Actually, my first trip to Hong Kong was to attend the H.K. International Film Festival back in 1998. Since then, I’ve attended the fest for nearly 8 years. It’s sort of an anniversary for me - so it holds a special place in my heart! Each year, in addition to the tens of thousands of H.K. movie-goers, several hundred film professionals come to the festival to check out the latest in Asian cinema. There are over 200 films showcased. Since H.K. has historically been the third largest producer of films in the world (no longer,) there are always important films premiering here. Though the festival has recently lost ground to the Pusan International Film Fest in Korea, it came back strong this year (its 30th anniversary) with three notable Hong Kong films opening the fest.

The Hong Kong film industry has been depressed for around ten years already. This year is already looking brighter though with three solid H.K. films debuting at the film festival. What’s interesting is that the films are very different from each other, which is a healthy sign. Perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of an upswing. The three films I’m talking about are Election II, the sequel to last year’s popular gangster film Election; Isabella, starring Chapman To and Isabella Leong, both previously known for lighter fare in the past, this film is a very mature work for the H.K. industry; and Daniel Wu’s directorial debut - The Heavenly Kings, which is a mockumentary about the state of the H.K. music industry.

Below are some photos I took at the opening ceremony for the film festival. The ‘ambassador’ for the film fest this year was H.K.’s superstar Andy Lau. You can also see Chiaki Kuriyama the Japanese girl who played Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill, who was attending for her new film.

Click on the photo below to see a full image of the cast of Election II.

Check out the papparazzi at the premiere of The Heavenly Kings.

Daniel, Terrence, Andrew, and Conroy on the red carpet.

As a follow up to my previous entry about D.J. Premier coming to H.K., here’s a quick rundown of his performance. There was a large turnout and lots of anticipation on the night he performed. The place was packed and many people in the local Hip Hop community turned up. It was a Wednesday night, which is one of the big party nights at Dragon-i. Premier came on at 12:30. He started off on the mic giving a brief intro to get the crowd hyped. Then he began his set with some medium tempo Hip Hop.

Unlike other touring d.j.s who use CDs or laptops, Premier used real records and he brought five crates of vinyl! Throughout his set he didn’t play any commercial Pop music, and stuck to mostly underground, New York style Hip Hop. It was cool to see the usually conservative crowd rocking to real Hip Hop for once. It just proves that you don’t need to sell out - by playing all familiar Pop/Hip Hop in order to get people dancing. Premier played many of the hits he produced including Gangstarr, M.O.P. and K.R.S. cuts. The show lasted til after 3am.

I was walking through a part of Mongkok that I haven’t been to in a while when I saw a window loaded with assault rifles on display. As I walked further down the block I came across three similar shops. Where there were once several, there is now an influx of gun stores. I counted over ten in this small sub-section of Mongkok.

The range and detail of the weaponry is amazing. These aren’t real guns or plastic guns aimed at kids, but metal replicas for adults who want to play wargames. Many of them are capable of firing pellets. There are places in the New Territories (an area outside of Kowloon that is less densely populated,) where people go war-gaming. Given the number of shops, I’d say that the trend is growing. M.C. Yan, Hong Kong’s godfather M.C. and graffiti artist mentioned to me that he’s into war games last time we hung out, so it seems to have a wide appeal. I stopped into one of the shops to take a quick look at the selection. Not only do they have a huge variety, but you can also customize or modify your gun. I saw a whole wall devoted to silencers for example.

In Hong Kong’s Central neighborhood, above the famous nightlife area Lan Kwai Fong and on the fringe of the Soho neighborhood lies Victoria Prison. Last week it was decommissioned with much fanfare. Visitors were permitted to tour the grounds and thousands of people showed up. I’ve never seen so many people want to go to prison before! I happened to be walking around it and took some photos.

This decommissioning is a big deal because the land it sits on is extremely valuable. On one side of the prison is the Hollywood Road police station - one of the few old colonial buildings left in Hong Kong. There have been plans to make the former prison into a shopping mall or a new nightlife area. It’s a desirable location in a neighborhood with scarce land.

When my friend Meeco invited me to her birthday party last week I didn’t really understand what she was saying. It seemed like she said ‘band room’ and BBQ?

When the night arrived, I took the train out to an area called Ngau Tau Kok. I’d never been there before. It is located deep into Kowloon-side, about 25 minutes from Central by subway. I got off the train and met up with Meeco and some of her friends at the station. We went to a grocery store nearby and picked up some food, drinks and the barbeque skewers. Hong Kong barbeques are slightly different from American bbqs. Usually, instead of placing the food on a grill, with just one person cooking, everyone sits around the fire and holds special bbq skewers with food on them. It’s more fun making your own food, and everyone can chat while cooking.

After picking up the food at the supermarket, I wondered where we would bbq? It didn’t seem like we were near a park or the beach. We walked a few blocks to a completely industrial area. We turned down a dark alley surrounded by massive buildings that once housed factories, and now contain offices. In the middle of the alley we walked into one of the faceless buildings and took the service elevator up to the top floor, from there we climbed a staircase and headed up to the roof.

What Meeco had told me earlier now finally started to make sense. Tucked away on top of this industrial building were ‘band rooms’. Since Hong Kong apartments are small, and most kids live with their families, there are few places for bands to practice, much less rock-out. In the midst of these industrial areas, several buildings rent out no-frills space to bands. This particular band room was located on the roof and had a full set of drums and dozens of different instruments laying around. The barbeque was set to take place nearby on part of the rooftop.

If you see round, white colored food on the skewers, those ain’t marshmallows! Typical H.K. bbq food includes fishballs, squidballs, and shrimpballs in addition to hotdogs, chicken, beef, and pork. Sometimes honey is slathered on everything. People make toast with honey, chicken wings with honey, and even steak with honey. Click the photo below to get a closer look.