M+ Museum｜M+ presents "Asia Avant-Garde Film Festival 2025: Time as Witness" to explore the concept of time through the perspectives of Asia's leading artists and filmmakers

Description

M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture located in the West Kowloon Cultural District, proudly presents the second Asian Avant-garde Film Festival, supported by CHANEL. This three-day festival will showcase and explore the history of independent moving image works that have shaped the Asian art scene over the past sixty years from a visual culture perspective. The Festival will be held at M+ from Friday 30 May to Monday 1 June 2025, and will feature a series of screenings, exhibitions, performances, talks and workshops, bringing together artists and filmmakers from across Asia and showcasing important works from the M+ collection, presenting audiences with fascinating Asian avant-garde films from the past and present.

The second "Asian Avant-garde Film Festival" supported by CHANEL is themed on time, presenting artists and filmmakers using creative media closely related to time to explore and express the creative concept of time in incisive ways. Time is an irresistible force that shapes the existence of all things in the world. Through films, performances and installations, creators transform time into tangible entities and concrete concepts, highlighting its fluid, cyclical, measurable, constructible and abstract properties. These works include historical reenactments that question concepts of truth, nostalgia, and memory, explorations of virtual realms and future worlds where time can be manipulated, and the innovative use of film as a physical medium to measure time.

The Asian Avant-garde Film Festival 2025 invites artists and filmmakers who have shaped the Asian art scene over the past sixty years, including Fung Mei-wah, Ho Tzu-yin, Hsieh Teh-ching, Amar Chin-hua, Huang Jie-yi and Yamashiro Chikako. Ho Tzu-yin will collaborate with independent singer-songwriter Wong Yin-yan to stage a new live film on the M+ steps. All leading guests will be present in person to participate in the three-day film festival, which includes a series of screenings, workshops and discussions.

The details of the film festival are as follows:

Big Stairs

Ho Tzu-yin x Wong Yin-yan (live music): "An Inch of Light, An Inch of Sound"
Ho Tzu-yin and Wong Yin-yan collaborated to create a commissioned live performance work, An Inch of Light and An Inch of Sound (2025), for the Asian Avant-garde Film Festival, presenting a multi-sensory experience about time. "An Inch of Light, An Inch of Sound" uses a giant screen to display Ho Tzu-yin's 43-channel installation, while Huang Yinren composes live music for the images, with his original songs combining colloquial words and haiku in English and Cantonese. This unique collaborative project depicts time in a variety of real and imaginary ways, inviting viewers to reflect on the fleeting moments they experience.

Film Festival Pudian Talk

Hsieh Tehching's Life Works
Tehching Hsieh is known for a series of innovative works that expand the conceptual, physical, aesthetic and temporal limits of performance art. He created six performance art works in his career, which Hsieh called his "life works", including "Cage" (1978-1979), "Check-in" (1980-1981), "Outdoors" (1981-1982), "Rope" (1983-1984), "Not Making Art" (1985-1986) and "Thirteen-Year Plan" (1986-1999). All six works are now part of the M+ collection. At the "Asian Avant-garde Film Festival 2025", Hsieh Tehching will attend three seminars at the same time for three consecutive days, with each discussion focusing on two of the "Life Works".

M+ Cinema 1

Spend time with Ho Tzu-yin, Hsieh Teh-ching, Amar Kam-wah and Kitty Wong
This roundtable discussion invited several special guests of the "Asian Avant-garde Film Festival 2025" to discuss their diverse artistic careers and their commitment to time-based media creation. Four artists active in Singapore, New York, New Delhi and Hong Kong will share their unique perspectives, philosophies and methodologies, interpreting concepts related to time and instant, ritual, site, duration, history and memory.

Moderated by M+ CHANEL Moving Image Lead Curator Su Xiaoqi, this panel discussion will bring diverse perspectives to time-based art practices, illustrating the connections and differences between artists from different periods and regions.

Chikako Yamashiro: Sound, Pulse
Chikako Yamashiro sees ineffable bodily expressions such as vocalization and pulsation as windows into repressed trauma, buried histories, and other unseen dimensions of time. This screening event brings together three films by Chikako Yamashiro, covering different stages of her creative career, showing similar experiences of people living in very different historical and geographical backgrounds, including My Throat Makes Your Voice (2009), a Japanese veteran's recollection of the Battle of Saipan; Man of the Soil (2016), which explores the common but largely forgotten colonial history of Okinawa and Jeju Island; and Flower of Palau (2023), in which an Okinawan old man continues his ancestors' imagination of Palau.

After the screening, there will be a conversation with Chikako Yamashiro moderated by M+ Associate Curator of Ink Art, Joseph Yeung.

