This wood and its chambers form the subject of director Cheuk Cheung’s observational documentary Bamboo Theatre, in which a Cantonese troupe assembles and disassembles the titular edifice three times. Through this, the film casts and recasts light on the community rituals that take place in the coastal villages littered around Hong Kong.

The documentary is one of the six films showing in ACMI’s Hong Kong New Talents, a program covering films created by early-career Hong Kong directors and collaborators, spanning a series of genres and themes. Bamboo Theatre is one of two documentaries in the line-up (the other, Keep Rolling, directed by Lim Chung Man, is a portrait of celebrated Hong Kong director Ann Hui), and is an ode to the art of Cantonese opera and the workforce that upholds it – from set dressers to the construction workers who assemble the theatres by hand. Using a plain, observational style, Cheung takes a scattershot view of the people involved in vastly different parts of the process. Scenes travel in loose chronological order: we see the unloading of heavy bundles of bamboo; a man nestling sticks of incense in ashes; the wrapping of a ribbon around a forehead, securing the hair. We also see the performances themselves, which sweep from high drama to mischievous slapstick.

While the artistry of this work is clearly and delicately portrayed, the documentary’s minimal exposition and free structure make it difficult to fully engage with; scenes feel strung out and disconnected from one another, despite the film only running for a compact seventy-five minutes. Scenes of the main events themselves – the Cantonese operas – are portrayed throughout with the same steady, detached tone, which, though lending a pleasant democratisation of art and the process of its creation, adds to the sense that the film itself is unfocused and lacks a direction or message. The entire documentary feels as if it is pure exposition.

The same cannot be said about Better Days, directed by Kwok Cheung Tsang. Set in the cut-throat environment of China’s education system, the film is a condemnation of the pressures that Chinese youth undergo in the search of success and survival. Better Days is helmed by two heavy-hitting performances – those of Zhou Dongyu, who plays Chen Nian, a hapless victim of high school bullies, and Jackson Yee, who plays Xiao Bei, the steely, small-time criminal who becomes her protector. The violence at the forefront of the film, wherein the acts of bullying are saturated with a real feeling of horror and brutality, brings the two teenagers into an alliance that buds into subtle romance.

Better Days’s agenda, however, is a tad ham-fisted: only slight context is given to Chen Nian’s sudden victimisation, and there is little engagement with those sitting at the periphery of Nian’s life, such as her peers and her distant mother, who funds her daughter’s tuition through illicit trading. It is worth noting, however, that Nian’s mother’s larger narrative, along with other socially critical scenes, was censored by the Chinese government prior to release. The motivations of Chen Nian’s bullies, though intimated, warrant further investigation – it’s obvious that the wickedness that possesses them is brought on by the same causes as those that heighten Chen Nian’s deepest anxieties, namely the stresses of schooling and the rigid definition of success ubiquitous in their community. The film barely strays from the perspective of the central duo, and indeed Better Days’s strongest emotions stem from Chen Nian and Xiao Bei’s relationship. Though their relationship seems implausible on paper, the strength of their on-screen chemistry justifies their acts of severe sacrifice.

A still from Suk Suk, directed by Ray Yeung, part of Hong Kong New Talents (ACMI)

The same strong, covert thread of connection runs through Ray Yeung’s Suk Suk: a gentle romance between two older, closeted men – a taxi driver Pak (Tai Bo) and a pensioner Hoi (Ben Yuen). The film offers a measured portrayal of the two men as they come to terms with their new relationship and the friction it creates against the other facets of their inner lives. Inspired by the story collection Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten (2016), written by Travis Shiu Ki Kong, Yeung seems most interested in telling the stories of Pak and Hoi plainly, truthfully. He handles the central romance with grace, filming the lives and desires of these older queer men with care and introspection. The film doesn’t portray their relationship in isolation; instead, both men’s lives are separate, with each distracted by their own concerns – for their families, friends, and livelihoods. Pak is otherwise occupied by the incessant grousing of his wife and the organisation of a wedding banquet for his daughter, which her unemployed fiancé cannot afford. Hoi’s life centres mostly around his cold, irritable son Wan and his young Christian family. Though never explicitly stated, it’s clear that both families would not accept Pak and Hoi’s relationship, and the ramifications of coming out would be too unbearable. The irreconcilability between their love and the strict social norms of those around them is so plainly accepted as to be heartbreaking.

In a city where same-sex marriage is not legally recognised, homophobia is in many communities still the status quo and displays of homosexuality are discouraged. It’s a reality with which the two central characters are made to comply. Hoi spends his time meeting with a committee of older gay men and rallying behind closed doors for the government to establish a gay nursing home. Even if one were to exist, he admits he wouldn’t go, for fear of being found out. He leads Pak to the only place they can be intimate: a dim, crowded gay bathhouse. But the joviality of the men within, as they chat and bicker over bowls of rice, brings a fresh sense of reprieve from the world outside.

Simple depictions of Hong Kong living ground Suk Suk, transforming it into a material reality, with many scenes involving respective families hunkering down over tables of Cantonese dishes, placing meat, fish, and vegetables onto bowls of white rice. But the innate naturalism of this film, which forms an impression of ordinary life that is organic and without gloss, possesses a critical agenda: though the realistic representation of queer life in Hong Kong offers a homage to the city’s queer community, it also acts as an affecting indictment of the corrosive values of much of the city’s populace.

It is worth mentioning that ACMI’s Hong Kong New Talents airs against a backdrop of increasingly strict censorship rules around Hong Kong cinema. A new law passed in October 2021 allows for the revocation of a film’s licence if it is found to ‘endorse, support, glorify, encourage and incite activities that might endanger national security’, offering a wildly ambiguous scope of power. It doesn’t take a cynical mind to imagine the ways in which this will further suffocate the city’s film scene. In an era in which such things may soon become scarce, it feels as if there is a need to savour these new films and voices, to embrace their creativity and their quiet nerve.

Hong Kong New Talents is currently showing at ACMI 2–12 Dec 2021.