Hong Kong Palace Museum | HKPM Movies: Havana Divas and Post-screening Conversation

Naomi Chung

Head of Xiqu, Performing Arts of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Naomi Chung is currently the Head of Xiqu, Performing Arts of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, and a member of the China Theatre Association. She graduated with an MFA in Lighting Design from the California Institute of the Arts. Since she joined West Kowloon in 2011, she has produced a number of events, including the West Kowloon Bamboo Theatre (2012, 2013, 2014), Freespace Fest (2012), the Xiqu Centre Seminar Series, Rising Stars of Cantonese Opera, The Ghost Seller & His Butterflies, experimental Cantonese opera Farewell My Concubine (New Adaptation), and cultural exchange programmes in the Mainland. In 2019, she produced The Reincarnation of Red Plum for the grand opening of the Xiqu Centre. Before joining West Kowloon, Naomi Chung was the Head of Programmes and Education with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra (2001–2009), and Technical Director of Hong Kong productions at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China.

S. Louisa Wei

Film Director

S. Louisa Wei was born in China. She left China in 1992 to Canada for studies and received Ph.D. in literature and film. In 2001, she moved to Hong Kong. Over the past 13 years, she has been teaching film production, story writing, and media culture courses at the City University of Hong Kong while making films.

Wei’s first released work was the short musical Cui Jian: Rocking China in 2006, broadcasted on Channel 13 of Cable TV Hong Kong. Her feature-length documentary Storm under the Sun (2009) premiered at International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam in 2007. A revised version was then on view at the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) in 2009. Storm under the Sun has not only received warm feedback from social media and film critics but has also been viewed by historians and sinologists as a great contribution to documentary development.

Since 2009, she started the production of documentary, Golden Gate Girls, sponsored by the Hong Kong Art Development Council. It has received positive reviews and attention from overseas after its premiere at the HKIFF in 2013. South China Morning Post, Mingpo, Voice of America, and more, recognised her major contributions on the writing of Hong Kong history. Later it closed the Women Make Waves Taiwan Film Festival and showed in England and America.

Wei has won many awards in various writing competitions since her student years . In 2005, she co-wrote the script for the feature film Show You Color with Cui Jian, pioneer rocker of China. This script won an award at the Busan International Film Festival in 2006. In 2007, Wei assisted Hong Kong director Susie Au in co-writing the script and the production of Ming Ming. In the same year, she was credited as the primary screenwriter and finished the script writing for Gun of Mercy. The film was a ‘mainstream’ movie, but Wei’s writing tells the story with a rare characters’ portrayal and a complex narrative structure. In 2010, she wrote the script for Broken Wings: An Incomplete Genius. In 2012, she completed the script for Golden Gate Girls in both English and Chinese. She also worked on the scripts for two documentaries: Flower Girl from Havana, about a Cuban lady who performed Cantonese opera in Cuba for ten years, and Dream under the Sun, a film about Cui Jian and his fans.