Hong Kong is a place of longing, a high-speed city of a thousand different faces and huge contrasts, of rapid development and turbulent history. The cinema of Hong Kong reflects the energetic, visual, cultural, political and commercial potential of this unique metropolis like no other medium and has been a talking point for decades as the largest film industry in the region. It is here that adventurous auteur films stand alongside thrillers, costume dramas, martial arts epics and gangster films, all of which breathe new life into international genre cinema in the process, a place where cinematic extravaganzas with a keen disregard for convention rub shoulders with raw independent debuts. Here in Germany however, it is hardly possible to follow contemporary Hong Kong cinema on the big screen outside of festival screenings, to say nothing of its film history. We are thus all the happier to able to present five new productions from Hong Kong, including films by Johnnie To and Dante Lam, as well as one of the great classics of Hong Kong cinema, the 2002/3 Infernal Affairs trilogy, in collaboration with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office and with the support of the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

TIH-MINH (Louis Feuillade, F 1919) was called the "greatest, which is to say, the weirdest, most uncanny, most dreamlike" of the Feuillade serials by writer and film critic Gilbert Adair. During the 1910s, Louis Feuillade created numerous serials, including the gangster and justice adventure series "Fantômas", "Les Vampires" und "Judex". Unlike these more well known films, TIH-MINH was received with less enthusiasm, yet its wild poetry and realism have served as an inspiration for generations of filmmakers and artists just like its predecessors.

White suits, red shoes, black coasts, dark sunglasses – there is many a piece of clothing or accessory to be found over the course of film history that seems to encapsulate an entire film, even outside of its immediate context. Yet even before costumes attain this iconic status, they tell stories within the film, give their wearers new life, conceal hidden chasms, create atmospheres and leave their mark on the look, texture and often even the soundtrack of films. The dramatic, narrative and psychological function of costumes in film is undisputed, as is their influence on the zeitgeists, fashion trends and styles which they call into existence, play a role in and launch. The Magical History Tour invites audiences to take a look into the studios of international costumers fashion designers and artists from nine decades.

Following "Les parapluies de Cherbourg", Miss Vaginal Davis once again presents a film by Jacques Demy on 25.5.: UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE (F 1982). The director himself named the film, in which all the dialogue is sung, a "musical tragicomedy". During the shipyard strike in Nantes in 1955, a young worker and the married daughter of a penniless baroness fall in love. Just as the film begins and ends with a confrontation between strikers and police, this love affair not in keeping with the daughter’s station ends bloodily.