Things we are not satisfied with, things that are damaged,
are often relinquished.
But can we easily relinquish a relationship?
Life is like a drama and vice versa.
Destined to love with regrets.
Handle the world with care, even if they lack a soul within.
The value and happiness of people should not be built on others. If you try to find someone to complete your life, your self-value will become dependent on others and will feel incomplete when you lose this person.
While life moves on normally in such a day, the signal of the first match seems to be disrupted by strange audio waves. The frustration in the air builds up giving way to a bigger live event.
But once we get there
It may not be as beautiful as you have expected
/
Could there be anyone who does not yearn for his
own home
A place which really belongs to oneself
More to reveal: the man’s wife has been cheating on him, so he is telling his wife’s sister about it.
It is all about death, guilt and helplessness.
Deeper
Deeper
Deeper…
A memorial of Q
Three protesters and three police officers, six people with different political views sitting around the table. The copy machine is out of order, it’s going to be a long night. So they started chatting.
When Ellen vanished into thin air, feeling heartbroken, her secret admirer Chak decided to totally forget about her and fall in love with Yan.
But Chak slowly realised that his dream should be Ellen, the girl who has vivid imagination as he always does. Yet, what Chak has to face is the brutal reality…
At home, she often reminisces about the past, and sings “Salt Water Songs”. After the death of Grandpa, I found out that Grandma has many stories I have not heard before. I also discovered that her smile is as beautiful as rainbows.
Perhaps there are no double popsicles that will never be separated, because all popsicles are destined to melt.
Even though they may be separated, some people may still remember the innocent times the two halves had shared.
In this city, singing is far more popular than music.
We can never escape it, nor can we fight it.
We can only reach out our hand from below ground, and put a white chrysanthemum on our grave.
Since November 2011, every moments of his life has been documented by a video camera mounted on glasses, producing an expanding database of digitalised visual memories. Using a custom virtual reality software, he created a virtual mindscape where people could navigate, and experience his memories and dreams.
The virtual world is perpetually evolving as he loads fresh digital memories every night.
She is an adult woman.
A series of wrong dialing brought the two together in a most fitting way.
My graduation film is about my personal feelings to Hong Kong and its complicated relationship with China. It expresses what I really want to say and feel at the age of 23, that I love not just my birth place Hong Kong but my country as well.
One day, a monster attacked Hong Kong. Man rose up his armpit and transformed himself into a super hero, GALAMAN!
Armpit is no more a body part to feel embarrassed and shame with. Raise your armpit and welcome the age of GALA!
Crawling through a decadent life
Floating in between reality and simulation
Searching unconsciously
The self I see is the seeing self
A vicious cycle
Stimulated Vision: Tuning forks alternately block the light to create flickering effect.
Illusionary Sound: Tuning forks with 512Hz and 522Hz produce sound randomly. When the two frequencies pass through your ears separately, 10Hz binaural beats will be generated by the illusion in your brain. Oscillating waves instead of pure frequencies are heard.
Extended experience: The viewing process documented by video and computer programming is installed outside the room to extend the viewer’s experience to a larger audience.
Through the revolving path, the audience can listen to or record sounds, and move their bodies to experience linear mobility, and in the process experience the cassette recorder in a new way.
How to create a music video which is interpreted by and derived from the audience instead of the director or music producer?
PMV, a personalized music video, can achieve this by monitoring the subtle changes in brain waves of the audience while listening to the song. Upon wearing the specialized headphone, the brain waves of the audience is recorded and transformed into data, thus controlling the sequences and special effects of the music video. This experience is diverse and unique and the music video which is “created” by the audience can be shared among friends via the social media.
Bayanbat is one of the Mongolian herders who fought to keep his animals alive for more than six months in freezing temperatures that average minus 40 degrees Celsius. He fought bravely against the natural disaster known as ZUD. However, the battle ended with nature’s victory.
In the winter of 2009-2010, thousands of Mongolian herders, including Bayanbat, lost their property.
On June 1, the family starts their all the same morning.
A mother left her family because she loved them, but there was a big price to pay.
More than 20 years ago, a Filipino girl named Charlie left her son and came to Hong Kong to work as a house maid. Separated from her family all these years, she thought she could finally go home to her son when she retired, but…
This is an interactive video installation in which the audience engage in the interactions with the characters in a series of short stories and scenarios with their own mobile phones.
