Undercover Underworld

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Tai Kwun’s 2025 summer exhibition Undercover Underworld celebrates a long-running theme in one of Hong Kong’s most distinctive cinematic genres. In a medium created from light and shadow, nothing shines so brightly from the core of Hong Kong film crime drama. Within that world, nothing embodies shadow more than the undercover agent infiltrating the criminal underworld. What makes these lonely covert figures risk their lives and sanity? And why does this global theme resonate so strongly with Hong Kong audiences? Undercover Underworld will expose the unseen layers from 1 Aug to 5 Oct 2025 in Tai Kwun’s Duplex Studio.

Co-curated by film director Sunny Chan Wing San and Kristof Van den Troost, Assistant Professor of the Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the exhibition offers a deep dive into the shadowy world of covert operations. Tai Kwun’s Duplex Studio will be transformed into re-creations of memorable scenes from classic crime films, where visitors can literally put themselves in the shoes and the camera frame of some of Hong Kong’s most memorable cinematic characters. Undercover Underworld dissects both the procedural steps of an agent beginning a covert mission and the mental anguish resulting from dual identity as well as difficulties in reentering the normal world.

Along with exclusive behind-the-scenes recollections from award-winning filmmakers and actors associated with the featured movies, the exhibition also includes interviews with former real-life undercover agents, psychologists and other professionals contrasting these fictionalised accounts with real-life experiences in the field. This summer exhibition is made possible through the continuous funding and support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club, with Oriental Watch Company as the Lead Sponsor.

Note: the programme contains strong lighting and haze effects.