This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Sweden. In Hong Kong, theatres are returning with performances of work by Martial Courcier and Harold Pinter; in Taiwan, novelist Gan Yao-ming talks about their latest work; and in Sweden, a new exhibition is opening at Junibacken, based on books by Tove Jansson. Read on to find out more!
Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
Inter-disciplinary connections between literature and art are often a kind of inspiration that fascinates artists and engenders unique artworks. In late April, Jockey Club New Arts Power presented to the audience the exhibition, “Before a Passage,” which comprised “visual arts, interactive installations, soundscape, movement performance, site-specific writing and reading,” based on Hong Kong poet Leung Ping-kwan’s eponymous poem, “Before a Passage.” The exhibition took place at the North Point Pier, which was also the setting for Leung’s poem. In the exhibition, the audience could experience interactive installations that concerned themes such as awaiting, travelling, leaving, and the anxiety and struggle that come along with these to reflect on their own life experience of passage.
Theatrical performances are also returning to the theatre while the pandemic in Hong Kong eases down. As May comes, the annual French cultural and art festival, The French May, returns with a series of programmes, including a Cantonese performance of French writer Martial Courcier’s play, Larger Than Life. It will be staged from 13-15 May in Hong Kong City Hall. Theatre du Pif will perform Harold Pinter’s Old Times in early June in Cantonese as well. A play-reading and interactive commentary session was already organised in early April.
Singaporean bookstore, City Book Room, is organising a series of online talks that focuses on Hong Kong literature, inviting well-known Hong Kong writers such as Chan Koon-chung, Dung Kai-cheung, Ma Ka-fai, Lee Chi-Leung, Hon Lai-chu, Dorothy Tse, and Tang Siu-wa to be in conversation with Chinese literature scholar Ting Chun Chun. The writers will discuss their views on COVID-19, political oppression and rebellion, climate change, and the future for mankind.
Vivian Chih, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Taiwan
As one of the most representative post-nativist Taiwanese novelists, Gan Yao-ming’s works (甘耀明, 1972-) tactfully and charmingly blend realism of nativist writing with languages of magical realism and post-modernism. On the afternoon of May 22, the well-loved writer will be talking about his latest novel, minBunun (《成為真正的人》, Becoming a Real Person) at the Kishu An Forest of Literature (紀州庵文學森林) in Taipei city. The novel is based on a historical incident happening in Eastern Taiwan back in 1945, the “Sancha Mountain Incident” (三叉山事件), which involved a plane crash of a U.S. bomber aircraft with prisoners of war onboard, and the ensuing disastrous rescue effort from the Japanese police and local Taiwanese people amidst a serious typhoon. The literal translation of the book title is “becoming Bunun people.” Bunun is one of the indigenous tribes of Taiwan, to which the only survivor of the first rescue team belonged. Gan makes Halmut, the Bunun survivor, the protagonist of minBunun and the central figure that threads through historical facts and the author’s imaginative narratives.
The 2021 Golden Horse Classic Film Festival just announced its stellar selection of films and animated shorts from Czechoslovakia produced between 1960 and 1970, including The Shop on Main Street (1965) by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1967) directed by Evald Schorm, and Jiří Menzel’s Capricious Summer (1968). Since 2018, the Golden Horse Film Festival has been hosting annual summer screenings for the chosen classic films from a selected country. The focus this year shifted to Czechoslovakia, as Prague became Taipei’s sister city in 2020, after which the Czech Republic’s President of the Senate and the mayor of Prague paid an official visit to Taipei, with a delegation group of ninety people. The Golden Horse Classic Film Festival is scheduled to be held in Taipei and Taichung city in August this year.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
This weekend, a new exhibition opens at Junibacken in Stockholm. Junibacken is a cultural center for children and adults, based on the characters and stories by Swedish children’s book author Astrid Lindgren. The center includes exhibitions, events, a theatre, and a bookstore, and it often features works by various children’s books creators. Because of pandemic restrictions, Junibacken can only have a limited number of visitors at the moment and the center has been severely damaged financially during the past year. This week, however, Junibacken is looking forward and now welcomes visitors to their most recent exhibition, based on four books about the internationally renown Moomins by Swedish-speaking Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson. “Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson showed the way when a war-torn Europe learned to prioritize children. We are incredibly proud to be a part of and to remind of the importance of children’s literature again. The same values are needed today for us to manage to get out of the crisis that the COVID pandemic has caused,” says Roleff Kråkström, CEO of Moomin Characters.
Another book-related event in the Swedish capital that is being planned in the wake of the pandemic is Stockholms bokhelg (Stockholm Book Weekend), that now has over 100 collaborators, including publishers, bookstores, museums, and others. The weekend is planned for late August but as early as June, there will be maps published showing all the collaborators. Inspired by the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France, the Swedish publishing house Kaunitz-Olsson initiated Stockholms bokhelg earlier this year. Thomas Olsson from Kaunitz-Olsson explains how the whole town of Angoulême joins the festival, with every shopfront displaying cartoon characters. The event will not be located in one spot only, but will be spread out in different parts of Stockholm and therefore the organizers believe it can be arranged in a safe way, especially since most activities will be held outdoors. “This is going to be about books and the audience, about writers and publishers to meet the audience. It is a meeting that has not taken place in two years, and of which there is a very big demand,” Thomas Olsson explains.
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