Thin Dream Bay + Imagining Evan Yang + Shu Kei Q&A

A special screening of the acclaimed short Thin Dream Bayand companion documentary piece Imagining Evan Yang, followed by an extended Q&A with writer director Shu Kei.

Thin Dream Bay / 海滨薄梦

Country: Hong Kong

Year: 2015

Director: Shu Kei

Starring: Erica Yuen, Yau Hawk Sau

Running Time: 33 mins

Format: Digital

Language and Subtitles: In Mandarin and Cantonese with English Subtitles

Film Type: Fiction

Synopsis:

Shu Kei is one of Hong Kong’s most famous and well established independent filmmakers and Chair of School of Film and Television, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. His short film, Thin Dream Bay, is based on a short story written by Yi Wen, a Shanghai intellectual who migrated to Hong Kong and became one of the most influential screenwriters and directors of Hong Kong Mandarin cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Thin Dream Bayis about a Shanghai émigré in Hong Kong, an intellectual woman who experiences her sexual awakening and identity reconfiguration as someone who occupies the in-between-space between the local, the colonial, and the national.

Imagining Evan Yang / 想像易文

Country: Hong Kong

Year: 2015

Director: Shu Kei

Running Time: 52 mins

Format: Digital

Language and Subtitles: In Mandarin and Cantonese with English Subtitles

Film Type: Documentary

Synopsis:

Best known for having directed several popular films such as Mambo Girl, Bachelors Bewareand Sun, Moon and Star, Shu Kei’s documentary Imagining Evan Yangfocuses instead on the late Yang's lesser-known career and achievements as a writer. In order to fully capture Yang’s life as a writer, Shu Kei utilises interviews and recreations, including enactments of selected clips and scenes from Yang's films to explore his motivations and his attitudes towards society back in the early 50s. At the same time, through interviews with his children, collaborators and scholars who study his work, the film, with the elements of a documentary as well as a feature film, investigates how Yang was able to rebuild his identity as an artist after coming to Hong Kong.

Support for the Hong Kong programmes under CVF, including the visit of Stanley Kwan, Jun Li, Jennifer Yu and Shu Kei, comes courtesy of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, London.