M+ Museum, West Kowloon Cultural District | Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival: Space Entry Transfer

Description

Located in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, the Asian global contemporary visual culture museum M+ is proud to present the third 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival' with the support of M+'s principal partner, CHANEL. The film festival will be held at the M+ Moving Image Centre from 29 to 31 May 2026, featuring a diverse range of exciting programmes including screenings, performances, talks, workshops, virtual reality experiences, and listening sessions.

The 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival 2026' explores the concept of 'Space' through a cross-disciplinary framework, showcasing the works of pioneering filmmaker Goce Gadiev, while focusing on visual artists Lamia Joreige, ikkibawiKrrr, Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind, Xu Bing and Zheng Maolo, as well as musical acts David Boring, Daham Park, and Wong Ka-chia.

With the theme of 'Space Entry Transfer', this year's festival continues the year-long exploration of the concept of 'Space' that began in autumn 2025. Through the three chapters of 'Avant-garde!', the festival examines how artists and filmmakers respond to the physical, psychological, and machine-generated worlds. The programmes spark multifaceted discussions on the fluid relationships between power and capital, territorial divisions, surveillance, and the real and the virtual. The 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival 2026' establishes unexpected connections between different artistic practices and, against the backdrop of escalating global ecological crises and ongoing conflicts, seeks new meanings of 'community', affirming it as a positive state of being in a globalised and digitised world.                                         

'Space Entry Transfer' presents a diverse array of moving image works that employ composition, perspective, alienation, and abstraction, combined with camera and sound techniques, to guide viewers to imagine and perceive space on different levels - from the intimacy of a bedroom to the vastness of the cosmos. The festival traverses pure natural landscapes, dense concrete jungles, and intersecting spaces of exile, dreams, and virtual reality, offering a stunning sensory experience of this complex and multifaceted concept.

Details of the 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival 2026' are as follows:

Goce Gadiev: Hong Kong Modern
The programme will screen two pioneering films by Goce Gadiev, which have been included in the 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Collection', offering a retrospective of Hong Kong's independent film heritage. Since the early 1980s, when Gadiev founded the independent film organisation Modern Films Production, his experimental and essay films have laid important foundations for the development of moving image culture in Hong Kong.

Lamia Joreige x Wong Ka-chia: Nomadic Traces (2026)
This M+-commissioned collaboration presents a large-scale, visually stunning showcase of Joreige's thought-provoking architectural photography and Wong's live musical accompaniment, evoking the traces of human existence, memories, and hopes for the future in the midst of temporal and spatial migrations.

Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind: Extraterrestrial (2019), The Familiar Phantasm (2023), and The Drowned Story with a Late Loss (2026) - Asian Premieres
Sansour and Lind interweave science fiction, memory, and history into a cinematic language, revealing how space, time, and colonial histories shape identity. Sansour's latest work, 'The Drowned Story with a Late Loss' (2026), will have its Asian premiere on the Grand Staircase, accompanied by a brief introductory performance.

Reel Gidravani: Myu Visits His Neighbours (2011)
In this quiet observational work, Gidravani documents the daily life of Myu, a retired rice farmer, taking viewers on a peaceful journey into the Chiang Mai countryside. As Myu moves through Tian Ye, interacting with villagers, local sages, and the elephant king, his rhythm of life prompts reflections on equality, opportunity, autonomy, and democracy.

Xu Bing: Dragonfly Eye (2017)
'Dragonfly Eye' is Xu Bing's first feature-length film, with no actors and no cinematographer. Instead, it weaves together public surveillance footage to tell a bittersweet love story. Blurring the boundaries between public and private, real and fictional, the film employs montage techniques to prompt thoughts on the mechanisms of viewing and technology in contemporary society.

Loud Sound, No Sound: An Experimental Performance
The 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival' once again presents its signature party, 'Loud Sound, No Sound', featuring a night of energetic experimental music, live performances, and projected images. Hong Kong's post-noise rock band David Boring will take the stage with a live performance of their latest album, 'Liminal Beings and Their Echoes' (2026), as the highlight of the evening. The exciting lineup also includes atmospheric DJ sets by Korean sound artist and curator Daham Park, live performances by dance students, rhythm-driven performances by LifeWielder, experimental noise and skateboarding performances by Happy Wheels, and ambient animations by Zheng Maolo.

ik kibawiKrrr, Larissa Sansour, Reel Gidravani, and Xu Bing in Conversation
This roundtable discussion brings together prominent artists to share their global perspectives on using space as a conceptual framework for their creative practices, as well as exploring topics such as power, capital, technology, and alternative forms of communal living.

Film Festival Hangout: Exchange, Workshops, VR Experiences, Installations, Screenings, and Artist Talks

During the three-day festival, the M+ Moving Image Centre will transform into a 'Film Festival Hangout', providing a platform for film enthusiasts and art lovers to connect and interact. Free silkscreen printing workshops will be held, along with the presentation of Zheng Maolo's immersive video and virtual reality work from the M+ Collection, 'What's It Like to Be a (Virtual) Bat?' (2023). Several installations will also be on display, including ikkibawiKrrr's 'Who Forgot the Villages' (2026), Xu Bing's 'A Case Study of Transference' (1993–2018), and Reel Gidravani's 'Honey in the Rock, Water in the Stone' (2026), which invites visitors to play table tennis with friends, family, and even strangers.

The Film Festival Hangout will also host special screenings and artist talks. Highlights include a screening and talk on Xu Bing's art satellite project, 'Non-Human Non-Object' (2025–2026), and the presentation of Zheng Maolo's latest M+ Digital Commission, 'The 23,000 Genders of the Lysergic Mushroom and Other Stories' (2026).

'We are delighted to present the third Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, bringing together film enthusiasts and newcomers to avant-garde cinema,' said Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director of M+. 'Since its inception, the festival has evolved into an important platform for exchange between artists and audiences, fostering dialogue rooted in curiosity and innovation. This festival reflects M+'s commitment to supporting experimental and forward-thinking moving image practices in Asia, and through ongoing research and cross-regional exchanges, we aim to expand their impact beyond the region.'

'This year's Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival continues the exploration of the concept of 'Space' from the year-long 'Avant-garde!' initiative, translating the resulting ideas into a shared, site-specific environment,' said Aric Chen, Senior Curator, Lead, Moving Image, M+ CHANEL. 'The festival combines film, performance, sound, and discussion in multiple ways, responding to the experimental nature of contemporary moving image practices. We consider space from various dimensions, from the physical to the psychological, from the site to the cosmic, questioning how artists use space as a medium, and how it shapes, confines, or transforms our daily lives. The diverse voices and creative approaches presented in the festival are exhilarating, and it is inspiring to see film creators regard M+ as an important platform for premiering their new works that are both research-intensive and ambitious.'

All pass holders or ticket holders aged 18 or above are welcome to join the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival party, 'Loud Sound, No Sound: An Experimental Performance', on 30 May 2026 at the M+ Panorama. 

* Concessionary rates apply to full-time students aged 18 or above, seniors aged 60 or above, persons with disabilities (with one companion), and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance recipients.  

For more programme details, please visit the 'Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival' website.