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RECREATION AND THE ARTS

The festival also featured retrospective programmes on F. W. Murnau, the great German master; Gyula Gazdag, an up-and-coming Hungarian director; Larisa Shepitko, the remarkable Soviet woman director; and Cai Chusheng, the early master of Chinese cinema. For the first time in Hong Kong a retrospective on Central Asian Cinema was presented with a 10-film programme which was warmly received by the local audience. This pro- gramme offered people a rare opportunity to see the outstanding works of Soviet film- makers between the 60s and the 80s. The festival programme also featured seven local films, including a world premiere.

An attempt was made to look at the 'Changes in Hong Kong Society Through Cinema' in the Hong Kong Cinema Retrospective Section. The programme was made up of 18 feature films, ten shorts, eight combined programmes and seven video films. It incorporated the works of both local people and foreigners to show their respective points of view on various aspects of the changing society of Hong Kong. Many of the films were 'treasures' on loan from private sources as well as museums and institutions all over the world.

International Arts Carnival

The international Arts Carnival was the seventh annual summer festival organised by the Urban Council to provide entertaining cultural programmes for young people during their summer vacation.

Five troupes from Belgium, Canada, China and the United States took part in the carnival. Together with six local groups, they gave 33 performances at the City Hall and Hong Kong Space Museum, eight free performances at major shopping arcade and two fun fairs at the Chater Road pedestrian precinct.

The carnival included children's musicals, drama, puppetry, acrobatics, mime, magic shows and story-telling.

An arts gathering and a children's arts fair were also held to introduce various arts activities.

Hong Kong Museum of History

Work was carried out on the Hong Kong Museum of History's extension building during the year which will enable the museum next year to present a more comprehensive permanent exhibition on the development of Hong Kong. For this work, the museum was closed for two periods, but special activities-were held on traditional handicraft such as Chinese knotting, silhouette cutting, the making of grasshoppers, Chinese paper lanterns and dough dolls all of them oversubscribed. The museum's weekend programmes continued to be very popular.

The thematic exhibition of the year was 'Made in Hong Kong - a History of Hong Kong's Export Design: 1900-1960', which featured early lithograph posters, glass and silver goods, tin toys, enamelware, radios, garments and plastic goods. The exhibition demonstrated the continuity, cultural identity and characteristics of Hong Kong export design within a framework of changing markets, materials and manufacturing methods. This, and the standing exhibition 'History of Hong Kong - A Brief Introduction', attracted. 287 000 visitors.

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Cultural co-operation with outside institutions included the loan of the 'Puppet Theatres of Hong Kong and their Origins' Exhibition for display at the Regional Council's Sam Tung Uk Museum and the loan of two model junks for display at the Museu Maritimo de Macau. Separately, five model junks and an edited version of the 'Old Photos of Hong