
Poetry on Film is a moving image commissioning project for young and emerging Hong Kong filmmakers, motivated by the belief that poetry possesses an inherent cinematic quality. Its rhythmic cadence, vivid imagery, and emotional depth offer a rich tapestry for filmmakers to weave their visual narratives. Animator STEP C., narrative filmmaker Chu Hoi Ying, analogue film artist Jolene Mok, and documentarian Lee Wai Shing were asked to choose a contemporary Chinese-language poem written by a local writer, then visualise it using their personal cinematic language. The resulting shorts showcase the diversity of Hong Kong moving image practice, with unique approaches to medium, storytelling, cinematography, and sound.

Poetry on Film is a moving image commissioning project for young and emerging Hong Kong filmmakers, motivated by the belief that poetry possesses an inherent cinematic quality. Its rhythmic cadence, vivid imagery, and emotional depth offer a rich tapestry for filmmakers to weave their visual narratives. Animator STEP C., narrative filmmaker Chu Hoi Ying, analogue film artist Jolene Mok, and documentarian Lee Wai Shing were asked to choose a contemporary Chinese-language poem written by a local writer, then visualise it using their personal cinematic language. The resulting shorts showcase the diversity of Hong Kong moving image practice, with unique approaches to medium, storytelling, cinematography, and sound.
2023-11-22
0
6.4The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
7.1Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.
5.9After her boyfriend ends their relationship, the dreamself of a heartbroken woman floats through the air over an industrial wasteland singing ballads of love.
7.0In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
6.7An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.
6.0Paolo, an Italian tour bus driver living in Paris, has just summoned up the courage to propose marriage to his German girlfriend Greta. However, a chance encounter with a French woman on a bicycle the very next day turns Paolo's life upside down.
6.3Neil, a self-proclaimed film geek and owner of Gumshoe video, has always been content to live vicariously through his favorite films noir. But when he meets Violet, a real-life femme fatale, his mundane world gets turned upside down and the line between reality and the movies quickly begins to blur.
6.5A hypochondriac vacations in the tropics for the fresh air - and finds himself in the middle of a revolution instead.
7.9Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
6.1A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
6.6Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers.
6.5An action epic that explores the origins of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (better known as Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad,) who somehow become pitted in a battle over an immortal piece of exercise equipment.
6.9Laurel and Hardy try to entertain a female neighbor, unbeknown to Hardy’s wife.
6.4Victor Frankenstein is a promising young doctor who, devastated by the death of his mother during childbirth, becomes obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. His experiments lead to the creation of a monster, which Frankenstein has put together with the remains of corpses. It's not long before Frankenstein regrets his actions.
7.2Ollie's house is a mess after a wild party from the previous night. Ollie receives a telegram from his wife (who is on vacation in Chicago), which tells him that she is returning home in the afternoon. Fearing his wife's wrath he calls Stan over to help him clean up. Things go downhill and they make more mess not less.
6.7An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Told through her own words for the very first time — drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews — and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork.
7.5Offbeat documentarian Chris Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon.
6.8Stan and Ollie join the French Foreign Legion after Ollie's sweetheart rejects him.
6.2SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
7.9Home movies, photographs, and recited poetry illustrate the life of Tupac Shakur, one of the most beloved, revolutionary, and volatile hip-hop MCs of all time.
7.3When churlish mobster Albert Spica acquires an upscale French restaurant in London, he dines there nightly, effectively scaring off the clientele with his bad manners. His wife, Georgina, is especially disgusted by him, and soon begins an affair with regular guest Michael. Despite their best efforts to keep it secret, Spica learns about their trysts, and he plots a terrible revenge.
3.7Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.
0.0After waking up with amnesia on the beach, the protagonist is pursued by the police to face the consequences of an unknown past. This soundscape uses tension as a tool to explore how uncertainty, anguish and urgency mobilize a body that would otherwise remain paralyzed in time.
0.0The restaurant opens. Customers eat. The restaurant closes. For one employee, this daily routine becomes his personal hell.
0.0A microscopic view into American youth in suburbia through the eyes of Robert, a young man who becomes fixated on his own identity after moving back to his small Texas town.
0.0Meet Shavon O'Brien: Her family doesn't understand her, her church ignores her, even Jesus forgets about her. With only the spirit of Sinead O'Connor to guide her, Shavon battles institutional child abuse, narcissistic group think, a talking stomach and a singing poop bucket! Shavon goes from Catholic to Crusty Punk in this very, very, very, dark musical comedy!
10.0Bobby breadcrumb lives a terrible life of hitting his head on doorways, running out of milk, and slipping on banana peels. In an effort to find meaning and change the script of his life, he journeys beyond the fourth wall to fight against the powers that be.
4.7A young bride flees the ceremony with a stranger and, together, they set off on an epic journey though increasingly bizarre lands. They encounter talking animals and mournful exhibitionists, converse with a discoursing rock, journey through a surrealist's psychedelic hotel, instigate a prison riot, escape from naked cannibals living in a tree, and battle a wind-up midget dictator!
0.0A girl trapped in a time loop leaves an AI replica to relive her final days. Glitches and burned-in subtitles reveal the machine’s fractured view, until the loop shifts to the real her — blurring the line between memory, code, and consciousness. "Told from the memory stream of a trapped A.I., the film visually glitches as it attempts to 'escape,' including encoded flashes of an 'ESC' key."
6.6Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers.
0.0Ramsés begins to experience disturbing changes in his body and mind, unsettling shifts that disrupt his daily life. Soon he realizes he is no longer alone in his own skin: the demon Asmodeus has taken control. Under this possession, Ramsés is driven into a spiral of desire and violence, seeking out both men and women to consume through blood and sex, feeding the darkest temptations of the demon within. As reality and delusion blur, Ramsés struggles to hold onto what remains of his humanity while Asmodeus leads him ever deeper into a world of lust, horror, and destruction.
Study of posters and graffiti on the walls of Paris, using ellipses, brief shots and quick camera movements. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2000.
7.2Unconventional portrayal of mining in the Swedish Lapland ore fields, a powerful image and sound symphony that can be experienced both as a documentary and symbolic work.
4.8The quasi-fictional story of transgender sex workers living in Rio de Janeiro's swampy red light district, who are joined by a group of hippies and a runaway stockbroker, "Mangue-Bangue" is the paradigmatic expression of the post-1968 spirit of desbunde, the Brazilian slang catchword for "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll".
0.0Christine Vachon’s story of a man haunted by the grotesque memory of having stepped on a dead animal's carcass is an artistic tour de force starring Michael Sean Edwards (the voice of Richard Carpenter in Todd Haynes’ Superstar) and a young Steve Buscemi.
10.0For this film, Takashi Makino allowed himself to be inspired by the earth. In a never-ending stream of images, we recognize elements from the forest that he then reduces to an abstraction. The film came about as a classical composition in which the picture and the musical contribution of Jim O’Rourke link up seamlessly and lead the mood in turn. A sense of freedom is what predominates.
0.0This experimental short documents the clash, sometimes obsessive, sometimes glorifying, between humans and their mechanized environment. Using photographs, the animator creates varying perspectives through optical manipulation and changing colour, achieving bold and provocative effects.
7.2A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless, cult leader mother, and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.
10.0In 2017, a short anime film called Hypersonic Music Club was produced in Japan. It was directed and written by Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran of the industry who passed away in April 2021. For various reasons, this short anime was never released. It was made public on August 1, 2023.