A film I saw last year in which my favorite Japanese mascot
actually made a cameo appearance... ;b
Program information for a film festival I attended
in what can seem now like another lifetime ago
As I was making my way home from a screening at the tail end of the 43rd Hong Kong International Film Festival
on the final day of March 2019, I caught side of a protest march
wending its way through the streets of Hong Kong. Upon learning what it
was about, I resolved to participate in the second anti-extradition bill protest march -- held one month later.
And even while that April 28th event drew a much larger crowd than that
for the March march, I had little sense then that things would balloon
the way they did -- with protest marches with 1 million and even 2 million participants, and what's effectively a resistance movement against the the Mainlandization of Hong Kong that's still ongoing in 2020.
In a Hong Kong where I'm liable to be told, upon emerging from a cinema, that a cop had fired a live round in the vicinity or literally walk into a street filled with brick roadblocks after a visit to a multiplex, it's only inevitable that there have been ample periods when I've not felt like watching a movie or making a trip to the cinema. Indeed, in view of my now having come to associate Sai Wan Ho as much with a police shooting as with the Hong Kong Film Archive,
I actually think it rather surprising that the number of movies I
viewed in 2019 doesn't compare even more unfavorably than those for 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006...
1 -- The number of films in which I got to see Funassyi in last year :D
1 too -- The number of movies that were a sequel or part of a series that I viewed last year (and for the record, it was indeed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker!)
2 -- The number of movies from Malaysia that I viewed in 2019
4 -- The total number of films from the UK that I viewed last year
4 too -- The total number of Mainland Chinese productions (as
opposed to Hong Kong-Mainland China co-productions) that I viewed last
year; of which only one was made after 1949
5 -- The total number of movies not viewed on a big screen in 2019 (all on board a plane and none at home!)
12 -- The number of films from Japan I viewed in 2019
12 too -- The number of black and white films I viewed last year (including Roma (Mexico-USA, 2018) and The Trial (The Netherlands, 2018))
13 -- The total number of 2019 Hong Kong films that I viewed in 2019
13 also -- The total number of American movies I viewed in 2019
13 as well! -- The total number of documentaries I viewed last year
18 -- The total number of films I viewed last year that I'd rate as an 8.5 or above on the brns.com scale, with these being: A Home with a View (Hong Kong, 2019), Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Canada, 2018), The Big Short (USA, 2015), Earth (Japan, 1939), Fahrenheit 11/9 (USA, 2018), First Night Nerves (Hong Kong-Mainland China, 2019), Free Solo (USA, 2018), The Garden of Evening Mists (Malaysia-Taiwan-UK-South Korea, 2019), Glory to Eternity (Japanese-occupied China, 1943), La Haine (France, 1995), Never Look Away (Germany, 2018), Only the Cat Knows (Japan, 2019), Our Departures (Japan, 2018), Parasite (South Korea, 2019), Ramen Teh (Singapore-Japan, 2018), The Sisters Brothers (France-Romania-USA-Spain, 2018), Sunset Boulevard (USA, 1950), and Where is the Friend's Home? (Iran, 1987))
18 also -- The number of movies originally released in the 20th century that I viewed for the first time in 2019
20 -- The number of films I viewed at the 2019 Hong Kong International Film Festival
23 -- The total number of feature-length Hong Kong films I viewed for the first time last year
23 also -- The total number of countries and other territories
whose films I viewed in 2019 (And for the record, they are -- in
alphabetical order: Canada, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong
Kong, Iran, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Mainland China, Malaysia, Mexico,
The Netherlands, Romania, Spain, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland,
Syria, Taiwan, UK, USA, and pre-Reunification West Germany)
48 -- The total number of feature-length films from outside Hong Kong that I viewed for the first time last year
1939 -- The original year of release of Earth, the Japanese drama that was the oldest film I viewed last year
1951 -- The original year of release of The Flower Girl, the oldest Hong Kong film I viewed in 2019
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