RECREATION AND THE ARTS
of several films adapted from the same story but made by different directors at different times and with different approaches.
As well as screening films, the festival arranged a Stills and Posters Exhibition, discussion sessions with film-makers as well as a seminar on the Phantoms of the Hong Kong Cinema. The entire festival attracted almost 100 000 film-goers.
International Arts Carnival
The International Arts Carnival was the eighth annual summer festival organised by the Urban Council to encourage the interest of children and young people in performing arts and to provide them with entertaining and educational cultural programmes during their summer vacation.
The programme included five overseas and three local groups in a wide variety of art forms such as children's musicals, black light theatre, magic, masque and puppetry. Thirty-nine original and exciting performances were staged at the City Hall and Sheung Wan Civic Centre. Two outdoor funfairs were held at the Chater Road pedestrian precinct.
A poster design competition and a children's arts creation contest were held before the carnival to encourage young people's interest in visual arts and crafts. During the carnival period, winners of the two competitions were displayed at an exhibition entitled Arts in Children's Daily Life at the City Hall exhibition hall.
Hong Kong Museum of History
The year 1989 was a momentous one for the Hong Kong Museum of History. Its new extension building was completed early in the year, providing an additional 1 000 square metres of flexible exhibition space. Half the space is used for holding temporary thematic exhibitions while the other half is for a standing exhibition on the History of Hong Kong.
The Human Story exhibition, a joint venture with the Commonwealth Institute in London, was opened on July 1, 1989, as the inaugural exhibition for the new building. This was widely acclaimed for its educational value. It told the story of mankind's origins and development by drawing together accumulated knowledge in anthropology, geology, astronomy and computer science, and featured computer graphics, life-like figures and dioramas, maps and cultural artefacts. The Museum of History is the first museum outside Europe to present the exhibition which was attended by 250 000 visitors.
The standing exhibition History of Hong Kong A Brief Introduction reopened in January and remained open throughout the year. In the meantime, preparatory work progressed well for the comprehensive permanent Hong Kong History exhibition, which will illustrate the transformation of Hong Kong from a fishing village into a modern metropolis and cover the development of Hong Kong from the neolithic age to the present time. Much information and visual material were collected through research projects on oral history, local industry, local education, local costumes and history of the Japanese occupation. The projects received encouraging support from the public. Fabrication work for the permanent exhibition will begin in early 1990 and it is scheduled to open in the autumn.
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The museum's educational programmes continued to be popular. Weekend programmes which included lectures, film/video shows and demonstrations on subjects covered by the scope of the museum, were held from March to September and attracted a very high attendance. Special interest groups were impressed by live demonstrations of traditional handicrafts held from October 1989 to February 1990. To complement the Human Story exhibition in which archaeology occupies a very important part, two special workshops on
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