For the first part of this year’s Made in Hong Kong Film Festival, the Smithsonian National Musuem of Asian Art (the Freer-Sackler Gallery) celebrates the work of one of Hong Kong’s most esteemed filmmakers: Wong Kar Wai.
The virtual festival presents restored versions of seven of his most iconic films. All film descriptions courtesy of the Smithsonian, via Janus Films.
Tickets are free but should be reserved online. Streaming and tickets can be accessed via Eventive: https://mihk2021.eventive.org/welcome
FILMS OF WONG KAR WAI
As Tears Go By
Available in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from June 11–27 ( (1988, 98 mins, Cantonese with Engl subtitles)
Wong Kar Wai’s scintillating debut feature As Tears Go By, set in Hong Kong’s ruthless gangland underworld, is a kinetic, hyper-cool crime thriller graced with flashes of the impressionistic, daydream visual style for which he would become renowned.
Chungking Express (1994, 102 mins, Cantonese with Engl subtitles)
Available in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from June 11–27
The whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of ninties cinema and the film that made Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. The film follows two heartsick cops who cross paths at a takeout restaurant, where they meet an ethereal waitress.
https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D152282839
Days of Being Wild (1990, 95 mins, Cantonese with Engl subtitles)
Available in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from June 11–27
Wong Kar Wai’s breakthrough sophomore feature Days of Being Wild is an exhilarating first expression of Wong’s trademark themes of time, longing, dislocation, and the restless search for human connection.
https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D152282882
Fallen Angels (1995, 99 mins, Cantonese with Engl subtitles)
Available in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from June 11–27
Swinging between hardboiled noir and slapstick lunacy with giddy abandon, Fallen Angels is both a dizzying, dazzling city symphony and a poignant meditation on love, loss, and longing in a metropolis that never sleeps.
https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D152282898
Happy Together (1997, 96 mins, Cantonese and Spanish with Engl subtitles)
Available in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from June 11–27
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Happy Together is Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown, a depiction of the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and deliriously romantic.
https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D152282906
In the Mood for Love (2000, 98 mins, Cantonese with Engl subtitles)
Available in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from June 11–27
At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, in which two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses, is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments.
https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D152282916 \
The Hand (2004, 56 mins, Cantonese with Engl subtitles)
A hypnotic tale of obsession, repression, and class divisions, The Hand finds Wong Kar Wai continuing to transition from the frenetic, energized style of his earlier films into a register that is lush with romantic grandeur.
https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/films/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D152282972
The National Museum of Asian Art (1050 Indepdence Ave. SW) contains both the Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art. After closure for COVID, the Freer Gallery of Art will reopen on July 16. Free, timed entry passes will be made available soon. Please check back for updates in the coming weeks. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will remain temporarily closed until November for exhibition construction. Learn more by visiting asia.si.edu/visit/
