Indie Films at Hong Kong Art Centre: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Human Flow’ and Kal Ng’s ‘Nirvenue’

Description

Human Flow (USA, Germany, China, 2017) is a documentary film by acclaimed artist and director Ai Weiwei that gives a powerful visual expression to massive human migration. It elucidates on both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey.

Directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Kal Ng, Nirvenue (Hong Kong, 2017) tells the story of a young man who discovers a programmed copy of himself on the web, living in a parallel cyber-world that mirrors contemporary urban life. On the surface, this is a love story between a man and a woman in which the young male protagonist’s obsession with memories of bygone times lead him to fall deeper and deeper into a virtual labyrinth, eventually forcing him to become irretrievably intertwined with his mirror self. Just like in a virtual reality game, he is able to determine the settings and characters within this artificial world, allowing him to reenact carefully-designed scenes from a romantic relationship.

Both films will be screened with English subtitles.