Awards and festivals

Film description

Rebellious Moon wanders between Hong Kong skyscrapers, accepting small jobs form shady members of the local underworld. He has a sick girlfriend who is waiting for a kidney transplant, and a friend whose life is also filled with setbacks.

The three of them seem to be perfect candidates for a wild, romantic tale in the style of the popular Hong Kong "young rebels" cycle, with its picturesque image of a gangster life. Chan deconstructs these conventions, staying close to the ordinary life and the unimpressive reality of a gang. The style of his film is indebted both to the Japanese young rebel films of the 1960s, and the aesthetics of Wong Kar-wai. Strong frames, the desperate-melancholic atmosphere, and the dynamic editing turn "Made in Hong Kong" into an expressive urban poem, piercing and hypnotic.

The young filmmaker made his production in a truly independent home-made way, using pieces of film from the movies he worked at. Five crew members, loaned money for the equipment, and only two months of production were enough to create a film which soon became legendary – a fresh, vivid work capturing the spirit of its times. Twenty years after its premiere and twenty years since Hong Kong came under Chinese rule, many of its themes remain valid, and the restored version made for the film’s anniversary allows us to once again appreciate its sharp visual form.

The 4K restoration of Made in Hong Kong was promoted by the Far East Film Festival (Udine, Italy) on the occasion of the 20th anniversary since the film's first public screening in 1997, the same year as Hong Kong’s handover to China. The restoration was made from the original camera negative with the supervision of director Fruit Chan and cinematographer O Sing-pui and was carried out in 2017 in the Hong Kong and Bologna headquarters of L'Immagine Ritrovata.

> Interview with Bede Cheng about film restoration

Jagoda Murczyńska