M+ Cinema Winter Edition 2025

EVENT DESCRIPTION

M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) in Hong Kong, announces the M+ Cinema Winter Edition, running from January to March 2025.

Winter Edition Highlights

M+ Cinema fosters deeper understanding and connections to visual culture through thought-provoking moving image experiences that celebrate heritage, innovation, and diversity. Highlights of this Winter Edition include Tilda Swinton: Between Worlds, spotlighting the influential actress’s collaborations with some of the world’s most renowned filmmakers. The weekend programme Colours of Life: A Celebration of Indian Cinema takes viewers on a journey through acclaimed classics and contemporary films. Recent local releases Remember What I Forgot (2024) and The Way We Talk(2024) capture the bonds formed within communities facing adversity. Avant-Garde Now: Sensing Time invites audiences to experience time as both a subject matter and a medium.

Details of the M+ Cinema Winter Edition are as follows: 

• Tilda Swinton: Between Worlds

This programme celebrates the shapeshifting talents of actress Tilda Swinton, a muse and loyal collaborator to some of contemporary cinema’s greatest auteurs. It spotlights five of her career-defining partnerships from the past four decades, including Caprice (1986) by Joanna Hogg, Caravaggio (1986) by Derek Jarman, Orlando (1992) by Sally Potter, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) by Jim Jarmusch, and The End (2024) by Joshua Oppenheimer—each as surprising and daring as the last. This selection, drawn from Swinton’s more than fifty films, highlights her extraordinary versatility and range, demonstrating her ability to effortlessly navigate different cinematic and psychological worlds. Her on-screen personae are exceptionally diverse, yet united by their emotional complexity and unconventionality. Her magnetic performances elevate each film and invite audiences to explore her characters’ inner lives. 

• Colours of Life: A Celebration of Indian Cinema

From cinema classics to popular musical films, Indian cinema has contributed much to global visual culture. This programme presents Payal Kapadia’s acclaimed new film All We Imagine as Light (2024)—the first Indian film selected for Cannes’ main competition in thirty years and the winner of the 2024 Grand Prix. S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR (2022), the Oscar-winning cultural juggernaut, will grace the big screen in M+’s Grand Stair. The programme also features Pather Panchali (1955) by Satyajit Ray and Salaam Bombay! (1988) by Mira Nair, two timeless masterpieces that capture beautiful and harrowing experiences through the eyes of a child.

• Previews: Remember What I Forgot (2024) and Rumours (2024)

M+ Cinema presents long-awaited previews of newly released local and international films. Directed by Chui Tze Yiu, Remember What I Forgot (2024) evokes a sense of nostalgia for bygone Hong Kong cinema. The movie features Philip Keung’s vivid portrayal of an Alzheimer patient struggling with memory loss, leading to a friendship filled with both tears and laughter. Rumours (2024), starring Cate Blanchett as a fictional German Chancellor, satirises the dynamics of world politics as a group of foolish leaders convene at a G7 meeting.

• Special Screenings: The Way We Talk (2024) and The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)

Adam Wong’s latest drama, The Way We Talk (2024), explores the ups and downs of youth while realistically portraying the camaraderie and conflicts within the deaf community. The film features deaf characters who express their desire for equality and mutual understanding through sign language. Loosely based on Jin Yong’s novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1957), The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993) is a parody of the Cantonese martial arts films and period dramas of the 1950s and 1960s. There is no better time than the spring holiday to revisit this wacky classic.

• Avant-Garde Now: Sensing Time

‘Avant-Garde Now’ is a regular series that explores the latest in moving image practices. ‘Sensing Time’ inaugurates a year-long investigation of time as both a subject matter and a medium for artistic expression. Four invited artists—Takashi Makino, Raqs Media Collective, Morgan Wong, and Wu Tzuan—will present their research and artistic experiments on the topic of time through a mix of analogue and digital screenings, performances, and programmes. Curatorial presentations and discussions between the artists and the local community will lay the foundation for future events, including the next edition of the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival in May 2025.

• Fresh Eyes

‘Fresh Eyes’ is a recurring series dedicated to families and younger audiences. Gints Zilbalodis’s debut feature, Away (2019), tells the story of a boy who crash-lands on a strange island. The minimalist style and lack of dialogue contribute to the calming effect of this film. Produced by the acclaimed animation studio Laika, Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) follows young protagonist Kubo on his quest to find the magical armour he will need to challenge the heartless Moon King. The film’s characters and fight scenes are created using stop-motion animation that blends seamlessly with computer-generated backgrounds. Concession tickets for these films are only HKD 25.

• Rediscoveries

‘Rediscoveries’ is a recurring series bringing back forgotten gems and restored classics. Terence Davies’s debut film Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) is a semi-autobiographical film about a working-class Catholic family in Liverpool, England, during the 1940s and 1950s. This stirring English masterpiece, known for its impressionistic style, now returns with a 4K restoration. Mariko Okada stars as a young woman who inherits a traditional sweets shop in A Woman’s Uphill Slope (1960). This is a rare chance to see this Kōzaburō Yoshimura-directed gem on a vibrant 35mm print. 

• Stair in the Dark

‘Stair in the Dark’ presents ‘Dissonant Pleasures’, a monthly series spotlighting works hidden in the shadows of the mainstream that have had a lasting impact on cinema. This edition spotlights luminaries of Japanese animation. Kawajiri Yoshiaki’s masterpiece Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000) combines futuristic sci-fi and medieval vampire themes, demonstrating Kawajiri’s iconic bloody style and appealing aesthetics, in an enthralling tale of human-vampire tragedy. At once bedazzling and heart-wrenching, Eiichi Yamamoto’s erotic fever dream Belladonna of Sadness (1973) re-emerges to bewitch anime aficionados after decades in obscurity. Masaaki Yuasa continues to amaze and confuse with Night Is Short, Walk on Girl(2017), a surrealist comedy that turns a night in Kyoto into kaleidoscopic mayhem.