Who: Wong Kar Wai, La Frances Hui
What: Modern Mondays
Where: MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-708-9400
When: Monday, May 23, $8-$12, 7:30
Why: “Our distant comradeship went on for twenty years, all of them blessedly unconstrained by the inhibiting, red-eyed presence of a tape recorder. We never did a proper interview, much less anything so large as a book,” pop-culture and film critic John Powers recently wrote in his Vogue essay “How to Write a Book with Wong Kar Wai,” continuing, “As I flew home to L.A., I was experiencing what I’d long heard about working on one of Wong’s long-gestating films: You spend your time waiting and waiting, dependent on his decisions, wondering if there’s any end in sight.” They were trying to finish what would become WKW: The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai (Rizzoli, April 2016, $65) in time for the opening of the Met Fifth Avenue’s exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass,” for which Wong was serving as artistic director. Well, they made it, and on May 23, Wong, the writer-director of such cutting-edge works as Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Happy Together, and the lush In the Mood for Love, will be at MoMA for a Modern Mondays presentation including film clips, a conversation with MoMA Department of Film associate curator La Frances Hui, and a book signing. “China: Through the Looking Glass” continues in the Met’s Chinese Galleries and Anna Wintour Costume Center through September 7.