The Gao Xingjian Arts Festival co-presented by The Chinese University of Hong Kong(CUHK) and the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau as one of the events of Le French May will run from May 22 to June 11 this year. The Festival is organized by the Hong Kong Drama Programme of Sir Run Run Shaw Hall of the university. An all-encompassing celebration featuring the poetry, theatre, film, and paintings of Gao Xingjian, the festival is a rare opportunity for academics, students, artists and the general public to interact with the 2000 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, who will attend the festival in person.

The impetus to the Festival came from the first Gao Xingjian symposium at Universite de Provence in France three years ago. This year's symposium is held in the SAR with an aim to involve more academics from the Asia-Pacific region who, in addition to the original international contingent of Gao scholars, will arouse greater interest in this writer-artist who is honoured by the Nobel Committee “for an ?uvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama”.

Highlights of the festival include the opening of the Gao Xingjian Repository Exhibition cum book launch in the University Library on 23 May, and later on the same day, a public lecture entitled The Finite and the Infinite – the Aesthetics of Creation by Gao Xingjian, who is an honorary doctorate of the University. The three-day Gao Xingjian symposium , located at Cho Yiu Hall of the university, will commence on 28 May. The Festival will finish with the world premiere of Gao's play Of Mountains & Seas at the open-air theatre in the New Asia College Amphitheatre. The show, directed by Mr. Hardy Tsoi, local veteran director and The Chinese University's Arts Administrator cum Man ager of Sir Run Run Shaw Hall, will open on 30 May and run until 1 June.

As prelude to the festival, there will be a salon on Gao Xingjian and the festival held in Sir Run Run Shaw Hall on 28 March. It will be recorded as one of the RTHK talk shows Free As the Wind . On 28 April, a video screening and seminar on two Gao Xingjian plays, The Other Shore and Between Life and Death , will be held at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in Wanchai.

There is a host of joint presenters outside the University, including the Alisan Fine Arts, Ming Pao Monthly and the Hong Kong Arts Centre. The Festival is subsidized by the Arts Development Council, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Universite de Provence Aix-en-Provence , Chow Sang Sang Jewelery Ltd., Mr. Henry C.P.Lam, New Asia College , United College and the Independent Learning Centre of The Chinese University of Hong Kong . RTHK is the media partner of the Festival.