Located in the West Kowloon Cultural District, M+, the first global museum of contemporary visual culture in Asia, announced the first “Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival” (Film Festival), supported by CHANEL. The four-day festival showcases independent art and film productions from across Asia, highlighting vibrant film communities, original visual languages, and cross-cultural dialogues, celebrating alternative moving image creations that have shaped the rich artistic landscape of the Asian region over the past sixty years!
Encounter the Unexpected in the Light and Shadow
The Asian avant-garde film festival focuses on independent art and film production, challenging mainstream historical narratives, and expanding the possibilities of visual expression. By showcasing a series of moving image creations and important works from the M+ collection, the film festival will inject new vitality into the museum, providing audiences with different aesthetics and spatial experiences. It also invites Hong Kong’s renowned photographer and filmmaker, Christopher Doyle, to serve as artistic director, overseeing the visual identity of the film festival and providing his previously unreleased photography works for the main visual poster and trailer!
The inaugural film festival examines the production history of Asian avant-garde cinema from a unique visual cultural perspective, reflecting on its interdisciplinary, intercultural, and intergenerational development. The festival emphasizes the crucial role artists play in reexamining the past and shaping new historical narratives. Artists and filmmakers from across Asia, including Nick Deocampo, Ray Lei, Liao Peiyi, Lu Yang, Pao Ailun, Wing Shya, Su Huiyu, Huang Bing, Yang Ziyi, and Zhang Peili, will participate in post-screening discussions, workshops, dialogues, and performances. Festival activities include: “Wing Shya × nnscya Phantom Frequencies: An Audiovisual Experience,” “Lu Yang Illusory World,” “Between Touches,” “Fearless Gaze,” “Artistic Gathering,” “Self and Society,” “Watch and Learn,” “Zhang Peili: Weaving the Web,” “Shattered Desires: Nick Deocampo’s Selection,” “Yang Ziyi and Ren Guoguang – 16mm Experimentations,” “Glamorous Boys of the Tang Dynasty: Enhanced Version,” “Handmade Animation,” “Secrets and Lies,” “Private Diary,” and “Amorphous Bodies: An Experimental Performance.”
Further reading:
- Afa Lee – Traveling with Inner Child | Art City Chronicles
- Inside the walled village, outside the walled city, analyzing the five highlights of “The Siege of Kowloon Walled City,” experiencing the nostalgia of the 1980s!
- Korean version of the brilliant empire! Netflix’s “Rich in Korea” Aren Yoo only wears clothes once: you must endure it for the sake of beauty
During the film festival, M+’s Mobile Cinema will transform into a “Film Festival Hub,” providing a place for everyone to gather and watch outstanding mobile film works, stimulating creative resonance and inspiring academic discussions. The “Film Festival Hub” will also host a series of diverse programs, including workshops, lectures, screenings, and guided exhibition tours led by M+ curators.
M+ Museum Director Suhanya Raffel expressed her excitement about hosting the inaugural “Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival”: “M+ is thrilled to expand our work as a global visual culture museum, pioneering the curation and presentation of moving images. Moving images are a cornerstone of M+ and will come to life even more vibrantly with the ‘Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival.’ We will showcase avant-garde moving image creations that transcend geographical boundaries at the festival, reshaping the way the public views the world. We are honored to welcome outstanding pioneers in the film industry to shine at M+ and pay tribute to their groundbreaking work and the power of avant-garde cinema.”
Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival
Date: May 30 to June 2, 2024
Location: M+ Museum
