Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival 2023

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Organised by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD), the first Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival will kick off in April to showcase Hong Kong’s distinctive cultural characteristics, diverse and inclusive creativity and charisma, as well as the preservation of its pop culture.

The first Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival will bring audiences an array of programme experience. About 20 programmes are confirmed so far, including seven performing arts programmes, four thematic film screenings, four thematic exhibitions and a series of outdoor and outreach activities. These programmes will take audiences to revisit from different facets the masterpieces of the superstars in the 1980s and 1990s, the golden age of Hong Kong’s pop culture. They include Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui.

The programming of the festival has incorporated many elements currently popular among young people, like concerts of all-time pop favourites re-rendered unplugged, in jazz, a cappella or other styles or concerts with singers from various eras singing pop songs together on stage or concerts led by young singers with new elements, to demonstrate the continuation of cultural flow, perpetual preservation, breakthrough and development. It is expected that the programmes can attract the younger generation and audiences from different places of the world.

Two pre-festival programmes, namely “Miss You Much Leslie Exhibition” (March 29 to October 9) and “Pop Unplugged” (April 7 and 8) will be presented soon. The former will be held at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the passing of the superstar Leslie Cheung, while the latter directed by renowned local music producer Johnny Yim will be staged at the Arena, Queen Elizabeth Stadium.
The programme “When Leslie & Anita Meet Hei & Gin” to be held at the Grand Theatre of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on April 22 will officially kick off the Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival 2023. Renowned music producer Chiu Tsang-hei selected and re-arranged four theme songs from films of Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui. These songs, accompanied by excerpts of movies, will be performed by popular singer Gin Lee. The performance will be followed by a screening of the film “Who’s the Woman, Who’s the Man” (1996) co-starred by the two superstars. Another programme, “Outdoor Music x Film Marathon”, will be held at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre Piazza on the following day (April 23). The programme consists of two parts. The first part, a pop concert, will feature singers and bands across different generations; while the second part, “Film Songs Singing Along”, will put on screen songs selected from 20 movies acted by Cheung and Mui, and various young singers will lead participating audiences to sing together, demonstrating the legacy of the Hong Kong pop culture.

Through educational and outreach activities like production of television series on Hong Kong’s pop music and films, cultural sharing sessions with music and film practitioners, and tram tours revisiting filming locations, the Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival 2023 hopes to reach out to a wider audience for the promotion of Hong Kong’s pop culture. Some programmes will also be shown online after their presentation to enable more audiences to enjoy the fabulous performances.