Director of Oscar - Winning "Minari" Cries and Whispers: Film Retrospective of Lee Isaac Chung

Co-Presented by the Hong Kong Arts Centre and U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau July 29 – August 6, 2022

The Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC) and the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau will co-present a moving image programme focusing on Lee Isaac Chung, the director of Oscar-winning Minari – Cries and Whispers: Film Retrospective of Lee Isaac Chung – at the Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre from July 29 to August 6, 2022. This programme screens five feature films by Chung, from his Cannes recognised debut Munyurangabo to his Oscar honoured historic milestone Minari. The screenings will be accompanied by talks and a masterclass with Chung. Guests to attend the live talks virtually include Lee Isaac Chung, Amanda Plummer (multiple Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress, roles include Honey Bunny of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction), Samuel Gray Anderson (Director, Screenwriter and Producer), and Eugene Suen (Producer).

This retrospective honours one of the most celebrated and extraordinary filmmakers of our time, Lee Isaac Chung. It was supposed to take place in May, the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which pays tribute to Asians and Pacific Islanders who have enriched the country's development and history. Yet, due to Hong Kong's sudden Covid-19 outbreak and the subsequent temporary closure of cinemas, this programme now takes place from July – in a safer place.

Chung's stories, like the recent happenings of Hong Kong arts programmes and life, are trajectories subject to their time and fate. While Hongkongers and other peoples have been painstakingly coping with the tragedies of the pandemic and other earthshaking events, Chung's characters exemplify how humans survive the chaotic nature of life – be it personal or communal – in fury, in tension, in dazedness, in tenderness, in humour and in other emotional complexities, along with resilience, versatility and hope.

The programme title, Cries and Whispers, might recall the masterpiece of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. All outstanding filmmakers are primarily great for their primal urge and distinct artistry to carve profound human conditions onto film. In Chung's oeuvre, concerns are wide-ranging – such as war, illness, discrimination, displacement, loneliness and death. He strives for authenticity in his filmmaking, and his stories are full of cries and whispers from the depths of human psyche. But Chung's style is gentle and subtle, always allowing space for audiences to observe and evolve with the characters as their journeys ebb and flow. His films are not only about Americans or Asian Americans – they are about human beings – hence their appeal to people far and wide.

About Lee Isaac Chung (Director, screenwriter and producer)

Lee Isaac Chung's most recent film Minari won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for six Oscars total in 2021, including Best Picture. Chung is a writer and director who grew up in Lincoln, Arkansas, on a small farm in the Ozark Mountains. His first feature film was the Rwandan family drama Munyurangabo, which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim. His other feature films are Lucky Life, Abigail Harm, and I Have Seen My Last Born.

Opening Film: Minari

29.07 (Fri) 7:45 PM
*Director Lee Isaac Chung will attend the virtual after-screening talk.
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Cast: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton

Best Supporting Actress, Academy Awards 2021
Best Supporting Actress, British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards 2021
Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic Competition, Sundance Film Festival 2021

USA | 2020 | 115 mins | DCP | Colour | In Korean and English with Chinese and English subtitles

“Minari is truly the best. It grows anywhere, like weeds. So anyone can pick and eat it. Rich or poor, anyone can enjoy it and be healthy.”

A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream in the 1980s. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, the film shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.

Minari is a semi-autobiographical take on the upbringing of Lee Isaac Chung. Many critics declared it one of the best films of 2020. The director has cited Fyodor Dostoevsky and Willa Cather as inspirations when he wrote the story. In Chung's words, the film is about “a family trying to learn how to speak a language of its own. It goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language. It's a language of the heart.”

Lucky Life

30.07 (Sat) 7:45 PM
*Co-writer and producer Mr Samuel Gray Anderson will attend the virtual after-screening talk.
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Cast: Daniel O'Keefe, Megan McKenna, Kenyon Adams

Nominated for Best Narrative Feature, World Narrative Competition, Tribeca Film Festival 2010
Nominated for Grand Prix, Bratislava International Film Festival 2010

“Dear waves, what will you do for me this year? Will you drown out my scream?”

A beach trip from the past lingers in Mark and Karen's minds as they prepare for the arrival of their newborn. One year, the ritual of a seaside vacation shared by a group of friends becomes a farewell for Jason, who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Steeped in tenderness and affection, the friends continue their laughter and camaraderie in even the most quotidian activities, and conceal their grief to face the last days of Jason. As memory plays back, the couple embraces another phase of life.

Lee Isaac Chung's contemplative, understated second feature on companionship, memory, life, and loss is inspired by the poetry of Gerald Stern, whose work lends the film its title. With much of the dialogue absent from the film's outline, the actors improvise in the scene. The film has been shot in natural light without a storyboard, and Chung describes this spontaneous journey of filmmaking to seem like “an exercise of faith”. Eric Kohn of IndieWire praises the director for “his uncanny ability to elevate seemingly minor exchanges to a place of deeper significance”.

