This screening offers a perspective on graphic designer Henry Steiner’s life and work through two artists. In The World of Dong Kingman (1954), the Chinese-born Oscar-winning director and cinematographer, James Wong Howe, follows the American-born Chinese artist Dong Kingman as he works on the streets of New York’s Chinatown in the 1950s. Kingman was one of Steiner’s teachers at Hunter College and, unknown to either at the time, they would work together years later in Hong Kong. Andy Warhol: Made in China (1988) tells the story of a short trip that Andy Warhol made to China in 1983. Invited by the entrepreneur Alfred Siu, the documentary records Warhol’s impressions when he visits, among others, Hong Kong for the opening of Siu’s I Club, a private members’ club, in the Bank of America Tower. Ambitious in his vision and scope, Steiner designed the I Club’s now legendary opening campaign.

The screening will be followed by a post-screening talk conducted in Cantonese and English by designer and collector John Wu and moderated by Tina Pang, Curator, Hong Kong Visual Culture, M+.

This programme is organised in support of Henry Steiner: The Art of Graphic Communication, the second in the Pao-Watari Exhibition Series on historically important figures or moments.

James Wong Howe (1899–1976) was an American Chinese cinematographer known for his black and white works and innovative filmmaking techniques such as his dramatic use of light and shadow and inventive camera movements.

Lee Evan Caplin (b. 1946, United States) is an entertainment and communications industry executive, who executively produced films such as Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (2005) andThe Great American Art Game (1982) and directed Andy Warhol: Made in China (1988).

John Wu is a graphic designer, a collector of Hong Kong historical and design objects, and the founder of the platform MODERNISM. Wu co-organised Hong Kong Graphic Archive Exhibition (2019) with the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI) and worked with different institutions and partners to digitise his collection for research of Hong Kong’s design history.