Tai Kwun｜New Summer Exhibition 'Undercover Underworld – The Mole in Hong Kong Crime Cinema'

Description

Tai Kwun’s 2025 summer exhibition Undercover Underworld celebrates a long-running theme in one of Hong Kong’s most distinctive cinematic genres. In a medium created from light and shadow, nothing shines so brightly from the core of Hong Kong film crime drama. Within that world, nothing embodies shadow more than the undercover agent infiltrating the criminal underworld. What makes these lonely covert figures risk their lives and sanity? And why does this global theme resonate so strongly with Hong Kong audiences? Undercover Underworld will expose the unseen layers from 1 Aug to 5 Oct 2025 in Tai Kwun’s Duplex Studio.

Co-curated by film director Sunny Chan Wing San and Kristof Van den Troost, Assistant Professor of the Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the exhibition offers a deep dive into the shadowy world of covert operations. Tai Kwun’s Duplex Studio will be transformed into re-creations of memorable scenes from classic crime films, where visitors can literally put themselves in the shoes and the camera frame of some of Hong Kong’s most memorable cinematic characters. Undercover Underworld dissects both the procedural steps of an agent beginning a covert mission and the mental anguish resulting from dual identity as well as difficulties in reentering the normal world.

Along with exclusive behind-the-scenes recollections from award-winning filmmakers and actors associated with the featured movies, the exhibition also includes interviews with former real-life undercover agents, psychologists and other professionals contrasting these fictionalised accounts with real-life experiences in the field. This summer exhibition is made possible through the continuous funding and support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club, with Oriental Watch Company as the Lead Sponsor.

Tai Kwun is very proud to collaborate with the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers in preparing and presenting Undercover Underworld. By tapping into its unparalleled links into every tier of the Hong Kong film industry, the Federation has enabled Tai Kwun to include a rich catalogue of authentic artefacts such as director’s hand-annotated filmscripts, original film footage and even some of the actual awards garnered by the films in the year of their release. Tai Kwun is pleased to contribute a proportion of exhibition ticket sales to the Federation in support of emerging home- grown talent and the creative vibrancy of the Hong Kong film industry.

“After paying tribute to the city’s neon signage and vibrant popular music in previous summers, it was a natural extension to celebrate the world of Hong Kong cinema, which at its peak was rivalled in output only by Hollywood and Bollywood,” said Timothy Calnin, Director of Tai Kwun Arts. “We are enormously grateful to The Hong Kong Jockey Club whose unflagging support enables Tai Kwun to present such a huge and varied range of programming throughout the year, and to Oriental Watch Company for their continued support as Lead Sponsor of a major show each year since 2023. This year, we celebrate a new association with the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers with the shared goal of ensuring the continued vibrancy and creativity of the Hong Kong film industry. What makes Undercover Underworld particularly fitting for Tai Kwun is that thousands of real-life police dramas passed through these gates and cellblocks. Block 01, where the exhibition takes place, was in fact once the home of the Criminal Intelligence Bureau and the Narcotics Bureau.”

Creative Director and Co-Curator Sunny Chan Wing San said, “Compared to the film world at large, undercover agents do appear in Hong Kong movies more frequently than others. As if by fate, where Hong Kong exists as a tiny crack in the international community, undercover agents exist in the crack between black and white, shadow and light, evil and justice, waging a constant war on the side of humanity. That tussle has been the stuff of drama through the ages tugging at audiences’ heartstrings. Those who skirt the boundaries of good and evil walk along frontlines where every step is tinged with danger, ready to erupt into rampant gunfire.”

Co-Curator Kristof Van den Troost added, “The undercover agent, often faced with difficult moral dilemmas and torn by conflicting loyalties, has been a staple of crime dramas here for nearly half a century. Perhaps the precarious in-betweenness of undercover agents especially resonates with the in-betweenness of Hong Kong. After co-curating this exhibition, the moral and legal complexity of undercover work both in the movies and in reality has become more salient to me. As we talked with actual undercover agents, the artistic license taken by filmmakers became more obvious, but so did their artistry.”

