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The 46th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF46) will pay tribute to iconic actor-director-producer Sandra Ng as this year’s Filmmaker-in-Focus.

Re-scheduled to 15 – 31 August, the postponed HKIFF46 will celebrate Ng’s illustrious career with a retrospective of ten seminal works, the publication of a commemorative book and, in collaboration with the festival’s long-term partner Moleskine, a special edition notebook. Ng will also attend a Face-to-Face session to share her insights and anecdotes with the public.

Hong Kong International Film Festival Society Executive Director Albert Lee lauds Ng’s chameleon-like ability to deliver memorable performances across all genres and give layered nuances and diversity to each challenging role that reflects the dynamism of modern women.

“The evolution of Sandra’s career, from acting to directing and producing, reflects her multifaceted calibre and acumen and evidences the transformation of Hong Kong cinema,” Mr Lee said. “We are proud to recognise her indelible contributions.

Destination Films

Horror ooze and martial arts ahhs cross swords in this atmospheric genre novelty, written and produced by prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark. His colleague Wellson Chin takes the helm for the mostly silly period exercise, but it's Tsui's name that will draw genre fans to midnight shows when Vampire Hunters, aka The Era of Vampire, bows Friday in Los Angeles and May 30 in New York before its DVD release by Sony next month.

The story centers on four martial arts warriors with intriguing monikers and two-dimensional, cartoonlike personalities: Lightning (Chan Kwok Kwan), Wind (Ken Chang), Rain (Lam Suet) and Thunder (Michael Chow). Under the tutelage of their master Ji Chun Hua, who makes an impression as the ultimate hero of the piece), and with the help of a nifty compass that's sensitive to undead activity, they're intent on destroying the Vampire King, the evil corpse of a general who is turning zombies into fellow flesh-eaters.

The foursome pass themselves off as servants at the Jiang estate, where the patriarch (Yu Rong Guang) jealously guards the cache of gold he's accrued from his wax-manufacturing business. It turns out that he also has trouble letting go of people, having created a kind of wax museum of preserved bodies on his property. Soon enough they're hopping through the shadowy rooms, awakened by the Zombie Wrangler (Chan Koon Tai) as part of a robbery plot that involves a debt-saddled gambler, whose sister (Anya) is Jiang's young widowed daughter-in-law. If that sounds confusing, the movie will do little to clarify matters.

Plot and character are secondary here to the primal battle of noble warriors and creepy supernatural beings. Through sylvan mists, wedding scrims and red lanterns, ominous music and a textured sound design, the film effectively builds a mood of dark doings, albeit while generating few believable moments. Good and evil duke it out with swift-moving martial arts leaps and swordplay, action that's so finely sliced and diced that it never quite connects. Neither does the film as a whole, but it's a quick thrill ride that will mildly entertain fans of Hong Kong action and gore.