Hong Kong Sex Workers’ Film Festival
If you weren’t there this weekend (like me), you missed out on Hong Kong’s latest film festival. And this one might have been worth going to. No kung-fu movies this time, this was all ‘me-fuck-you’ films.
Actually that’s not completely true. But the festival was all films about prostitutes, told by the [tag]prostitutes[/tag] themselves. Evidently the idea is to combat some of the stereotypes found in mainstream movies. Not all prostitutes are victims or predators, and the nine films shown during the festival were chosen for their portrayals of the day-to-day lives of some of these [tag]sex workers[/tag].
An ironic twist is that while prostitution is not illegal in Hong Kong, it was illegal to hold this festival without proper licensing, which was demanded with a few days notice and which could easily have been denied to them.
The good news is that the organizers were smart enough to get around the permit requirement at the last minute by making it a private, members-only activity. Ticket buyers just had to join Zi Teng, the local sex workers support group.
Nice, you leave with a ticket stub, a program guide, AND membership in a Hong Kong Sex Workers group. See, I told you this one might have been worth going to.