Undercover Underworld traces the theme of covert police operations through four decades of Hong Kong film, from New Wave pioneer Alex Cheung’s Man on the Brink (1981) to the action-film boom of the 1980s and 1990s with Ringo Lam’s City on Fire (1987) and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow II (1987) and Hard Boiled (1992), from Clarence Fok’s Century of the Dragon (1999) to the current century of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs (2002), Derek Yee’s Protégé (2007) and Benny Chan’s The White Storm (2013). Though filmmaking styles and moviegoing audiences have changed through the years, undercover agents caught between light and shadow, justice and evil, have remained a consistent contribution to Hong Kong cinema’s international reputation as being “all too extravagant, too gratuitously wild.”

Tai Kwun: Showing Affection for Hong Kong’s Popular Culture

As the complex encompassing the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison, Tai Kwun was once a crossroads where law enforcement met the administration of justice. Now a vital heritage and cultural space, Tai Kwun is the perfect location to pay tribute to those undercover heroes - both cinematic and real - who stood up for justice, recounting how in the process they helped pave the way for “a better tomorrow.”

Undercover Underworld unfolds as a journey in 10 scenes, most re-creating a classic movie moment and featuring manuscripts and interviews with the film’s directors, actors and composers. Beginning with “Identity,” where an original self is cleansed from past reality and transformed into a new persona amidst a soundscape of snippets from undercover movie dialogue, visitors continue to the “Mindmap,” which introduces the plots of eight undercover films, gradually preparing visitors' minds for the undercover world experience that is about to unfold. Scenes 3 “Mission” and 4 “Battlefield” depict the challenges and pressures faced by undercover agents while carrying out their missions. Scene 5 “Life Journey” shows the classic scenes of undercover work from movies through an elaborate wall mural by Hong Kong illustrator Alex Chan running the length of Duplex Studio’s LG1 corridor, while Scene 6 “Psychological Dilemma” probes the problem of dual identity and the misery of isolation. The tension of an undercover story transforms into an immersive action scene experience in Scenes 7 “Boiled House” and 8 “Shooting in Action”, after which visitors can pause to peruse priceless manuscripts and awards on loan from top filmmakers in Scene 9 “Hall of Fame”. Finally, in Scene 10, “A Better Tomorrow,” references a scene from A Better Tomorrow II, highlighting how everyone is unafraid of sacrifice in pursuit of a better tomorrow. It is both a farewell and a blessing — the future still has much to offer.

The exhibition will feature exclusive video interviews with figures both from the film world and the real-life field of covert operations. Filmmakers featured include Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor Louis Koo, celebrated directors Tsui Hark, Alan Mak and Alex Cheung, Hong Kong Film Awards Best Music winners Teddy Robin and Peter Kam, and director / former police officer Philip Chan.

Scenes from classic undercover films re-created in Undercover Underworld invite visitors to step into the settings of the characters. Highlights include:

● A scene from Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, featuring a fierce gunfight paired with immersive sound effects, places visitors right in the heart of the action

● The psychiatrist’s consulting room from Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs, a key setting in unveiling an undercover agent’s mental turmoil

● The iconic tea house from John Woo’s Hard Boiled, where police and gangsters engage in an intense chase and a series of climactic fight sequences, showcasing the director’s signature action aesthetics

● The dramatic transformation of the gallery of the Duplex Studio into a 1990s action movie soundstage, where visitors can choose to play a role on set or call the shots behind the camera from the Director’s Chair, complete with authentic and valuable film equipment from the 1980s and 1990s

Public programmes to come during the Undercover Underground exhibition will include Tai Kwun Conversations, and Tai Kwun Movie Steps which will present Mission on the Edge, a series of free screenings of Hong Kong undercover films on 4, 5 and 7 October. The films will include: Man on the Brink (1981), A Better Tomorrow II (1987), City on Fire (1987), Hard Boiled (1992), Truant Hero (1992) and My Father is a Hero (1995).