'Film Course: Women Make Film V' consists of two sixty-minute screenings, each followed by a discussion with a filmmaker and a critic.

The fifth of seven classes looks at how some of the world’s greatest women directors depict political themes. Genres including comedy, melodrama, sci-fi, and thrillers also come under the spotlight. This session features screenings of six chapters from Mark Cousins’ documentary Women Make Film.

‘Politics’ presents the lucid relationship between cinema and politics. The next chapter, ‘Gear Change’, looks at surprises in film that replaces an unsuspecting mood by its opposite. ‘Comedy’ explains the fundamental—action and innocence—of film comedy, sometimes with political mockery that becomes darker and more absurd.

‘Melodrama’ shows the key aspects in which events, plot, and characters are sensationalised to escalated and sometimes volcanic, emotions that innovatively migrate into form and style. ‘Sci-fi’ explores the genre from being a bullet-time idea to its integration with the digital age: showing that the genre has no bounds. Finally, ‘Horror & Hell’ slides into scenes of real-life horror through clips about war, abuse, homelessness, torture, and torn relationships.

In this film class, we hear from acclaimed scriptwriter Au Kin-yee and veteran critic Ka Ming. The speakers will converse on Mark Cousins’ views on gear change as well as genres of comedy, melodrama, and sci-fi. They will draw from Running on Karma (2003), Yesterday Once More (2004), Written By (2009), and other genre films from Hong Kong. Ka Ming will also explore the portrayal of women in local melodramas.