing the personal and the political through four gently provocative stories of everyday people, and Fruit Chan’s searing 1997 masterpiece Made in Hong Kong, a shocking, violent look at Handover-era Hong Kong youth.

Tickets are on sale now:

https://focushongkong.uk/strand/june-2023/

Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash Them Down features four stories (three fictional, one documentary), which show how fiction and fact, humour and drama, the personal and the political are contemporary facets of the same ever-fascinating, complex, challenging real lives that constitute Hong Kong. Leung Ming-kai and Kate Reilly’s delightful anthology captures the rich mix of cultures that defines Hong Kong in lively and gently provocative fashion, following a diverse set of characters from different backgrounds as they reminisce on the past while looking to the challenges of the future, trying to balance nostalgia with uncertainty. Having won over audiences during a highly successful international festival run, the film now has its in-person UK cinema premiere, giving audiences the chance to enjoy an authentic look at modern day Hong Kong society on the big screen.

Released to critical acclaim and multiple awards in 1997, the year of the Hong Kong handover, Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong was praised as an anarchic, searing masterpiece, a powerful distillation of urban alienation and youthful despair, following a small-time triad member stuck in an endless cycle of pointless violence with no hope of escape. Afer he and his friends witness the suicide of a young girl, they embark on a journey to deliver two letters she had on her when she died. Produced on a shoestring budget, with nonprofessional actors and using discarded film reels for stock, the powerful film has since attained classic status, and if anything feels more relevant and challenging today, remaining a hard-hitting, must-see cinema experience.

The short programme is the first of two planned Focus Hong Kong screening events to be held in London during the summer of 2023 – stay tuned for an announcement regarding the next event, to be held at BFI Southbank in July.