31 young and new film directors from Hongkong in town!

Blogger with Raymond Wong.

Not many people in the industry knew about it, but yesterday, the Hongkong Trade Council with the Hongkong Film Council arrived in KL for a short visit (2 days) to launch the Hongkong Film Week at GSC Mid Valley and also to introduce 31 young filmmakers to the Malaysian audience.

Last night there were cocktails at the Boulevard Hotel between the Hongkong group and Malaysian film fraternity. I was there.
Surprisingly ot many local industry players were there. Those that were included the Malaysian Film Producer's Association President and Vice President, Encik Ahmad Puad Onah and Tengku Dato' Annuar Musaddad, Encik Zulkifli from FINAS (as the Director General of FINAS, Encik Mahyuddin Mustakim was in Bangkok) and filmmakers Adflin Shauki, Norman KRU, Latip Mahidin and that's it. I went with my colleague Ken S. Yap.
And on the other side, led by the top officials of the Hongkong Film Council were 31 young and exciting film directors from Hongkong. What a missed opportunity!
Also present from Hongkong were two legends of Hongkong cinema, actor-producer Raymond Wong (whose latest movie Ip Man made box office waves around the world to the tune of more than US120 million) and singer-songwriter-actor-producer Teddy Robin.

Multi=talented singer-songwriter-actor-director-producer Teddy Robin was also at the Hong Kong FDC dinner last night.

I will write more about the Hongkong New Film initiative later. Meanwhile, those who want to catch what Hongkong's latest generation of filmmakers have to offer like Decade of Love (which has ten short stories directed by ten new filmmakers) make a beeline to GSC cinemas in Mid Valley.