Hong Kong International Film Festival ticketing and other woes!

Waiting in line to buy Hong Kong International Film Festival 

tickets even before the booking counter opened!

 

The 48th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) was originally scheduled to run between March 31st and April 11th this year.  But as a result of tightened pandemic measures being enforced from January 7th through to late April in response to Hong Kong's fifth and thus far worst Covid wave, the decision was made to postpone it to the summer -- with the hope that it wouldn't suffer the fate of the 2020 edition of the fest, which was originally postponed to the summer but then ended up being cancelled entirely.

 

Despite daily Covid case numbers being above the 4,000 mark (and thus higher than any day in 2020 or 2021) though, the 2022 HKIFF does look like it will be going ahead (touch wood!); with the fest's full line-up being announced last week; and ticketing for it beginning today for the fest that's now due to take place between August 15th to 31st.  And like in many a previous year, I spent a good amount of time in the days in between the line-up announcement and the opening of ticketing for the fest perusing the fest program and figuring out what film screenings I wanted to go to!

 

This morning, I woke up extra early to make sure that I'd be among the first in line at an URBTIX counter to purchase my HKIFF tickets.  Despite my arriving at my destination close to half an hour before the counter opened and ticketing began, I found -- to my dismay -- that there were 10 people already in line there!  And worse was to come as I discovered that each person being served (at the three counters at the venue) were taking an average of 30 minutes or so to complete their purchases!

 

Thus it was that I ended up spending over 2 hours standing in line before I could make my bookings; at which point, five of the screenings that I had wanted to buy tickets for were already fully booked!  Adding to the pain: that five included screenings to ever single one of the Hong Kong films I had wanted to see at this year's HKIFF (along with a classic Japanese film from 1974)!

 

For the record: the four Hong Kong films in question are Philip Yung's Where the Wind Blows (which was controversially pulled from last year's festival -- so one wonders how much censorship it has undergone to be deemed okay to be screened this year); sci fi blockbuster, Warriors of Future; Mabel Cheung's To My 19-Year-Old Self; and legal drama, The Sparring Partner.  Also for the record: critically acclaimed extradition bill protest-themed works like Kiwi Chow's Revolution of Our Times, Golden Horse winner May You Stay Forever Young and Chan Tze-woon's Blue Island are not in the fest program (and, in all likelihood, will never be allowed to be publicly screened in Hong Kong).

 

Politics aside, the biggest bug bear for many with regards to the Hong Kong International Film Festival will involve the ticketing.  In normal times, it's already a pain -- with the URBTIX website being known to crash on the first day of HKIFF ticketing as well as having a tendency to "time out" on people who want to make multiple ticket purchases (i.e., many, if not the majority of, serial HKIFF goers!).  

 

Because of my own bad experiences with the URBTIX website, I've found counter booking a more reliable way to get tickets.  But this year, even the URBTIX's own booking computers were on the slow and problem-ridden side, as the harried staffer I dealt with -- the same woman who confided to me a few years back that the first day of ticketing for the HKIFF was usually her worst work day of each year! -- told me.  Which helped to explain why each person in the line I was in was taking so long to complete their bookings.

 

It surely doesn't help that, because it was pushed from its usual schedule, the HKIFF appears to have been unable to make use of its usual screening venues, which include my favorite of the lot: the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's +1,700 seater Grand Theatre.  Put another way: I doubt that any of this year's HKIFF screening venues have anything approaching as large a capacity as it even before social distancing regulations further cut down the number of seats allowed to be sold for each HKIFF screening.

 

One nice thing about this year's HKIFF ticketing though is that I didn't have to go to different venues to buy tickets; unlike in previous years.  Centralization of ticket sales is good -- at least theoretically.  But, alas, it might have further strained the system today!    

 

Ah well, I hope that the films I got tickets for all prove watchable, if not stellar!  And this especially since, like with last year's Hong Kong International Film Festival but unlike the years previously, all I have to look forward to as far as the fest is concerned are the films themselves rather than meet ups with old film friends coming from other parts of the world -- since I very much doubt that any of them are planning to come over to Hong Kong thanks to it being one of the few territories in the world which still require people to undergo several nights of hotel quarantine upon arrival as a result of it still officially pursuing a (Dynamic) Covid Zero strategy!