Multi-media artist and filmmaker Li Zhenhua has curated a program of nearly 30 short and feature films now on show at Art Basel Hong Kong, reflecting art and artists as well as the world's current political climate.

Art Basel and M+ have collaborated to produce Miraculous Trajectories, written and directed by the Chinese artist Cheng Ran, pulled from his nine-hour In Course of the Miraculous, which was based on three real-life missing persons cases. During the screening, musician Shao Yanpeng will provide a live soundtrack for a uniquely immersive viewing. Cheng and Shao are also in town for a chat with the audience and M+ Moving Image associate curator Chanel Kong before the show.

Hou Hsiao-hsien (Millennium Mambo) of Taiwan explores the Chinese artist Liu Xiaodong's creative process in Liu Xiaodong: Hometown Boy. During a three-month stay in his hometown Jincheng in Liaoning province after nearly two decades away, Liu documented his work, painting friends and family, in diaries and photos that Hou later used as the basis for his chronicle of both Liu's artistic process and the social, economic and environmental degradation of the former paper mill town.

It is the short films that really sparkle, however, and this year's programs tackle some thorny and timely issues. Perhaps most resonant of the themes is "Le Deuxime Sexe," whose title was inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's landmark literary contemplation of the nature of womanhood. Picking up from de Beauvoir's "othering" theory, the program pivots on agency, autonomy and personhood. Among the highlights are Xing Danwen's Thread, which explores the ways we can be both connected and independent through the medium of a dress woven by the artist's mother and worn by the artist. In Chen Xi's A Single Life in Multiple Lives, evolution and impermanence are at the core of a story that blurs the line between fantasy and reality. Alex Prager's La Grande Sortie, Cao Yu's The Labourer, and Captcha-Captcha by Wu Chi-yu round out the section.

Elsewhere, social and environment destruction is at the heart of "With or Without People," five films exploring our collective contribution to the disconnect plaguing the world. Found footage of falling trees becomes a melancholy clarion call in Julian Charrire Ever Since We Crawled Out. Yuan Goang-ming's The Strangers contemplates the position of migrant workers, in addition to David Noonan's A Dark and Quiet Place, Chang Chien-chi's AZMA, and Yuan Gong's Scented Air - The Stroll.

Finally, a mini-retrospective of three shorts by Ju Anqi collected in "Missing Police" paints a portrait of China in the 1960s, the 1980s and present day. The 1960s revolutionary nature anchors Big Characters, the subversive Drill Man's action is summed up in its title and revolves around the tumultuous technological shifts of the 1980s, while in A Missing Policeman, a cop gives up his badge to become an artist.

(HK Edition 03/29/2019 page11)