The scenarios in this project are based on the everyday usage of mobile phones. How do people use their phones? When will they use it? What consequences will they have when a phone rings? The audience can call or answer phone calls from the characters in the videos. Picking the phone or ringing the characters at different times will affect the ending or outcome of the video.
Textworm is an interactive installation which experiments on deconstruction of text. Game Play
(1) Type in: Players type words in keyboard and they will be projected onto the canvas.
(2) Cut: They can split the words by pointing laser pen on the projection screen.
(3) Auto Combine: The dissected parts will float and combine into new symbols.
Lok has been struggling with mental disorder for many years. Because of the misunderstanding and discrimination among the common people, he chose to keep his illness in secret.
Lok is used to take a walk inside his residential building at sleepless night and he meets Yan occasionally. He feels happy after get in touch with her and they are soon to be a lover. However, he does not tell the truth and try to find a chance to confess. One night, Lok finds an opportunity…
This video is an observation of two HKCEE candidates about how they prepared for their results release two days before the HKCEE result release day.
The two of them had different decisions.
One of them had full confidence to get promoted to another famous school for study. The other one had already made up her mind about what she should do afterwards. However, the F.6 admission result is so unpredictable that the ad to encounter a totally unexpected outcome. How do they feel deep in their heart? Are their futures really determined by their “marks”?
Have you ever been forced to enter a “maze” when you can make no other choices in your life?
When you are lost, you feel contemptible, fearful, confused, worried, frustrated, and at last losing your soul and suffocates.
This moment, the hardest person you are facing is indeed yourself. You betray yourself, you distrust yourself, you disrespect yourself…..to walk out of the maze, you have to face your true self and destroy the obstacle inside you.
You are the only person that controls your own future.
This is a story about a long distance relationship between a mother and her son.
The film reflects on his changing relationship with his mother when he leaves Hong Kong to start his new life in a new country, leaving mum behind and lots of wonderful memories.
“My lovely neighbor Tom” is the title of this movie. The word Tom is referring to “Peeping Tom” often associated with voyeurism.
If you’re associating voyeurism with sex and nudity I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed because this movie does not contain one single frame of sex or nudity, it’s only about BLOOD and VIOLENCE.
On the 35th floor of the Carter Building lived an upper class family of 4 (Father, Mother, Son & Daughter). Not long after the son’s 7th birthday something terrible happened and since that day the kids have been living by themselves in the flat.
Losheng Sanatorium, Taiwan’s only isolated hospital for leprosy patients. In the past, due to the lack of medical advancements and social panic, Taiwan government forced 1,000 patients into isolation. This condition lasted through the colonial government, the National government, the reformed democratic government. For 50 to 60 years, the patients have made Losheng their home, enduring a loss of their rights, and slowly fading from the society’s notice.
Now, they seemed to have walked out of their past, and into society. Yet, with the construction of the Hsin-Zhuang MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) works, the government has once again forced 300 aged patients to move out of LoSheng, tearing it down for the purpose of economic benefits. In the face of authority, the patients persevere in life, voicing out for their homeland.
First: Laughter has aroused my curiosity on emotions. Second: I want it, I want to get out!
Third: So, that’s it? Fourth: Right or wrong, meaningful or not, see you at the stop!
Summer is the season for love, and the time Chi Fan broke up with her lover. Trying to forget the sadness, Chi Fan came back to Hong Kong. She revisited the old places with her best friend, Kee Yin. The places seemed familiar but strange. They came across many happy faces. They talked about work, love and their lives.
Traveling from one city to another, everyone is searching for something. Back and forth, we are only looking for a chance to starting over again.
Although the hawkers are not well educated, we can feel their honesty to life in the interviews.
And nothing else.
Two women and a man in cinematic dance,
Subtle emotions and hidden desires,
Revealing truth and deadly beauty.
Exodus deals with the unspoken nuances of human emotions. An encounter between a lower-class ethnic Chinese shampoo girl and a Javanese court dancer sparks an awakening that manifests the dialectic of obsession and the transient nature of human affection. Set against the backdrop of the dominant Javanese culture, this story deals with the aspirations and identity of two women, each gambling for a better life in a post-Suharto era.
Wong, a young author of 25, was alone on her bed at midnight. In her own little secret place, she tried to record all her private life in front of a digital camera. This was an attempt to challenge the norm of morality. Without reservation, Wong presented her secret life to all of us. What was projected on the screen was apparently her morbid state. Video production has become very popular, and all of us could create an independent short of our own free will. The major theme of this film is the exposure of one’s personal privacy.