Image-based Observation: Early Hong Kong Avant-garde Films
Hong Kong filmmakers of different generations are good at using images to express their thoughts and feelings about the times. This programme features four films, namely Death Knot (1969) directed by Shi Qi, All Lines (1968) and Begging for Food (1970) directed by Luo Ka, and Thoughts (IV): The End of the World (1989) directed by Feng Meihua. All four films have recently been added to the M+ collection as part of the Asian Avant-garde Film Exchange. This exchange library aims to preserve and promote the heritage of Asian experimental film and video art from the 1960s to the 1990s. It is the first and only collection project of its kind in Asia.

This screening event will feature a post-screening talk, during which Shi Qi, Luo Ka and Feng Meihua will share the different creative environments and experiences of two generations. Three independent filmmakers will also discuss the evolution of local film culture from past to present. The post-screening talk was hosted by M+ Hong Kong Film and Media External Curator Li Zhaotao.

Huang Jieyi: Time Bomb
Huang Jieyi's "Time Bomb" was commissioned by the "Asian Avant-garde Film Festival 2025" and is a narrative performance integrated with karaoke. The work explores the multiple interpretations of time from the perspectives of Eastern and Western philosophy and theology. Huang Jieyi questions how we, as living beings, are constrained by our flesh and blood, and how this affects our choices and responses to pressing global issues such as climate change and the fertility crisis. From a personal and feminist perspective, she considers whether women have a unique relationship with time, and whether women can be liberated from the time constraints imposed on them. Festival audiences will also have the opportunity to interact with Huang Jieyi in her performance "One Hour Contract".

Yama Jinhua: Such a Morning
Yama Jinhua’s Such a Morning (2017) is a modern fable about two people’s silent pursuit of the truth. The story revolves around a well-known mathematics professor who decides to say goodbye to his original life and live in seclusion in an abandoned train carriage. This work outlines his sensory and hallucinatory experiences, creating an almanac of darkness. Such a Morning shuttles through multiple illusions between speech and silence, fear and freedom, democracy and fascism, opening up a metaphysical response to contemporary reality.

After the screening, there was a discussion session in English between Ama Jinhua and M+ Moving Image curator Jiang Qianhui.

M+ Cinema 2

Yama Jinhua Lecture
Yama Jinhua has long been known for using documentary and archival materials in his works, dealing with the politics of power, truth and evidence from a critical perspective and poetic approach. In this forty-five-minute English lecture, Yama Jinhua will talk about his decades of creation and his ongoing concern with time. The artist will combine images and elements from some of his works, including the film Night of Prophecy (2002); the installations Testimony of Lightning (2007), The First Torn Page (2004–2008), Autonomous Forest (2012), and Such a Morning (2017), to review what he has learned from his years of video production and creative experiments with time.

M+ Cinema 3

Tricks
This free screening welcomes children and parents to enjoy a selection of seven short films created by Asian artists. The works screened include Liam Leigh's "Color Scream" (1952), Koki Tanaka's "One is Everything" (2006), Liu Jingyi's stop-motion animation "Beyond the World" (2021), Trollama's "The Charade" (2014), Zhu Jia's "Never Take Off" (2002) and Zhang Qing's "Taxi Samba" (2003), as well as Li Yuqi's "Play, Fun, Garden" (2002). Through leaps of colour, dancing seeds, crayon-drawn parks, dancing taxis and spinning brooms. This joyful series of short films uses rhythm, movement, and seasonal changes to lead viewers to explore the flow and perception of time. No appointment is required for showings.

Focus on M+ Asian Avant-garde Film Exchange Library
The Asian Avant-garde Film Festival will screen a series of free single-channel short films and videos created by Asian artists between the 1960s and 1990s. The Asian Avant-garde Film Exchange, supported by CHANEL and launched in 2024, is a new collection development project aimed at preserving and promoting Asian experimental film and video art, and is committed to celebrating and protecting these important cultural heritages.

This year, M+ will work with film, art and academic institutions to launch an international tour of the "Asian Avant-garde Film Exchange Library", bringing the outstanding works in the exchange library to audiences around the world. In the second half of this year, all films in the project will also be available at the M+ Multimedia Centre, where audiences can enjoy M+’s ever-expanding collection for free.

Seaview Corridor

"Sounds on the Skin: Experimental Performances of Touch and Sound"
The Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival will present “Sounds on the Skin: Experimental Performances of Touch and Sound”, a unique party experience including two specially commissioned live performances by Crip Art collective c.95d8, composed of Hong Kong artists Yeung Siu-fong, Cheng Wen-yue and Lin Ru, and Jakarta-based experimental sound artist Wahono, whose exciting works blend traditional and contemporary Indonesian music. Last up was the popular Hong Kong vinyl record collector DJ Woonjii. "Sounds on the Skin: Experimental Performances of Touch and Sound" will be held on 31 May 2025 (Saturday) at the M+ Promenade. Anyone aged 18 or above holding an AAF Film Festival pass, a day pass or any programme ticket can attend for free.

