Restored versions of Chinese language cinema classics Wong Kar-wai’s “Days of Being Wild” (1990) and Jia Zhangke’s first full-length feature “Pickpocket” (“Xiao Wu”) 1998) will lead the inaugural program of Hong Kong’s M+ Cinema, which will be opened to the public on June 8.
The opening program also features the Hong Kong premiere of one of the films from Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s epic project series “DAU,” making the M+ Museum notable for not canceling Russian culture following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The cinema, comprising three theaters with seating capacity of 180, 60, and 40 seats, is a core facility of the Moving Image Centre at M+, the visual culture museum that opened in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District in November last year. Moving images, including artist-made audio-visual works, artist films, and traditional feature films, are considered among one of the three key disciplines of the mega institution housed in a building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The cinema is also equipped with digital and analogue 16mm and 35mm projection facilities as well as a Dolby 7.1 sound system.
“Featuring seventy works from Hong Kong and around the world, our inaugural edition celebrates extraordinary film artists and renowned works in thought provoking thematic and artist-focused screenings,” said Silke Schmicki, M+’s moving image lead curator.
Nearly 100 screenings of the 70 works featured in the opening program will take place in the months to come. A total of 28 screenings of the 4K restored version of “Days of Being Wild,” starring the late Hong Kong super star Leslie Cheung, will run from June to August. Three screenings of the 4K restored “Pickpocket” will take place in June.
Nine Hong Kong feature films from the 1980s to recent times, including Johnny Mak’s ground-breaking crime thriller “Long Arm of the Law” (1984) and Fruit Chan’s “Hollywood Hong Kong,” are presented in a thematic program titled “Hong Kong: The Establishing Shot,” which aims to revisit the city’s collective memory, everyday local stories, and action classics. The screening of each feature is accompanied by shorts on related topics.
Six screenings of artist-made works from the M+ Moving Image Collection will be presented. Special screenings of “DAU. Natasha” and “DAU. Degeneration”—shown for the first time in Hong Kong—from Khrzhanovskiy’s “DAU” series will take place in September.