30 Years of Filmart, 50 Years of HKIFF: Hong Kong Cinema Takes Stock
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Two milestone anniversaries, one uncertain moment. How the city that introduced Asian cinema to the world is reckoning with the forces reshaping it.
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Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment The Hong Kong film industry is looking back even as it charts a course forward — and this week it has good reason to reflect. Filmart , the city’s annual entertainment industry gathering, is staging its 30th edition, while the Hong Kong International Film Festival prepares to mark its 50th in early April. Both milestones deserve acknowledgment, even as the industry they serve navigates genuinely uncertain terrain: falling box office, the rising power of streamers, and the looming challenges posed by artificial intelligence and the boom in vertical short-form drama. Related Stories Movies Filmart: French Editor Matthieu Laclau Talks China Industry Changes, Looming Shadow of AI Movies Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum 2026 Hotlist Through all of it, Filmart has soldiered on. The event has long positioned itself as a gathering with its finger on the pulse of Asian cinema — not just a marketplace where producers promote their latest projects, but a forum for debating where the industry is headed. This year, 790 exhibitors are on the floor, up from 75 when the event launched in 1997. That growth tracks closely with the rise of the Chinese film market, which Filmart was early to recognize as a transformative force. When the first edition was staged — June 11 to 13, 1997, days before Hong Kong’s handover to China — the HKTDC framed the event as a bridge between the international film community and a mainland industry still finding its feet. The skeptics were eventually silenced: within a decade the Chinese market had exploded, and within 15 years it had become the second largest in the world. Major players flocked to Hong Kong looking for a way in. “Despite the industry’s significant transformation, international companies continue to demonstrat...
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