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See schedule and program details here or see the text version below.
SCHEDULE
September 14, 2024 (Saturday)
2:00 p.m.–2:45 p.m.
Pre-screening Sharing
Director WONG King Fai; Co-producer/Literary Adviser Mary Shuk Han WONG
Languages: Chinese and English
3:00 p.m.–5:20 p.m.
Screening: Leung Ping Kwan: Boundary 梁秉鈞：東西
Languages: Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
September 15, 2024 (Sunday)
1:00 p.m.–1:15 p.m.
Screening: Garden of Forking Dream 遊園驚夢
1:20 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Screening: Liu Yichang: 1918 劉以鬯：1918
Languages: Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
3:00 p.m.–3:45 p.m.
Post-screening Sharing
Director WONG King Fai and Co-producer/Literary Adviser Mary Shuk Han WONG
Languages: Chinese and English
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
“Voice of Verse” and In Memory of Leung Ping Kwan Poetry Readings
Keith LIU 池荒懸, Mary Shuk Han WONG 黃淑嫻, Ken LEE 不清, Chris SONG 宋子江
Languages: Cantonese and English
September 17, 2024 (Tuesday)
Research Talk: “Let’s get together sometime:” Hong Kong Cinema and Adaptation (1914–2024)
Speaker: Dr. Mary Shuk Han WONG (Department of Chinese, Lingnan University, Hong Kong)
Language: English
5:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
PROGRAM
September 14, 2024 (Saturday)
2:00 p.m.–2:45 p.m.
Pre-screening Sharing
Director WONG King Fai; Co-producer/Literary Adviser Mary Shuk Han WONG
Languages: Chinese and English
3:00 p.m.–5:20 p.m.
Screening: Leung Ping Kwan: Boundary 梁秉鈞：東西 (139 mins)
Director: WONG King Fai
Cinematographer: YUEN Chi Him, KWAN Pun Leung, YIP Siu Ki
Co-producer, Literary Adviser: Mary Shuk Han WONG
Languages: Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
In 2014 and 2015, Hong Kong and Taiwan jointly hosted an exhibition titled Leung Ping Kwan (1949–2013): A Retrospective, celebrating the life and legacy of the beloved writer Ye Si. Known for his gentle smile and boundless curiosity, Ye Si was a figure who embodied a unique humanistic vision during a golden era in Hong Kong’s cultural history. His works—poetry, essays, fiction, and criticism—evoke a vivid array of emotions and insights, reminiscent of a summer garden in full bloom. Filmed over several years, Boundary began in 2009, with Ye Si guiding the filmmakers to understand him through his friendships. The documentary weaves together interviews with his friends from diverse fields—scholars, writers, artists, fashion designers, and epicures—alongside intimate conversations with his family. This rich tapestry of personal stories retraces Ye Si’s life from the 1950s to the 21st century, enriched by rare footage of the writer himself. The film’s poetic visuals capture a Hong Kong culture that thrived on diversity and interdisciplinary creativity, offering a profound tribute to a literary and cultural icon.
September 15, 2024 (Sunday)
1:00 p.m.–1:15 p.m.
Screening: Garden of Forking Dream 遊園驚夢 (13 mins)
Director and Producer: WONG King Fai
Dancer and Choreographer: Mui Cheuk Yin
Garden of Forking Dreams is an adaptation of an avant-garde stream-of-consciousness novel 遊園驚夢 by Taiwanese literary master PAI Hsien-yung, reflecting on the passage of time and the inevitable changes it brings. In this short film, choreographer MUI Cheuk-yin 梅卓燕 reinterprets the story through the medium of dance, using the cheongsam and folding fan to blend the traditional aesthetics of the East with the minimalist elements of Western modern dance. The result is a quintessential Hong Kong creation that fuses Eastern and Western cultural influences. Director WONG King Fai, known for his artistic experiments that bridge literature and cinema, carefully selected historic colonial buildings in Hong Kong as the backdrop. This setting amplifies the unique Hong Kong flavor in Mui's modern dance, weaving through both the ancient and contemporary and traversing different eras and histories. This choice offers a localized interpretation, adding depth to the film's exploration. The film interlaces imagery and dance, with Wong and Mui collaborating once again to focus on how the dancer's movements navigate the spaces within old architecture and the stream of consciousness. The film seeks a distinct expression of Hong Kong's dance cinema. It explores whether memories of the past belong to personal life or the colonial history of the place. Are the illusory images a symbol, an image, or simply a dream? (This film was shot at the Hong Kong Contemporary Dance Company. The location was demolished after filming, turning history and memory into a fleeting dream.)
