Recounting the tribulations of an ambitious and unemployed director who has been offered the job of making an erotic film by a money-grabbing producer, Viva Erotica stages a dilemma as old as cinema itself: art or money? Integrity or career? Beneath its façade of a cheeky comedy, this lucid satire shows what the Hong Kong film industry of the ‘90s was doing to idealists, caught in the crossfire between cynical producers (sometimes, as here, under Mafia influence) and an unforgiving public. Also, what it does to the actresses, flesh for the box-office and desire. But if the facts are dark, our filmmaker finally manages to overcome his contradictions through the very act of filming. AR
Screenings
KATORZA
SAT 16 > 8:30 pm, in the presence of Clarence Tsui, journalist, critic in Hong Kong and co-programmer of the Derek Yee retrospective.
THU 21 > 8:45 pm
