Apart from pictures and written materials, the exhibition will also include four thematic booths to exhibit artifacts, scripts, and trophies that mark the careers of Kwan Tak-hing, Chua Boon-hean, Josephine Siao and Chow Yun-fat. Exhibits include:

Kwan Tak-hing Special
Kwan Tak-hing has contributed a lot to the film industry and created the legendary image of Wong Fei-hung in a film series that remains to be influential nowadays. A huge group photo of Wong Fei-hung's son and disciples will be displayed, together with the broadsword, kung-fu shoes and leggings used by Master Kwan before. Kwan's eldest son, Mr David Quan Hon-chuen, apart from donating all his father's film-related items to the Archive, has also written an essay in memory of him.

Chua Boon-hean Special
Writer and script consultant Mr Chua Boon-hean has collected hundreds of volumes of screenplays, part of which are now donated by his descendents Chua Tan, Chua Swan and Chua Lam. The two hundred volumes to be displayed will no doubt surprise viewers. Chua Lam has also contributed an article that discloses the background of these scripts.

Josephine Siao Special
Josephine Siao has already been in the film career for over 40 years, playing a large variety of characters. From her child star's days to now, she has proved her talents in the many roles she plays and the film awards she has won. This exhibition will display all the 11 awards donated by Siao to the Archive and recap her different stage images for the audience to review on her success.

Chow Yun-fat Special
We will also display all the awards and trophies donated by Chow Yun-fat in 1995. Among them is the Best Actor Award he won with A Better Tomorrow in 1987, an award Chow has fond memories of. Various stills that captured Chow in different film characters will also be displayed.

Video Show
A video show-room will be set up to screen film clips of the most precious films preserved under the Archive's film stock, plus footages of recent oral history interviews of film stars and filmmakers. The programme Celluloid Treasures will screen footages of precious historical films like Scenes of Yan'an, A Page of History, the earliest feature, films in Chaozhou-and Amoy-dialects as well as cartoons under the Archive's collection. The other programme Films Stories Unfold features extracts of prominent film personalities' interviews. These include interviews of Chin Tsi-ang, Ng See-yuen, Grace Chang, Wei Wei, Sek Kin, Li Lihua and Hu Xiaogeng, just to name a few.

Nostalgic Film Songs
The diversity of the exhibition is marked by the inclusion of vinyl records recently obtained. Records of soundtracks and theme songs from the earliest films produced in the 30s include Conscience, New Youth, and China's Youth. There are also the classic tunes from the 50s and 60s like The Kingdom and the Beauty, The Nymph of the River Lo, and Tragedy of a Poet King. An audio booth will be set up to let audience select nostalgic film songs at their own choice. The song list includes theme songs from Princess Cheung Ping, The Love Eterne and Peach Blossom River.

Pictures and Textual Materials
These include a selection of film stills, star photos, posters, scripts, handbills, magazines, newspapers and other written documents.

Due to the lack of space, we can only select a portion of the exhibits to be printed in this catalogue. To enrich the contents of this book, we have also interviewed Josephine Siao and Chow Yun-fat and invited Ho Ying-lung and Lin Man-on to write essays on the history of cinema handbills, early movie theatres and entertainement newspapers, which are all very stimulating.

We have gained lots of support from friends far and near and would like to express our sincere thanks to all those who have helped make this exhibition and catalogue possible.

Hong Kong Film Archive


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