WST TV

1. A question of identity: the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng, and photographer’s encounter with a community whose roots go back 1,400 years

   Award-winning photographer John Offenbach looks at one of the portraits featured in his exhibition “JEW” at the Jewish Museum in north London.“I liked this woman because she talked about discovering her Jewish heritage from an official document,” he says.The black-and-white photograph is captioned “Kaifeng Jew II”. It shows a middle-aged Chinese woman, surnamed Li. Offenbach travelled to her hometown, Kaifeng, in the central Chinese province of Henan, to learn more about the Jewish community…

2. Why Ghost in the Shell is the greatest and most philosophical anime ever made

   Ghost in the Shell, directed by Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii and released in 1995, is not only one of the greatest anime movies ever made, it is also one of the best science-fiction films of all time. What’s more, the story of an artificial intelligence that evolves to such an extent that it demands to be treated as a new life form is more relevant today than when the film was made. Although it is pinned to an action-oriented storyline, Ghost in the Shell features many philosophical scenes…

3. How Hong Kong poet Mary Jean Chan is wowing Britain’s literary circles with first collection, Flèche

   The business school at the Chinese University of Hong Kong has not perhaps inspired many poets. But when Mary Jean Chan describes her journey to becoming one of the world’s most promising and admired young writers, she names her decision to leave the business school as a pivotal moment.“It was desperation really,” she says. “I was in a very bad place bordering on depression. My parents saw that and knew something had to change.”Talking to 29-year-old Chan a decade later, in her adopted home…

4. Hong Kong Museum of Art and Italy’s Uffizi Gallery to partner on exhibitions, plus seven works you can’t miss at reopened HKMoA

   The four-year renovation of the Hong Kong Museum of Art has not just upgraded its facade and exhibition spaces but also overhauled its curatorial programming, which will include future collaborations with the British Museum and Italy’s Uffizi Gallery.Hong Kong’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD), which runs 15 local museums, signed memorandums of understanding with Sir Richard Lambert, chairman of the British Museum, and Professor Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Gallery, on…

5. Books Mark Zuckerberg thinks you should read this winter: Facebook CEO’s choices are far from light reads

   Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a single mission: to connect people around the world. It’s one reason why he decided to launch a book club in January 2015, with a reading list that focused on “different cultures, beliefs, histories, and technologies”.Although the birth of his daughter, Max, kept him from hitting his goal of a book every two weeks, he ended 2018 with 23 selections in his A Year of Books reading group.During the summer of 2019, he recommended another book.Here are a list of his…

6. In first, four finalists share coveted Turner Prize for art

   The prestigious Turner Prize for art has been awarded to - everyone.All four of the artists chosen as finalists won this year’s award after they wrote to the jury and asked to be treated as a collective, prize organisers said Tuesday during a ceremony at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, southeast England,Artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani said that, at a time when the world is divided, they wanted “to make a collective statement in the name of…

7. Melania Trump book delves into US first lady’s wardrobe, living arrangements and frosty family relationships

   Melania Trump has a White House suite of her own, is less than chummy with first daughter Ivanka, and uses her wardrobe to make statements, a new biography of the US first lady says.Free, Melania, an unauthorised look at President Donald Trump’s wife by CNN reporter Kate Bennett, is published on Tuesday and Washington was buzzing about its contents ahead of its release.At 49, and three years into her husband’s administration, the Slovenia-born ex-model remains genuinely private and “mysterious”…

8. Last Christmas stars Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding say Hollywood getting better for Asian actors but still has room for more diversity, women

   Things are changing fast in Hollywood for Asian actors, and it’s about time, says Michelle Yeoh.The Malaysian-born actress, who made her name as a Hong Kong action heroine in the mid-1980s, stepped back into the international spotlight with her performance in Crazy Rich Asians , the hit romantic movie she credits for Asian performers’ increased opportunities in American film and television.“It’s been a long time coming, so let’s not make it a one-hit wonder,” Yeoh says in New York ahead of the…

9. Look what we made: East-West furniture design project produces one-of-a-kind pieces

   Samuel Chan is a furniture designer with one foot in the West and the other in the East. Born in Hong Kong and educated in London – where Chan’s studio, Joined + Jointed, is based – he divides his time between projects in both regions. That led him to wonder what would happen if creative people from East and West worked together as equals on something. That thought led to Project HK-UK, a collaboration between Hong Kong and British designers that produced six original furniture designs. The…

10. ‘If you were a triad … If you were a police officer …’ – Hong Kong protests infuse art at Singapore Biennale

    “If you were a small potato in a low-level triad gang, which clothing would you prefer?”“If you were an undercover police officer infiltrating a protest but you have become suspected by a journalist, in order to maintain your undercover identity how would you respond?”Questions such as these make their way into Hong Kong artist duo Clara Cheung and Gum Cheng Yee-man’s Am I a Ghost?, an interactive installation showing at this year’s Singapore Biennale.The work at the National Gallery Singapore…