The dust is still settling on last month’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), and signs are it has been a success. With 500,000 visitors this year, it has managed to end a longrunning decline in attendance. It’s also a very personal triumph for Soo-wei Shaw, HKIFF’s executive director, who took over the festival just six months ago with a goal to restore it to prominence.
She had a major task on her hands. Even to the casual cinema enthusiast, it is clear that the HKIFF has been gradually receding from the global stage. It has become overshadowed by fixtures like the heavily subsidised Pusan International Film Festival.
Shaw is a fitting head for Hong Kong’s premier film event. As the granddaughter of Sir Run Run Shaw, founder of Shaw Brothers Studio she has the Hong Kong film industry in her blood. The former Oxford fine art student likens her childhood to that of “the kid in Cinema Paradiso”, and worked as a Warner Bros and Film Commission executive in her native Singapore prior to the HKIFF role.
Yet, putting on such a big festival in so little time has been a huge test, says one source. “She’s an absolute nightmare to work with as she hasn’t a clue what she’s doing and you have to chaperone her every which way. But she has a huge amount of ambition and passion, and that’s really what this thing needs.”
The experience does not seem to have sapped any of her enthusiasm. In the opulent surroundings of an executive suite in the W hotel, one of the event’s key sponsors, Shaw is animated as she outlines the hurdles already surmounted and those that lie ahead. “One of the greatest challenges when I took this job was that we had no sponsors and the economy had already gone into recession,” she says.
Not that Shaw appears to need much money. A combination of vision and personal charm helped secure the services of several of the SAR’s marketing services firms for free. Among these was Eight Partnership, which helped overhaul the festival’s branding, including a new logo and website, a blog called The Buzz, and an iPhone application to deliver programme information. According to one executive who worked with her, “cajoling is something she is extremely good at”.
“The HKIFF has been going for 33 years, but it didn’t have a very strong brand at all,” says Shaw. “A lot of the things we did, we would never have been able to afford.”
The extensive repositioning is designed to create what Shaw calls “an all-encompassing lifestyle event”. This, she says, was a critical move towards attracting sponsors including Lexus, Lenovo, Grey Goose, Agnes B, Starbucks and Quintessentially.
“We went to sponsors and gave them a vision of what this could be: something completely new. The programming would be different, and the positioning would be different. We showed sponsors that we would put their brand at the centre of the Hong Kong entertainment industry, and secured a lot of partnerships in a very short space of time.”
In terms of content, Shaw is keen to move away from the basic ‘film festival’ tag and draw new audiences by showcasing “all forms of art”. “We had films that we supported with an exhibition, with a publication, or with a party,” she says. “For the first time in 33 years, we screened a 3D film. It’s not about going mainstream. It was really the appreciation of new technology that we wanted to embrace.”
Next year she plans more of the same, and is forming a joint committee with Eight “to work on long term strategy in terms of branding and positioning”. But she recognises that her vision will not grow without more help from the authorities. “We have five times less financial support than Pusan or Tokyo, but we are double the size. The festival runs on the goodwill of a lot of people who offer their time and services. But the Government should invest in any event that will give back to the city 10-fold.”
Ultimately, with this sort of event, success breeds success: a couple of good years will generate momentum; a couple of poor ones will return it to decline. As one source close to the festival concludes: “She’s trying to make things work on a very tight budget and has to turn a vicious circle into a virtuous circle. Things can either spiral up or spiral down, and until now they’ve been spiralling down. It’s probably a three-year work in progress, but she’s the one pulling the plane out of its dive.”
Soo-wei Shaw’s CV
2008 Executive director, HKIFF
2008 Consultant (marketing, branding and events), Disney-ABC Television Group
2006 Consultant, Singapore Film Commission
2003 Consultant, Media Development Authority, Singapore
1997 Publicist and marketing executive, Warner Bros Theatrical