STATE OF THE ARTS
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as Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Malcolm Sargent and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Dame Margot Fonteyn. Its immediate success drew in that other great ‘King of Hong Kong Showbiz', Sir Run Run Shaw, and also the Hong Kong Government, Urban Council and the Jockey Club. With this kind of support it could only rise to greater heights. It is still with us, with a $15 million a year budget and a firm place on the musical calendar. Other local impresarios, noting its success, have recognised there is a market for excellence and are drawing top orchestras, ballet and drama groups and prominent instrumentalists, to play at other times of the year or in other local festivals, such as the International Arts Carnival and the Festival of Asian Arts, both run by the Urban Council.
These provide local audiences with performances of exceptional quality, and also contribute to raising standards of Hong Kong's own cultural groups who can measure their own productions against the highest international standards.
The International Arts Festival in turn spawned a 'fringe', based on the experience of other major international festivals, which has given impetus to many younger experimental groups on a year-round basis, supervised and encouraged by its own highly-committed secretariat supported by several voluntary workers. The 'fringe', however, is not evolving as an alternative to the conventional mainstream of arts so much as supplementing existing art forms, as well as providing much-needed classes and workshops with opportunities for performances in its own small studio theatre, supported by the Hong Kong Government, Urban Council and private sponsors. It has thus become much more a training venue for artistes and has found an important niche for itself in developing mime and street theatre, among others.
Film Industry
In addition to these festivals, the Urban Council stages an International Film Festival which draws the unusual and exceptional film productions from many parts of the world, alas all too briefly. This is an attempt to provide a small counterweight to the tons of celluloid which deluge the commercial screens, much of it by Hong Kong producers, but only a small proportion worthy of international recognition.
The film industry, indeed, is commercially the strongest yet culturally the weakest element in the arts world; more properly it is seen as entertainment and with its links to television it would happily accept that this is its main role in life. Yet it also has links in other countries to the live stage and relies as much on the efforts of the writer as on the producer, the actor and the technician to attract its audience. While film groups were active in China and in Hong Kong in the 1930s, the local industry owes much to the arrival of producers, directors and entrepreneurs from Shanghai and Singapore. Names like Sir Run Run Shaw and Raymond Chow are as legendary among Hong Kong people as Alexander Korda, Louis B. Mayer, Arthur Rank, Lew Grade, Cecil B. de Mille, and other moguls of Tinseltown are to the international film-goer.
Without this background in films, Hong Kong's foray into television would have languished. Instead, after a fumbling, stumbling start by a British group transmitting through cables in the 1950s, broadcast television was an instant success - indeed, to such an extent that Hong Kong scriptwriters are now writing for local audiences in Cantonese rather than Mandarin, as well as exploring new forms of drama, which in turn has enriched the film industry and given us such talented producers as Anne Hui, Yim Ho and Tsui Hark. It has also given actors more freedom and opportunity to move between films and television, though as yet the commercial live stage is not able to provide a third string to the actor's bow, as it does in Britain, the United States and Europe. Likewise, the musician