1:20 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Screening: Liu Yichang: 1918 劉以鬯：1918 (108 mins)
Director: WONG King Fai
Cinematographer: YUEN Chi Him, KWAN Pun Leung, WONG Shuk Han
Co-producer, Literary Adviser: Mary Shuk Han WONG
Languages: Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
3:00 p.m.–3:45 p.m.
Post-screening Sharing
Director WONG King Fai and Co-producer/Literary Adviser Mary Shuk Han WONG
Languages: Chinese and English
The title “1918” marks the birth year of Liu Yichang, a towering figure in Hong Kong’s literary scene, who played a pivotal role in shaping literary modernism in the city. Liu’s groundbreaking fiction has profoundly influenced celebrated Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai 王家衛, whose films In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000) and 2046 (2004) owe much to Liu’s experimental narrative style. This film presents Liu’s life and work through a unique blend of documentary and fiction, challenging traditional biographical documentaries. By intertwining Liu’s real-life experiences with his rich literary imagination, the film offers viewers a deep exploration of his literary journey that spans from the 1930s through his final years in Hong Kong. It is a tribute to a literary giant whose work traversed Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, leaving an indelible mark on modern literature.
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.
“Voice of Verse” and In Memory of Leung Ping Kwan Poetry Readings
Keith LIU 池荒懸, Mary Shuk Han WONG 黃淑嫻, Ken LEE 不清, Chris SONG 宋子江
Languages: Cantonese and English
Hong Kong poet Keith LIU will introduce the “Voice of Verse” project, followed by Hong Kong and Toronto-based poets reading poems in both Chinese and English and paying tribute to the late, beloved Hong Kong poet Leung Ping Kwan.
Founded by Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine in 2019, “Voice of Verse” is a poetry preservation project with the aim to build an online inventory of Hong Kong poets’ sounds. We record the readings of Hong Kong poets from different generations in a professional studio and upload both the readings and the texts of their poems along with visual artists’ works to the Voice of Verse website, disseminating Hong Kong poetry in a hybrid format. The curator, Keith LIU, will present this project, sharing his experiences from conceptualization to implementation, and the goal of poetry conservation through the utilization of network technologies.
September 17, 2024 (Tuesday)
Research Talk: “Lets get together sometime:” Hong Kong Cinema and Adaptation (1914–2024)
Speaker: Dr. Mary Shuk Han WONG (Department of Chinese, Lingnan University, Hong Kong)
Language: English
5:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
Abstract: This talk provides an overview of Hong Kong cinema and adaptation from a historical perspective. The adaptation of literary works into Hong Kong films has seen a significant decline from its zenith in the mid-twentieth century to the extent that it has almost faded into a mere myth. There’s no denying that since the latter half of the last century, Hong Kong cinema and literature have largely diverged. Yet, even in this shifting landscape, we can still find instances of literary works being adapted for the screen, and some writers continue to engage in cross-disciplinary creation, venturing into filmmaking while also penning novels. The evolving relationship between Hong Kong cinema and literary adaptations over the past century is a subject that merits our deep reflection and analysis.
