The Hong Kong Film Festival UK, HKFF (UK), aims to shine an international spotlight on Hong Kong’s creativity and humanity through film. The festival also strives to promote cultural interactions and exchanges between Hong Kong communities and UK citizens. Hong Kong’s world-renowned cinema was born out of its unique history and rich social context. Building on this vivid and eclectic history, the Festival aims to introduce a new wave of Hong Kong cinema that has blossomed in an era of drastic transformation. It is time to tell Hong Kong’s story again, to preserve and promote Hong Kong's cultural heritage, and to reflect on the city's enchanting, complex, and challenging reality from a fresh perspective.
Description
Language plays a significant role in shaping identity, yet many languages have been marginalised throughout history or are currently under threat from dominant languages. This programme features four short innovative films featuring such languages: Cantonese, Welsh, Taiwanese, and Gaelic. The programme, presented by Hong Kong Film Festival UK (@hkff.unitedkingdom) invites the audience to reflect on how speakers of these languages—particularly Hongkongers and the Welsh—are connected through the shaping of cultural identities rooted in languages.
📆 12 April, 2025 (Sat)
⏰14:00
📍 Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
🎬 DIALECT (2015, dir. Jevons Au, Hong Kong)
In an imagined future in Hong Kong, Putonghua spoken by Mainland Chinese has become the only official language in Hong Kong. A taxi driver who speaks only Cantonese struggles to survive under a new policy. The short film was originally part of TEN YEARS, a short film collection that won the Best Film at Hong Kong Film Awards.
🎬 ON HAPPINESS ROAD @onhappinessroad2021 (2013, dir. Sung Hsin-yin, Taiwan)
A six-year-old girl starts her first day in primary school, where she has difficulties in coping with so many things. For example, she can no longer speak in Taiwanese but must learn to converse in Mandarin. Grand Prize Winner at the Golden Horse Film Project Promotion, and with funding from the prize it has been developed into a feature length project that won the Best Animation Feature at the Golden Horse.
🎬 YU MING IS AINM DOM (2003, dir. Daniel O’Hara, Ireland)
With a spin of a globe, Yu Ming decides that Ireland will be his new home. He studies hard to master Gaelic, Ireland’s official language, only to find nobody understands him when he arrives in Dublin. The film won 18 awards at film festivals around the world and was on the Oscars shortlist.
🎬 WE NO LONGER TALK (2024, dir. Gavin Porter, United Kingdom)
The short film comes from a project by Common/Wealth Artistic Director Rhiannon White @rhi_annon_white and artist Ffion Wyn Morris, exploring the different relationships to the Welsh language in working class communities in North and South Wales. Artists from Cardiff who don’t speak Welsh and Welsh speaking artists in Bethesda worked for three days to find points of connection. They created work in response to these conversations, which were performed in the short film.
Rhiannon White, Artistic Director of Common/Wealth, who developed the concept and direction of WE NO LONGER TALK will join the post-screening dialogue to share more about the project.
A small portion of tickets have been set to be free for those in need.
This screening is part of Hong Kong Film Festival UK’s “Connections through Culture" series which aim to explore the connections between Wales and Hong Kong through literature and language. The series is supported by Wales Strategic Migration Partnerships.
Date & Time
Sat, Apr 12, 2025 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Venue Details
Chapter Arts Centre
Market RoadCardiff, Glamorgan CF5 1QE