I Have Seen My Last Born

31.07 (Sun) 7:45 PM
*Co-director Mr Samuel Gray Anderson will attend the virtual after-screening talk.
Directors: Lee Isaac Chung, Samuel Gray Anderson
Cast: John Kwezi

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2015

“I thought about what it means to be a true human, and that's what I chose to be.”

Lee Isaac Chung and his frequent collaborator, Samuel Gray Anderson, return to Rwanda to co-direct a documentary on 39-year-old Jean Kwezi, who was marked profoundly as a young adult by the 1994 genocide: separated from his family, only re-uniting with them years later, long after they had assumed him dead. The dramatic events of Jean's reunion with his parents and, much later, the daughter that he once abandoned, have already taken place; but his deep emotions remain present. Each moment echoes the continuing power of these events and the vitality with which Jean has emerged from a dark past to live with a new purpose. What is he? How to be a Rwandan? What is Rwanda?

Chung's only documentary continues to demonstrate the co-directors' strengths as keen observers – respectful, unassuming and thoughtful. I Have Seen My Last Born is a powerful companion to Munyurangabo.

Abigail Harm

05.08 (Fri) 8:00 PM
*Ms Amanda Plummer (lead actress) and Mr Eugene Suen (producer) will attend the virtual after-screening talk.
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Cast: Amanda Plummer, Tetsuo Kuramochi, Will Patton

Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature and Special Jury Prize for Best Director, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2013

“It has nothing to do with love.”

Abigail Harm reads books to the blind and lives at the edge of the city, where no one can see her. “You have no idea how it would be if one day you were the only person left in the city,” Abigail whispers to herself. She keeps her eyes turned away, but secretly she watches, listens, and hopes. She remembers an old story about a woodcutter who saves the life of a deer and is granted a wish. The woodcutter wishes for a companion. Before long, this tale seems to come alive as a mysterious man appears in Abigail's world, and she falls in love with him.

Lee Isaac Chung's daringly original take of the Korean folktale The Woodcutter and the Nymph exudes the air of a surreal urban fairy tale. Multiple Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress, Amanda Plummer, plays the titular heroine. She has starred in numerous films and TV series including Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction as the unforgettable Honey Bunny, and Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King. Violet Lucca of the Village Voice praises Plummer's arresting and emotive performance, which “exudes more emotion in a wistful sideways glance than most actresses do over their entire careers.”

Munyurangabo

06.08 (Sat) 7:45 PM
*Masterclass on Film Directing with Lee Isaac Chung will take place right after the screening.
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Cast: Cast: Jeff Rutagengwa, Eric Ndorunkundiye

Grand Jury Prize, AFI Fest 2007
Best First Film, Mexico City International Contemporary Film Festival 2008

“What is your battle?”

Munyurangabo is orphaned by the Rwandan Genocide and is eager to seek justice for his Tutsi parents. After stealing a machete from a market in Kigali, he and his Hutu friend, Sangwa, leave the Rwandan capital and return to their impoverished village, where Sangwa gets loving care from his family, and Munyurangabo is met with hostility from the family. “Hutus and Tutsis are supposed to be enemies,” Sangwa's parents balk at this friendship. As the two adolescents confront and reconcile their differences, they also learn to survive the aftermath of the Rwandan Civil War.

This debut of Lee Isaac Chung is also the first narrative feature in the Kinyarwanda language. It started as a project to allow genocide orphans, returned refugees, the undereducated, and those barely making a living who were not film professionals to become Munyurangabo's cast and crew. In the words of Chung, “[T]his is a film that focuses on memory, a collective one, and it was a quest to discover spiritual elements within memory.” American critic Roger Ebert calls it “in every frame a beautiful and powerful film – a masterpiece.”

Masterclass on Film Directing with Lee Isaac Chung

*Starts right after the screening of Munyurangabo in the Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre

Guest: Lee Isaac Chung (Director)
Moderator: Maggie Lee (Film Critic and Curator)
*Chung and Lee will join the masterclass virtually.

After a screening of his debut feature Munyurangabo (festival participation includes Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Rotterdam), Lee Isaac Chung will share his journey of filmmaking with the audience – from starting his career as an independent filmmaker to receiving popular international recognition. Chung has been persistent in his art with an authentic vision and determined efforts. His is more than a story of success, but of a film artist who is brave, sincere and faithful to his medium and his viewers.

Tickets are available now on POPTICKET and for full details, see the programme website.

TagsHong Kong Arts Centre Lee Isaac Chung Minari