Hongkong 1995 | Director: Wong Kar-Wai | Comedy, Drama, Love | 98 Minutes | 35mm | OmU

Monday, 3. February 2025, 7 pm

Blue Salon, Room 012, HfG Karlsruhe

Free admission, donation requested

Wong Kar-Wai’s frenetic fever dream plunges into the pulsating world of nocturnal Hong Kong, where a hot-headed hitman and his emotionally entangled partner collide with a mysterious criminal converge. Intense color grading transforms the city into an unreal place, with halogen lights turning night into day. The dynamic editing and irregular timelines create an adventure in urban isolation, exploring the loneliness and search for identity of the protagonists. FALLEN ANGELS has had a profound impact on Hong Kong cinema, and with its eccentric imagery, sounds, and rhythms, it stands as a pinnacle of the postmodern urban fairy tale.

The green-tinged color grading in FALLEN ANGELS gives the contrasting visuals their distinct edge. Green, typically associated with balance and freshness, instead creates a sense of alienation here: skin tones appear sickly and unnatural, and the settings feel cold and distorted. This intensifies the emotional isolation of the characters, making them seem like aliens on another planet.

Supporting film: There’s Only One Sun

Director: Wong Kar-Wai

USA 2007 | 9 Minutes | DCP | Original

The Kino im Blauen Salon, the student cinema of the Hochschule für Gestaltung, has been run by students since 2017 and has been a registered association since the beginning of 2024: https://kinoimblauensalon.de/de/news.

More about the film series in winter semester 2024/25:

Welcome to our new series CINEMA OF COLORS, in which we are dedicating ten films to the fascinating phenomenon of color in cinema: how does it come about, how does it work, what does it tell...? After all, apart from time, there is probably nothing more essential than light and color, which feed our lives and our projectors. While black and white dominated early cinema for decades, the introduction of Technicolor in the 1930s ushered in a new era for our viewing habits: Color sticks deep in our memory as an emotion. Who could forget the girl's coat in SCHINDLER'S LIST? Why can you immediately recognize a Wes Anderson film by its look, and what color is the MATRIX again?

Our program spans the entire winter semester like a rainbow and shows that the Blauer Salon is not resting on its monochrome reputation. Come along and immerse yourself in a colorful palette of classics and rarities from the international cinema landscape: 10 films of various genres from 10 different production countries and 10 decades will chase the grey season away from your eyes and hearts! 14.02.25 Jazz im Blauen Salon

17.02.25 Faust (1960)

22.02.25 Aktwechsel - 35mm Workshop

03.03.25 The Love Witch (2016)