Film Festival Spot

During the three-day film festival, M+’s Moving Image Centre will be transformed into a “Film Festival Venue”. It provides an opportunity for everyone to gather together, make new friends, spend time with other film enthusiasts and art friends, and have in-depth exchanges on avant-garde films and artistic practices.

Huang Jieyi: One Hour Contract
Huang Jieyi's performance event "One Hour Contract" is an extension of her lecture performance "Time Bomb". Visitors can use this event to have a one-on-one personalized communication with her. The event provides a safe space for the exchange of ideas and for a variety of activities such as critiquing a selection of works together, discussing video art, and sharing silence. Please register on site to attend.

Installations by artists Tehching Hsieh, Li-Hsing Chu and Lee Sun-Kit about thinking about time will also be on display at the Film Festival Point.

Xie Deqing
Next to the M+ staircase, a poetic artist statement by Tehching Hsieh will be displayed, in which his writings ponder human existence, creativity, and the passage of time, blurring the line between art and everyday life.

Zhu Lixing: "Cantonese Cocktail Song" and "TV Clock"
The Interactive Media Room of M+ Multimedia Centre exhibits the work "Cantonese Cocktail Song" by designer, software engineer and media artist Zhu Lixing. It is a karaoke generator that extracts clips from 120 Cantonese songs and generates a new medley song using computer algorithms. This work is inspired by shared cultural memories, a love for Cantonese songs, and expresses thoughts on this pop song style. It also reflects the increasing use of machines in music production. Television Clock, displayed at the east entrance of the M+ Moving Image Centre, is a real-time digital clock video work. In 2005, he was engaged in artistic creation in his spare time and always kept the TV on. Even if he doesn't watch it intentionally, he can calculate the time based on the programs being played. This discovery led him to experiment with combining real-time television broadcasts with a 24-hour digital clock.

Li Xinjie: "Those Moments I Regret About Not Pressing the Shutter"
In Those Moments I Regret About Not Pressing the Shutter, experimental film and photography artist Li Xinjie subverts the concept of traditional image creation and explores those uncaptured but unforgettable moments. This ongoing work uses a vintage slide projector from the 1990s to project handwritten text. These words are like the phantom of regret.

The Film Festival will also host a variety of exciting programmes, including guided tours led by M+ curators, artist exchanges, creative talks, screen printing workshops and calendar making.

“M+ is delighted to present the second edition of the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival,” said Anya Raffarin, Director of M+. “The moving image is an essential part of Asian visual culture, reflecting the social, cultural and aesthetic conditions of the region. This festival not only celebrates the innovative spirit of contemporary artists, but also pays tribute to the rich history of moving image in Asia and its transformative impact. Through a variety of methods such as screenings, workshops and discussions, we hope to showcase the multiple facets of avant-garde films and their power to challenge traditional narratives, and deepen the public’s understanding and appreciation of the evolving visual culture landscape of Asia.”

“Following the focus on the body in the last Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, we are excited to explore the concept of time this year. The topic of existence has become more important since globalization and digitalization have brought about huge changes in our society, and we are facing both time and the acceleration of time. The film festival will provide a cross-disciplinary platform for artists to profoundly construct histories through artistic and performance practices, and to respond powerfully to these phenomena and their impact on contemporary conditions. Through a carefully curated series of talks, screenings and performances, the film festival will stimulate meaningful dialogues and ignite ideas that will promote the development of moving image in Asia.”

Ticket Information

Film Festival Pass
Festival pass holders can attend all ticketed events of the Asian Avant-garde Film Festival and enjoy priority admission with their pass. M+ members and sponsors can enjoy 20% off. Limited quantity, while stocks last.

Film Festival Pass Ticket Price: HK$750
Ticket price for M+ members and patrons: HK$600
Special fare*: HKD 600

Day Pass
Day Pass holders can attend all ticketed events of the Asian Avant-garde Film Festival on designated dates and are invited to attend the "Sounds on the Skin: Experimental Performances of Touch and Sound" event on Saturday, May 31, 2025. Day Pass does not include tickets for the performance of "Ho Tzu-yin x Wong Yin-yan (live soundtrack) : An Inch of Light, An Inch of Sound" on 30 May 2025 (Friday), which requires separate ticket purchase. Day passes are available while supplies last.

Day Pass: HK$250
Ticket price for M+ members and patrons: HK$200
Special fares