By Graham K. Rogers

A few weeks ago I looked at the useful app for the Sundance Film Festival and commented then about the way that such festivals benefit from the use of such apps, mentioning then the app that I looked at last year for the Hong Kong Film Festival.

I am pleased to find that this year's Hong Kong Film Festival - starting this weekend - also has a free app with a rich collection of features that will help those attending. With the amount of information provided via the app this will also be of interest to those who cannot go, especially with the trailers of what is on offer.

The free app opens with a bright yellow screen on which there are small icons to select the language: English or Chinese. The main page is then available with a large selection of options, indicating the care and interest that the organisers have in promoting the event. Last year there were 12 icons and these remain unchanged this year: About Us, FIlms, Calendar, Favourite, News, Photo, Venue, Community, Sponsors, What's On, Booking, and Video.

As before, Films has a complete A-Z listing of the offerings, Calendar allows a quick look at showings on any date by tapping the date square. Initially, Favourite has no information as this is available for users to add their own choices, while Photo does have four items from the Press Conference, but it also available for users to add their own. News (between these two) is updated regularly and there are already a number of items shown.

There are 12 venues and each is listed with a photograph. Each is slightly greyed out when not center-screen but comes into proper focus when centred. Each of the venues, except the HK Convention and Exhibition Centre Theatre 2, had a full date and movie listing for the festival.

The icon marked Today is currently empty and will show any events for the current day, when the Festival begins: the first screening being scheduled for 17 March. Booking provides links so that a user may buy tickets for preferred events. The online links are fine, but telephone links are not set up for international dialling. When I tried to dial one of the numbers from Bangkok using the app, a local pre-recorded voice told me the number was wrong. For those within Hong Kong this method may be preferred, while those outside might prefer online bookings.

I have left the Video section for last. It is the final icon, but with the trailers for the movies to be shown it gives a clear indication of the quality and wide variety of what will be available for those lucky enough to be attending. There are movies from Asia (East and South) as well as Europe and America. As I scrolled through I noted Casting By with Jeff Bridges and Al Pacino; a 50-year remake of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia; Roman Polanski: a Film Memoir; Ken Loach's The Angel's Share; Danny Boyle's The Trance with James McAvoy; as well as a number of animations and projects. There are also movies by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan

The Hong Kong Film Festival app is easy to use and has a wealth of information for those who are attending as well as for those less fortunate who will stay at home and hope that at least some of these movies come this way.

The App is optimised for the iPhone 5 but displayed fine on my iPhone 4S. I was disappointed slightly to find that because of this it would only display on the iPad in the x1 and x2 modes. In the larger display format most of the screens were sharp enough, with the exception of trailer thumbnail images. The video clips themselves were good enough.I would hope that for next year this would be improved as the wide use of the device would make this preferable for some Festival attendees.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.