M+ Cinema opens in Hong Kong

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District, is pleased to announce the opening of M+ Cinema.

A centrepiece of M+’s Moving Image Centre, M+ Cinema comprises three houses with 180 seats, 60 seats, and 40 seats. Its programmes will feature a wide range of moving image works, including feature films, documentaries, experimental cinema, video art, restored classics, and newly discovered or rarely seen films. Curated within original frameworks that resonate with the themes that are evident throughout the museum, M+ Cinema programmes are cross-disciplinary in nature. They respond to the museum’s exhibitions and collections, as well as critical issues of our time. Audiences can look forward to programmes that establish new connections between different artistic disciplines and the creators behind them, moving stories from different parts of the world, and compelling immersive audio-visual experience.

M+ Cinema, together with the museum’s other moving image spaces including Grand Stair, M+ Facade and the Mediatheque, contribute to the diversity of viewing experiences that enrich the audience’s encounter with and appreciation for visual culture at M+.

Purpose-built screening spaces with designer features and technical facilities
M+ Cinema was designed by world-renowned architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The three cinema houses feature seats by Italian furniture maker Poltrona Frau and are furnished in distinct purple, green, and blue colour fabrics by Danish design company Kvadrat, famous for their innovative and elegant Scandinavian design. Equipped with digital and analogue 16mm and 35mm projection facilities and a Dolby 7.1 sound system, films will be screened as closely as possible to their original formats.

Inaugural edition offers a new take on Hong Kong cinema and the international avant-garde
Featuring seventy works from Hong Kong and around the world and close to 100 screenings, the inaugural edition at M+ Cinema presents thematically curated programmes, premieres of restored classics, documentaries on art, M+ collection works, and other special screenings. These include:

Opening films
The 4K restored versions of Days of Being Wild (1990) by Wong Kar Wai and Xiao Wu (1998) by Jia Zhangke will have their Hong Kong premieres.

Hong Kong: The Establishing Shot
Being one of the inaugural thematic programmes at M+ Cinema, this series celebrates the city’s illustrious cinematic heritage as well as its iconic urban landscape through the lens of its filmmakers.

Performing the Image
The thematic programme of “Performing the Image” consists of six screening programmes that explore contemporary artists’ performative interventions and gender related investigations.

Film Course: “Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema” (2018) sponsored by CHANEL
Directed by Mark Cousins, the documentary serves as a guided tour of the art and craft of film in forty chapters. It uses over 700 film extracts from across twelve decades and five continents, all by women creators.

Special screening: DAU. Natasha (2020) and DAU. Degeneration (2020)
An epic and multidisciplinary international film project created by Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, DAU combines film, science, performance, spirituality, social and artistic experimentation, literature, and architecture.

Makers and Making
Featuring thought-provoking and sophisticated documentaries about visual art, design, architecture, film and performance, the recurrent “Makers and Making” series gives audiences behind-the-scenes access to some of the most captivating creative minds of our time.

Screen Encounters: Yau Ching x Yvonne Rainer
The recurrent “Screen Encounters” series invites notable creative practitioners to select and present a moving image work that has been influential in the development of their career and/or practice.

M+ pre-show commissions
M+ has engaged artists Simon Liu and Florence Lee to produce a set of pre-show commissions. These works address questions and ideas around the collective viewing experience and will be shown at screenings and selected events at M+ in the coming two years.

For M+ Cinema’s ticketing information and programme details, please visit the M+ website.