January 16–February 5, 2025
Clara Law: Drifting Petals, Floating Lives
“One of the most respected wife-and-husband teams in world cinema.”
Fredric Dannen and Barry Long, Hong Kong Babylon
The sense of cultural displacement stemming from the diasporic experience has been central to the transnational cinema of Clara Law, the Macau-born, Hong Kong-raised, Melbourne-based director who, together with husband and creative partner Eddie Fong, has fashioned a cohesive and profoundly personal body of work spanning four decades and counting.
A key figure of the so-called Second Wave of Hong Kong cinema, whose cohort counts among its ranks Wong Kar-wai, Stanley Kwan, and Mabel Cheung, Law cut her teeth in broadcast television—producing, scriptwriting, directing—before studying abroad in the early 1980s at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in England. Her award-winning thesis film They Say the Moon is Fuller Here (1985), about a Hong Kong student in London (played by Law herself) drawn into a romance with a tormented Chinese nationalist, underscored not only a poetic new voice but the cardinal thematic that would distinguish her art—namely, the subjectivity of being elsewhere.
After directing A‑listers Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Ka-fai in the sobering migration drama Farewell, China (1990), Law achieved international recognition with Autumn Moon (1992), scripted by Fong and starring Japanese actor Nagase Masatoshi (of Jarmusch’s Mystery Train) as a drifter in Hong Kong who befriends an emigrating girl. The film, winner of the Golden Leopard at Locarno, would be one of Law’s last before she and Fong decamped to Australia, a decision triggered as much by anxiety over the 1997 handover as by frustration with the creativity-squeezing commercial demands of the Hong Kong film industry. The duo have operated out of Melbourne ever since, with Aussie-made pictures like Floating Life (1996), the first Cantonese-language film funded by the Australian government, and The Goddess of 1967 (2000), for which Rose Byrne won Best Actress at Venice, earning widespread acclaim. Suffice it to say, Asian Australian cinema was virtually ushered into existence by the groundbreaking achievements of these two immigrant filmmakers.
The Cinematheque and the UBC Asian Independent Cinema Showcase are pleased to present a select retrospective surveying the remarkable, decades-spanning oeuvre of Clara Law. Curated in concert with the director and Eddie Fong, the six-film program features each of the aforementioned titles, all boasting new restorations, plus the couple’s latest collaboration Drifting Petals (2021), a DIY ghost story plumbing personal and political traumas.
Law and Fong will join us via Zoom for audience Q&As following the first screening of each film in the retrospective.
“Clara Law is one of the most talented directors to emerge from the remarkable success of the ‘Second Wave’ Hong Kong cinema … [Her] films are a poetry of the Chinese diaspora.”
Dian Li, Senses of Cinema
“Film is art, first and foremost.”
Clara Law
Acknowledgments
The Cinematheque is grateful to Helena Wu and Jimmy Lo, co-curators and co-convenors of the UBC Asian Independent Cinema Showcase, for their invaluable assistance in making this program possible.
The Asian Independent Cinema Showcase (AICS) is a UBC-based film festival that aims to foster a film appreciation community within and beyond the university; cultivate media literacy and cross-cultural understanding; and give voices to independent stories told by Asian filmmakers.
Co-presented with the UBC Asian Independent Cinema Showcase
Upcoming Screenings
List of Programmed Films
Date | Film Title | Director(s) | Year | Country |
---|---|---|---|---|
2025-Jan | Autumn Moon | Clara Law | 1992 | Hong Kong . . . |
2025-Jan | They Say the Moon Is Fuller Here | Clara Law | 1985 | United Kingdom |
2025-Jan | Farewell, China | Clara Law | 1990 | Hong Kong |
2025-Jan | The Goddess of 1967 | Clara Law | 2000 | Australia |
2025-Jan | Floating Life | Clara Law | 1996 | Australia |
2025-Jan | Drifting Petals | Clara Law | 2021 | Australia |