RECREATION AND THE ARTS
World-renowned artists and performing groups, including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ninagawa Company from Japan, the Abbey Theatre from Dublin, pianist Alicia de Larrocha, guitarist Paco Pena and jazz musician Toots Thielemans, played to packed houses. Equally well received were the Hebei Clapper Opera Troupe from China, the Samul Nori Drummers from Korea, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company from the United States and the special series of mime and visual theatre from France and Belgium.
Local groups also played a prominent part in the 1989 Arts Festival, with performances given by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Hong Kong Ballet, the Hong Kong Dance Company, the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre and the Chung Ying Theatre Company.
Once again manifesting the policy of broadening the horizons of local audiences, the 1989 festival featured performances of foreign language theatre, early music and South American music – activities rarely available in Hong Kong at other times of the year.
Overall, the festival achieved the very high attendance figure of 88 per cent. A total of over 100 000 people attended the performances and exhibitions.
Hong Kong Festival Fringe
Since its founding seven years ago, the Hong Kong Festival Fringe has developed from an annual open arts festival into a successful year-round operation that gives the emerging artists of Hong Kong the opportunity to hone their skills and create new works.
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Manned by a small and dedicated staff and open throughout the year, the Fringe Club provides artists with free venues for performances and exhibitions. Its facilities include a 100-seat theatre, several rehearsal studios, a bar with an exhibition area, a pottery workshop, a shop and offices.
The Fringe Club arranges performances, exhibitions and classes on a monthly basis. In residence there are the Fringe Theatre Workshop and Mime and Movement Laboratory and they perform frequently in a broad range of venues. A very active outreach programme chalked up over 220 shows and special projects last year.
The Festival Fringe 1989, staged for three weeks in January and February, was attended by some 275 000 people.
Hong Kong International Film Festival
The annual Hong Kong International Film Festival is now firmly established as one of the major non-competitive film events in the film world.
The 13th festival, held from March 23 to April 7, 1989, provided a feast of high quality films from all over the world. A varied programme of feature films, animations, short films and video programmes was presented during the 16-day event. Included were works by internationally-known veteran film-makers Jean-Luc Godard, Manoel de Oliveira, Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy as well as by acclaimed young film-makers such as Pedro Almadovar, Aki Kaurismaki and Percy Adlon.
Following the success of the Central Asian Cinema Retrospective in 1988, a Georgian Cinema Retrospective was presented which featured 21 films dating from the 20s to the 80s by brilliant directors from the tiny republic in the Soviet Union. Apart from this, the Asian programme included productions by young talents such as Wu Ziniu's Evening Bell (Silver Bear Award, 1989) and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay (Camera d'Or, 1989).
Phantoms of the Hong Kong Cinema was the topic of the Hong Kong Cinema Retrospective. It comprised a total of 28 films representing a conglomeration of horror or ghost story movies over a span of five decades. One distinguished feature was the selection