Guests’ Biographical Notes
Dr. WONG King Fai 黃勁輝 is an award-winning film director, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the director of two documentaries 1918 (2015) and Boundary (2015), which are respectively about Hong Kong literary giants Liu Yichang (1918–) and Leung Ping-kwan (Ye Si) (1949–2013). Endeavors of six years in production, the two documentaries have been released in theatres in Hong Kong and Taiwan and screened in various universities in the United States, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, etc., as well as screening at the Berlin International Literature Festival in 2019. His screenplay for the film Life Without Principle (2011) has garnered a number of prestigious awards, including Best Original Screenplay (the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards), Best Screenwriter (Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards), and Best Screenwriter (Chinese Film Media Awards). The film was selected in the competition list at the Venice Film Festival. The film won Best Picture at the Asian Film Festival. His screenplay Wu Yan (starring Sammi Cheng and Anita Mui) competed for the highest box office of the year's Chinese New Year films and the film Help !!! was selected in the Berlin Film Festival’s official screening. Wong has been teaching in tertiary institutions in Hong Kong for many years. He was the chief editor of the book series “Literature and Cinema” published by Hong Kong University Press. He is the author of the novel Hong Kong’s most famous Pirate: Cheung Bao Tsai, a collection of short stories Hong Kong: The Mock City, Metamorphosis of Russia Dolls, etc., and his short stories have been selected into many representative Hong Kong literary anthologies. Dr. Wong was awarded the Artist of the Year by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2018. In recent years, Wong has explored his creative career in Taiwan The Girl Without a Face (original author, screenwriter, director, producer) was selected for the 2023 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion (in production preparation), the script consultant of the upcoming Taiwan international film series The Outlaw Doctor (starring Viet Nam actor Liên Bỉnh Phát and Janine Chang), and wrote the Taiwan-Hong Kong short story “Death in Kenting” to be published soon.
Dr. Mary Shuk Han WONG 黃淑嫻 is an associate professor at the Chinese Department, Hong Kong Lingnan University. She obtained her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo. Her research interest focuses on Hong Kong literature and culture, and the comparative study of literature and cinema. She is the author of Feminine Writing: Cinema, Literature and Everyday Live (2014) and Hong Kong Cinema: Writer, Literature and Cinema (2013). Major edited works are “Hong Kong Literature and Culture of 1950s series” (6 volumes, 2013) and Hong Kong: 1960s (2020). Apart from research, she also publishes essays, stories, and poems. Major creative works include How to Live the Sad Days (2021), Against the Grain (2017), From Kafka (2015), Surviving Central (2013) and online poetry book Cave Whispers (2022) She is also the co-producer and literary advisor of the documentaries 1918: Liu Yichang (2015) and Boundary: Leung Ping Kwan (2015).
Keith LIU 池荒懸 is the author of several poetry collections, including Idle Objects and Abandoned Songs, The Beach is as Quiet as a Broken Clock, and Not Even the Sound of Flowers Blooming. His works have been featured in various anthologies, such as Selected Poems of Post-80s Poets from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, Toilet Paper Poetry Collection, 22 New Poets from the Post-80s Generation in Hong Kong, Jellyfish and Rock 'n' Roll: Ten Years of Fleurs des Lettres Poetry Selection, and Unusual Times: Literary Fragments. Liu has served as a literary award judge, writing instructor, and workshop host. He was the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at the Hong Kong Baptist University Chinese Writers’ Workshop. He is the president of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine and the Musical Stone Publishing Limited. Additionally, Liu is a councilor of the House of Hong Kong Literature and a core member of the Hong Kong 18 Districts Poetry Tour. He has currated and participated in multimedia projects such as Poetic Waves and Electric Currents (2021) and the Voice & Verse preservation project, which won the Hong Kong Arts Development Award for Arts Promotion and Education in 2021. He also initiated the Sound and Rhythm Poetry Life Festival, which received the Hong Kong Arts Development Award for Arts Promotion in 2016.
Organized by the Department of Language Studies UTSC and the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library with co-sponsorship from the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Toronto in collaboration with the Musical Stone Publishing Limited (Hong Kong)
Supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.