Lineup for Hong Kong Int'l Film Festival

The Hong Kong International Film Festival announced on February 24 a line-up that has a little something for everybody.

It will open with a HK-Mainland romance "Love in the Buff" from director PANG Ho-cheung, which is a follow-up to his teasingly provocative "Love in a Puff"(2010), which was one of two HKIFF openers two years ago. Early reports suggest that Buff is more dialled down and Mainland-friendly-commercial than Puff, which was released in Hong Kong with a Category III rating.

The festival will close with the rural China dynastic epic "White Deer Plain", by WANG Quanan, which premiered in competition at last week's Berlin International Film Festival.

The festival's Awards Gala will enjoy a screening of the Taiwanese compilation work "10+10". The festival will also show another collective work, "Beautiful", that it commissioned from GU Changwei, TSAI Ming-liang, Ann HUI and KIM Tae-yong and was sponsored by Chinese online video firm Youku.

The Young Cinema competition section includes Edwin's Postcards from the Zoo Kebun binatang, Marlon N. RIVERA's The Woman in the Septic Tank Ang babae sa septic tank, KIM Joong-hyun's "Choked", KIMURA Shoko's "The End of Puberty" and KIM Kyung-mook's "Stateless Things".

International festival favourites in the Gala and Masterclass sections include "Coriolanus", "Monsieur Lazhar", "Footnote", "Thirteen Assassins" (2010), "Shame", "The Deep Blue Sea", "Post Card"(2010) and "A Dangerous Method".

Art-house admirers can fill up on "11 Flowers", "Modest Reception", "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", "Goodbye", "The Day He Arrives", "I Wish" and "Alps".

Tribute and retrospective sections include the previously announced tribute to Peter CHAN , which will show 12 films he either directed or produced; a programme of experimental films by Japanese avant-garde director ITO Takashi; a tribute to French director and activist Georges Franju; a look back at influential Japanese director KAWASHIMA Yuzo; a diverse assembly of works by Japanese 'genre-buster' KURAHARA Koreyoshi; a trio of Amoy dialect films from the 1950s; a 16-title collection of films featuring the popular character Wong Fei-hung; and half a dozen restored classics including Jean Renoir's Nana, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Roberto Rossellini's The Machine That Kills Bad People, which HKIFF programmer Bede CHENG likens to a comedic forerunner of "Death Note" (2006). Eight contemporary films make up Poland In Focus.

The festival will receive a dose of star power from the previously announced Keanu REEVES and the presence of Charlotte Rampling. The British star will attend the opening ceremony in her capacity as president of the Paris Cinéma Festival, with which the HKIFF is collaborating. The festival will screen Rampling biopic The Look and the Reeves-produced documentary "Side By Side".