Inaugural Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is pleased to announce its inaugural Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival (AAGFF) supported by CHANEL. The festival, which will run from May 30 to June 2, 2024, is a vibrant four-day celebration of the many diverse moving image practices that have shaped Asia’s artistic landscape over the past six decades. 

Through screenings, exhibitions, performances, talks, workshops, and live acts, AAGFF embraces independent art and filmmaking in Asia. Audiences can experience an array of moving image practices that have thrived beyond the confines of the mainstream art and film industries, challenging dominant historical narratives while expanding the possibilities for visual expression. The festival celebrates interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and intergenerational lineages, while looking at the rich history of Asian avant-garde filmmaking through the M+ lens of visual culture. 

The festival will open on May 30 with Phantom Frequencies: An Audiovisual Experience by Wing Shya × nnscya, a performance that redefines the possibilities of film photography in a digital age. Through innovative audio-reactive design developed by artist Samson Sing Wun Wong, photographer Wing Shya’s images will undergo a mesmerising transformation in real time while synching with nnscya’s experimental soundscape. On May 31, Chinese new media artist Lu Yang will present LuYang Illusory World, where they will incorporate various avatars from their troves and past works, including the renowned DOKU. Wearing motion capture technology, a dancer embodies the often-genderless avatar forms as digital reincarnations. The performance will be followed by Amorphous Bodies: A Happening, a fusion of avant-garde experimentation and live performances. 

Nine screening programmes will be presented at M+ Cinema: Self × Society, a series of films that unveil paradoxes between the selves and the society; Watch and Learn, three shorts that considers the power of education and media culture in a post-war Asia; Zhang Peili: Weaving the Web, a programme curated by Zhang that features moving image works by his students; Slivers of Desire with Nick Deocampo, an insightful journey into the body’s significance through Deocampo’s picks; Yam & Yang: Experimentations in 16mm, Hong Kong independent filmmakers Ruby Yang and Lambert Yam’s early works in analogue format; Glamorous Boys of Tang: Redux, a revisit of Chiu Kang-Chien’s 1985 homoerotic fantasy and cult classic through the reimagination of contemporary Taiwanese artist Su Hui-Yu; Hands-on Animation, analogue treasures that celebrate the unyielding dedication of animators; Secrets and Lies, three enigmatic speculative essay-films that looks into Asia’s unresolved Cold War histories; and Dear Diary, a collection of diary films that explore the complexities of family relationships. 

Audiences can also enjoy three looping screening programmes at the Grand Stair and the Festival Lounge: Touch Me, Touch Me Not views the body as a narrative agent where desire, violence, and emancipation intertwine; Fearless & Fierce: The Female Gaze explores women’s resilience and murmurs, while Art and Friendship celebrates the transformative power in friendships and collaborations between artists, filmmakers, and others. 

The Festival Lounge at the M+ Moving Image Centre will be open to all during AAGFF and is a space for the community to further explore alternative moving image practices, their creative resonances, and associated scholarship. It will feature site-specific installations alongside talks with artists, writers, and filmmakers; animation and screen-printing workshops; and exhibition tours led by M+ curators. 

Artists and filmmakers from Hong Kong and across Asia, including Nick Deocampo, Lei Lei, Simon Liu, Lu Yang, Ellen Pau, Wing Shya, Su Hui-Yu, Wong Ping, Ruby Yang, and Zhang Peili, will participate in post-screening talks, workshops, lounge chats, and performances. Wing Shya, a renowned Hong Kong photographer, designer, and filmmaker, serves as the festival’s Art Director. Shya has led the festival’s visual identity and provided never-before-seen images for the key art and trailer. 

For more details, please visit AAGFF’s website and Instagram.