Annual Arts Survey Result Dashboard – 2021/22 Film Arts

From April to December in 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic started to wind down, screening venues reopened. However, because the number of pandemic cases surged again in January 2022, cinemas and other screening venues were closed for 84 days in total. In the remaining days when cinemas and the screening venues were opened, attendance rate was restricted to be between 75% and 85%.

Although the number of onsite programmes, total number of screenings, attendance and box office income in 2021/22* rose from the bottom low in 2020/21, they were still below the 2019/20 level.

In 2021/22, there were a total of 1,579 onsite programmes, a huge rebound from 838 programmes in 2020/21, though a decrease of 14% was still observed when compared to 2019/20. After large-scale film festivals such as Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF)** were resumed again in 2021/22, leading to a surge of Film Festival programmes, to 577 programmes, with an increase of more than double. However, the number was still 26% lower than that in 2019/20.

As the total number of programmes increased, the total number of screenings rose to nearly double of the previous year, to 3,219 screenings. Compared to 2019/20, although the number of Featured/Individual screenings improved because of a significant increase of free screenings, the total number of screenings still recorded a drop of 12% due to a decrease of approximately 750 Film Festival screenings.

Total attendance surged to more than 240 thousands, rising from less than 10 thousands in the previous year. However, the number is still 17% lower than that in 2019/20.

Box office income rebounded to HKD 13.6 million from 2020/21. However, compounded by the decrease in the number of paid screenings and paid attendance (especially Film Festivals), box office income is still lower than the 14.3 million recorded in 2019/20.

Below is an interactive dashboard of the Film Arts onsite screenings’ statistics.  Readers can click on the interested category / year in one of the charts and the entire dashboard will be refreshed to highlight the respective category / year.

*The number of programmes of onsite screenings in 2021/22 refers to the programmes held during the financial year from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022.

**The duration of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) spans across two financial years.  Data from the 43^rd HKIFF were counted in 2019/20, data from the 44^th HKIFF were counted in 2020/21, and so on. The 44^th HKIFF scheduled to kick off in late March 2020, was postponed to August 2020 and finally cancelled due to pandemic. The 45^th HKIFF, of which data was counted in the 2021/22 calculation, opened as scheduled on 1^st April 2021.