ENG-1995 — Page 413

RECREATION, SPORTS AND THE ARTS

also organised and mounted new shows, exhibitions, workshops and an active outreach programme.

Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival

The 1995 Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival was held throughout November. It comprised a wide variety of programmes in drama, visual and multi-media arts, dance and music. It aims to provide young people with the opportunity to participate in arts performances and to work alongside arts practitioners, learning and sharing in new ideas and experiences in the arts.

Urban Council Presentations

Cultural Presentations

The Urban Council organised a total of 306 performances of various performing arts programmes attracting 203 702 people. Music highlights included concerts by the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra, the China Central Ensemble of National Music, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and instrumental virtuosi Gil Shaham, Christopher Parkening, Midori, Ofra Harnoy, John Williams and Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Highlights of dance programmes included the new commissioned production of Anna Karenina by the Hong Kong Ballet, performances by the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Jazz Tap Ensemble and the Ballet Cristina Hoyos Company. On the theatre front, apart from works by more than a dozen local drama groups, there were productions by the Oxford Stage Company from the United Kingdom and the Pikkari Theatre from Japan.

Operatic offerings included Cantonese opera by the Fu Wing Wah Opera Troupe, Shanghai opera by the Zhejiang Little Flowers Shaoxing Opera Troupe and the Italian opera Lucia di Lammermoor by a collaboration of local and international artists.

Hong Kong International Film Festival

The Hong Kong International Film Festival is one of the world's major annual, non- competitive film festivals. The 19th Festival in 1995 presented 204 films from 42 countries. Apart from the screening of films, several fringe activities were held, including the posters and stills exhibition of participating films and a seminar entitled An Investigation of Early Hong Kong Cinema. To commemorate the centenary of cinema, the festival featured a historical retrospective on the topic Early Images of Hong Kong and China. In this section, some pre-war documentaries, war films, restored and rediscovered post-war classics were screened with the assistance of the Hong Kong Film Archive. The Hong Kong Film Archive also staged an exhibition on The Early Days of Hong Kong Cinema (1896–1950) and a seminar entitled Remembering the Early Days of Local Cinema. The festival achieved a record attendance figure of 172 800.

Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards 1995

Jointly presented with the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the competition aims to encourage creative, non-commercial, independent productions of short film and video in Hong Kong, and to promote the interest of the public towards film and video as artistic, communicative and expressive media. A record 274 productions joined the

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