A Tai Kwun exhibition celebrates the team spirit that drives the Hong Kong film industry, and hopes to inspire young visitors to work in film. Mathew Scott reports.   

Speaking from a digital screen, Richie Jen explains why Hong Kong cinema was, is, and always will be a uniquely collaborative effort, or, as he puts it, paak zyu soeng (team spirit).

The actor is heard reminiscing about the time when he was shooting for the Johnnie To thriller Breaking News (2004). Soon after the film’s release, its opening scene came to be regarded as an iconic set piece, representative of Hong Kong cinema. Set in Mong Kok, the scene lasts seven minutes. An unbroken shot takes the audience through a series of apartments and down streets, landing in the middle of a shootout. Perfect coordination and cooperation between actors and crew were vital to get it right. One wrong move, and everything would have to be re-shot.

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“To had blocked the entire street,” recalls Jen. “We rehearsed for three days. But the gods were with us, and after we were done, we were so excited.”

The clip is playing on a loop at the ongoing Better Together — Partnering Up for Hong Kong Movies exhibition that currently fills Tai Kwun’s Duplex Studio.  

Jen is joined by director Derek Yee and fellow star Gordon Lam as they remember the shooting of the action-comedy Rob N Roll (2024), on which they collaborated. The film figures prominently in the exhibition. Other Hong Kong film industry heavyweights sharing their filmmaking experiences on video include actor Aaron Kwok and costume and design director Man Lim-chung — both were part of Rob N Roll. Actors Louis Koo and Sammi Cheng also feature, talking of their work together on the likes of Blind Detective (2013). There’s even a surprise appearance by legendary comic Sam Hui, who talks about cast and crew “all working together” in the hit action-comedy series Aces Go Places (the first film released in 1982), before bursting into a lusty version of its famous theme song.

Designed by production-designer Irving Cheung Yee-man, Better Together is an immersive experience, featuring replica sets from well-known films. Among the real treats is a showcase, complete with hair accessories and a two-in-one radio-cassette player, that figures in both The Black Rose (1965) and 92 The Legendary La Rose Noire (1992). The latter film paid homage to the former — the original crime thriller about two masked female vigilantes that had started a trend.

Visitors are invited to revisit the famous heist scen

e from John Woo’s Once a Thief (1991); see it from the perspective of Leslie Cheung’s character as he hangs upside down from the ceiling to avoid getting caught. They can also test out the lie detector — used to hilarious effect in Aces Go Places III (1984), when the main characters question each other’s trustworthiness.

Downstairs in the main gallery, there’s a reconstruction of the famous helicopter scene from Jackie Chan’s 1992 hit Police Story 3 — Supercop, no doubt a major hit with the selfie-obsessed.

Love letter to the city

The exhibition is the brainchild of filmmaker Sunny Chan Wing-san (Table for Six, 2022), back working with Tai Kwun after 2025’s successful Undercover Underworld exhibition. Tai Kwun management says that their summer series of exhibitions has evolved to become an annual “love letter to this city”, and Chan was motivated by a desire to celebrate that very notion.

When we sit down to chat midmorning on a recent weekday, Chan says that the last project got him thinking about the things that make Hong Kong cinema unique. Besides, he was keen to curate an exhibition that might help lift Hong Kong people’s spirits.

“I believe that being able to inspire everyone and give them strength is what matters,” says Chan. “I hope that through this exhibition, everyone can feel encouraged and can sense the companionship that has always existed between Hong Kong people.”

While cinema history is full of stories of despotic directors lording it over productions, Chan says that in the Hong Kong film industry, as he has come to realize through his long association with it, most often it’s a case of everyone leaning on each other, which is all the more laudable, seeing that Hong Kong cinema works under several constraints — in terms of budgets, locations, and talent pool.

He adds that while his previous Tai Kwun exhibition was primarily about “telling a story”, for the current show he is more concerned with “the kind of feelings the audience will have when they have left the venue”.

“I thought about this spirit of partnership we have here in Hong Kong — and I want audience members to leave the exhibition celebrating that.”

Chan worked closely with the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers for the show. He reached out to a selection of local filmmakers he believed would best represent the theme. In the end, he chose films from the past six decades, and then went knocking on the doors of their makers. Happily, they all jumped at the chance to contribute to the exhibition. “They all want to help the industry,” says Chan. “They strongly support the value of Hong Kong art.

“Hong Kong cinema relies on the spirit of partnership to overcome difficulties,” offers Chan, adding that looking out for each other is in the DNA of Hong Kong’s film industry culture.  

“While Hong Kong is a very small place, at one stage our film production ranked third in the world. What we were able to achieve at that time was because everyone made sacrifices for each other, supported each other, and believed in each other.”

While Better Together is designed with a view to inform and entertain, Chan is hoping that the show will also inspire younger visitors to consider working in film. The local film industry could certainly use the help, given that the momentum driving it hasn’t quite picked up since the pandemic.

On the bright side, there were individual hits — 2024’s The Last Dance (HK$158 million, or $20.15 million) and 2023’s A Guilty Conscience (HK$115 million) now rate 1 and 2 on the city’s all-time revenue list. Box-office figures have enjoyed a surprising spike across the first six months of 2026, up 25 percent on the same period last year to rake in HK$664 million. But there’s no escaping the fact that, overall, the numbers remain bleak — the HK$1.13 billion collected across 2025 was still down 41 percent from 2019’s collection.

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While he was conceptualizing the project, Chan was reminded of his young days, and his own “dreams of becoming a storyteller”. He was also reminded of the joy of “losing myself in the romance” of films such as Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), directed by his cinematic hero, Peter Chan Ho-sun.

“Creating anything in Hong Kong feels like a dream because it can seem too difficult. But I want people to see what’s possible — and then to go seek their dreams.”

If you go

Better Together — Partnering Up for Hong Kong Movies

Dates: Through Oct 4

Venue: Duplex Studio, Tai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Road, Central

www.taikwun.hk/en/programme

The writer is a freelance contributor to China Daily.