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See The Hong

Kong Festival

In 1975. It

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Published By British Airways

says TED DUGGAN Hong Kong is becoming accus tomed to being a festival city.

Although its British Airways-inspired international Arts Festival, currently running, is only the second, Hong Kong people seem to take it for granted that there will be a third, a fourth and a fifth.

In fact, preparations for the third are well under way and the bulk of its content will be announced soon.

But there have to be doubts beyond 1975.

For the festival is possibly unique in its near total dependence on the travel industry, private companies and individuals. Other festivals around the world are largely sub sidised by governments.

The Hong Kong festival is helped extensively by the Urban council and its patron is the Colony’s enthusias tic, and actively positive, Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose. But its main source of finance is private industry.

Apart from the massive support of British Airways, it is financially aided by travel companies like our partner airline Cathay Pacific, by the hotels which provide free accommodation to artistes, by the Hong Kong Tour ist Association, by large companies like Jardine Matheson, Hutchinsons and the Hong Kong Bank and by individuals like Sir Kenneth Fung Ping Fan and Mr Run Run Shaw.

The small band of people actively concerned with running this year’s festival work with unabated enthus iasm despite the clouds above.

Artistically, there are good

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grounds for their optimism. The first festival was a glossary of famous names like Fonteyn, Ozawa and Menuhin. It lost money.

Although the second festival has artistes of superlative standing like Tortelier, John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra, it is a less heady affair.

But the crowds are bigger and their appreciation as great. It may still lose money but perhaps not as much, certainly not in relation to in flation and the falling value of all currencies.

The festival committee—seven

These opera masks, together with their English and Chinese inscription, symbolise the Hong Kong Arts Festival's intention to present, through the media of the arts, a blend of Oriental and Occidental culture that is characteristic of Hong Kong's unique position in Asia. The Arts Festival is a four-week annual event.

men led by Sir Kenneth Fung and Run Run Shaw—and lan Hunter, its artistic director, are moving towards the third festival learning new les sons every day.

Asia has never had a festival of this magnitude before so there has been no yardstick by which to mea sure public reaction.

For all its financial and industrial drive and sophistication, Hong Kong is pretty traditional and staid in other directions.

Whereas European audiences, brought up on western classics, are also eager for innovations, Hong Kong people appear to want Beetho ven, Mozart and Shakespeare. They want Fou Ts’ong, Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra —names they know well.

In other artistic directions, they ap pear to want excitement, colour, noise and action, not the subtle nuances of small ensembles or slow moving folklore dancing.

The tourist, on the other hand, probably wants to see staged the mysterious, exotic East.

Since the Festival is aimed equally at the Hong Kong Chinese, and their growing desire to appreciate western culture, and tourists and their desire to know more about Chinese and other Asian cultures, the committee has on its hands all the problems of a mixed marriage.

If it succeeds in this balancing act —if the Hong Kong Arts Festival continues after 1975—the only re sult can be an addition to east-west understanding.

As the Governor, Sir Murray, said to the festival’s first night audiences: “The idea of this festival is to build on the natural advantages of Hong Kong as a meeting place of cultures and communications to offer for a month the art of many cultures . . . to stimulate for residents and visitors alike the concept of Hong Kong as the cultural and artistic, as well as commercial and tourist centre, which it could be . . . the interest was always there, but the festival has acted as a stimulus and a catalyst.

“I would like to thank many pub lic and private organisations which have supported this festival and in particular the Urban Council, the Hong Kong Tourist Association, British Airways and the Hong Kong Hotels Association . . .”