Cinema Strada puts Law Kar left, right and centre (Film review)

  

Cinema Strada director Donna Ong and subject Law Kar

at the world premiere of the film

 

Cinema Strada (Hong Kong, 2024)

- Donna Ong, director

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Filmmakers and Filmmaking program

 

The man known to Hong Kong film fans by his pseudonym/penname Law Kar (but whose actual name is Lau Yiu-kuen) is the subject of this documentary directed by Donna Ong.  He also is the producer and narrator of Cinema Strada -- so most definitely is left, right and centre of it.

I'll come right out and say it: I'm not sure whether this is a good thing.  For one thing, Law Kar may be too familiar with Law Kar!  By this, I mean that he -- and thus, Cinema Strada -- may have assumed that audiences of the documentary will already have known a lot about him prior to going into a screening of it.  For even while it does pretty much tell the story of Law Kar from the beginning, chronologically speaking, it also can feel like some of the more basic and obvious information we should know about this veteran Hong Kong film critic is missing -- or only mentioned by the by.

 

As an example: Law Kar was the programmer for the Hong Kong Film Archive from 2001 to 2005 (and a guest programmer for a number of years after that).  He also programmed the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Hong Kong film retrospectives for a number of years.  In doing so, he shaped opinions and views on Hong Kong cinema for decades -- particularly, it might be argued, in the 21st century.  And yet, the bulk of Cinema Strada focuses on events that took place in the 20th century, and selective decades of that century at that.

In particular, Cinema Strada spends a lot of time on the 1960s -- covering not only Law Kar's time as editor-in-chief of popular youth magazine, The Chinese Student Weekly, which he used to introduce world cinema and film theory to readers, critiqued non-mainstream art films from overseas, and shone a light on local moves in Chinese films, but also his reactions and thoughts about such as the Hong Kong Riots of 1967 and Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blow-Up!  

 

Given its surprisingly extensive coverage of the 1967 Hong Kong Riots, you might think that there would be mention too of more recent political upheavals in Hong Kong.  But that's not the case.  And I have to admit that I got to wondering whether this constitutes self-censorship on Law Kar's part.  Something that would be... understandable, given the times we now live in. (A reminder: Article 23 came into effect days before this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival got going.  This on top of Hong Kong already having a national security law imposed on it by China on June 30th, 2020.)  But disappointing and sad all the same.

 

Let's put it this way: I came out of Cinema Strada wondering what this film would have been like if it had been made just five years earlier -- the same way that I rue the biopic about Anita Mui having come out in 2021 rather than, say, 2011, 2016 or even 2019.  I also wondered if Law Kar the subject would have been better served if he had been less "hands on" with regards to this documentary.

 

To be sure, it was interesting to learn about such as Law Kar's youth in Macau, his time in Italy (when he went to study for a time and met Fellini, even being an extra in one of the Italian auteur's films) and also his views of 1950s Hong Kong after he moved here from Macau.  It also was fun to see snippets of his time with TVB (which he joined in 1974), where he scripted and co-directed drama series for and with then up-and-coming directors including members of the Hong Kong New Wave such as Patrick Tam Ka-ming, Ann Hui, Yim Ho and the late Alex Cheung. 

 

 Still, I can't shake off the feeling that, ultimately, what I got was an incomplete, uneven, skewed maybe too, portrait of Law Kar -- that was incredibly detailed in parts but basic in others -- and feel that it's a pity that this was so.  This not least as I think Law Kar, the man, could be as interesting a film subject as Harry Odell, the impressario that Dora Choi and Haider Kikabhoy's  To Be Continued (which had its world premiere at last year's Hong Kong International Film Festival) did such a great job of introducing its audience to.

My rating for this film: 6.0