What Can Small Festivals Do? Toward Film Festivals as Testimony to Expanded Civic Engagement in Post-Handover Hong Kong

Abstract

Small film festivals do not have the glamor and attention of the best-known international film festivals. They also have minimal corporate sponsorship and industry constraints. Some serve civic culture in notable ways besides the expansion of cinematic art. This chapter examines two small festivals in Hong Kong: the social movement film festival (smff) and the Chinese Documentary Festival (CDF). Results of field and festival program research indicate that both festivals have made interventions into local festival culture with social movement and documentary advocacy, and communitarian and participation-based activities. Both attest to a sharpened valuation of freedom and cosmopolitical public expression in Sinophone civic culture. Evidence of the latter has appeared in the nonviolent dissent and communitarian ethos of Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in September–October of 2014.