The moving canvas of cinema
For a building ostensibly dedicated to trade, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) has been awfully arty these past few weeks. With the Hong Kong International Film Festival relinquishing its hold on the main hall and theaters on March 29, Art Basel moves in for three days of gallery exhibitions, seminars and, yes, films. Sure, you could go and check out the trash heap that is Ready Player One or the mecha mania of Pacific Rim: Uprising, but they’ll still be there in a week. Unfortunately.
The link between art and cinema stretches beyond films about artists (Van Gogh biopic Lust for Life) or artists dabbling in filmmaking (Salvador Dali with Un Chien Andalou). Film — or video, or digital forms now — is just another canvas. Producer and multimedia artist Li Zhenhua (who also moderates two post-screening conversations and a seminar) curated 59 films and videos by 67 artists from the fair’s participating galleries. Best of all, the screenings at HKCEC’s theater and the Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC) are free.
There is plenty to sample on Friday and Saturday, starting with Wang Bing’s moving 2017 Locarno Golden Leopard-winning documentary Mrs Fang (Friday 6:55 pm, HKCEC). Wang is arguably China’s finest working documentarian — his nine-hour West of the Tracks is worth the effort — and manages to make an Alzheimerafflicted elderly farmer’s final days as insightful as they are heartbreaking in Mrs Fang. Unflinching, raw and painfully honest, Mrs Fang is a must for Wang’s fans, and a great start for those who haven’t experienced his singular filmmaking. Admittedly, a visceral and unfettered portrait of encroaching death isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but Wang finds the humanity in the situation — one we all share no matter how rich or how white one is — and makes it somehow triumphant. If only reality television were this enlightening.
But short films are the movies’ unsung heroes and the first collection, The Future Is in the Past, (Saturday 2 pm, HKCEC), is a collaboration between local new media collective Videotage and the Nam June Paik Art Center. Korean-American artist Paik is often credited with inventing the phrase “information superhighway”, (he actually theorized on an electronic super highway in reference to a post-industrial media landscape) and the two-part series begins with Paik’s seminal 1973 electronic collage, Global Groove (with John Godfrey), a prescient deconstruction of communication in the media-drenched world we currently live in. It’s also the work that essentially started the wider video art movement. After that, Ellen Pau, Yau Ching and Wong Chi Fai (Here’s Looking at You, Kid!), Wong Ping (Stop Peeping), Enoch Cheng (All This Happened, More or Less: Olympiades) and others take a page from Paik’s book for similarly themed works.
Rounding out the fair’s film series are several themed shorts programs. Looking for Mushrooms (Friday 4 pm, HKAC; 6:30 pm, HKCEC) takes its title from the classic 1967 work by Bruce Conner (presented here) examining the intersection between illusion, reality and perception. Science fiction is never about the future, it’s about the present, and Vertical Horizon (Friday 5:20 pm, HKAC; 6:30 pm, HKCEC) explores the challenges facing contemporary societies in the genre. The films in How Happy a Thing Can Be (Saturday 4 pm, HKAC) pose fundamental questions about the nature of happiness, and Dear Art World (Saturday 5:45 pm, HKAC) closes the program with a cheeky trio of films that challenge the nature and necessity of art itself. How very meta.
Film details and ticketing information at www.artbasel.com