The directors have borrowed a lot of ingredients from mainstream horrors. Manipulating these essentials, this independent video is tailored. From the plot to details, as well as in the sound effects, we can see many familiar elements. This work seems to pay homage to the American, Japanese, and Korean horrors. Only a few dialogues are used to narrate the horrible story, but the causality of events is still quite clear. Some frightening scenes added with the background music ofInfernal Affairs achieve fantastic results.
The directors use a big aquarium to symbolize the city. The audience witnesses how people lead their life in the container. A sense of solitude develops when we see how the people walk form home to the deserted underground train station, from the office to the busy streets, and at the end of the day walk back home. How are we like when we see our own reflection on broken pieces of glass? If we pick up the broken pieces and put them back in the water, will our life be saved?
Adapting to the particular setting of a typical public housing estate, the directors try to reflect the relationship between people – what seems close is in fact far away. With some simple scenes and wordless actions, a fantastic story about neighbour relationship delivered. It seems as if one was recounting his or her experience.
This work is boyishly honest, revealing the straightforward and frank conversation amongst boys. It exposes the different stages of exploration and self-discovery of our youth during their growth by looking at how they understand and interpret themselves. Taking advantages of the campus settings, the scriptwriter-director leads the audience to experience how the protagonist “looks for a lost guy”. It does not explain what the self is finally, yet the process sounds interesting. Many dialogues even crack your smile.
A change from joy and happiness to rude complaints is shown. It’s a statement of a great movie fan as well as an outcry of an anti-movie supporter.
Instead of adhering to rational discussion, the director skillfully explores the internal struggle of the character. Through images, the character’s bewilderment is turned into a number of illusions. This short but pithy work indicates the inner struggle of a gay “in the closet”. Some images are down-to-earth but in fact are equipped with dramatic tension. The open ending allows the audience to select their standpoint.
The directors intended to confuse the audience by misspelling the names in the film title. But the ending gives an explanation because the directors worry that the audience may misinterpret the meaning. The story does not go smooth because of overcautious calculation. Furthermore, the choice of theme as well as the ways and techniques of production reveal thoughtless effort. As an animation work, its skills are very rough and it lacks concrete details. Fortunately, some funny scenes make on feel comfy.
The directors depict the story by the use of computer game. Either words or illustrations are added to explain the story. By doing so, it enriches the ordinary plot. Also, it is likely to turn this world of fantasy into a series of films.
Wong, a young author of 25, was alone on her bed at midnight. In her own little secret place, she tried to record all her private life in front of a digital camera. This was an attempt to challenge the norm of morality. Without reservation, Wong presented her secret life to all of us. What was projected on the screen was apparently her morbid state. Video production has become very popular, and all of us could create an independent short of our own free will. The major theme of this film is the exposure of one’s personal privacy.
Independent shorts need no drama to underline the theme, but the voice-over can be served as the monologues while the films can mirror life. The author has explored the same theme with a digital video. Right now this 16mm-film remake, with better picture quality than the digital video does, allows us to discuss “what are films?” more appropriately.
When DV images have become the mainstream of independent production, the visual quality produced by the rolls of film brings out strong effects. In handling a down-to-earth drama, the full gradation of light and shadow together with on-the-spot sounds depict the important elements of Jordy and Kou’s inner feelings.
In independent short creation, a neatly done and easily comprehensible narrative may become a burden. Sometimes, when the structure is deconstructed and rearranged, the story becomes clearer while it also enlarges our thinking space, allowing us to view it from different perspectives.
Devote Very Fantastic to my dearest dad, ma and grandma.
Accustomed to spending its birthday alone, the paper doll comes across the rabbit lantern at one night. This night is perhaps their once-in-the-lifetime get-together.
To satisfy the increasing demand for suicidal attempts, a new hotel in Hong Kong is set up recently to provide service specially geared for this emerging need. The service includes scaled rooms for inhaling carbon monoxide fumes from burning charcoal, provision of drugs, rooms for hanging, and so on. The hotel also extends its service to include funeral arrangements after death. It is convenient for general public who wishes to kill themselves.
15 is inspired by the true-life accounts of three troubled youths searching for their self-identity and acceptance in a fast moving society. Often, violence and decadence are compensatory “rewards” to relieve themselves of their troubles and societal pressures. A short film acted by the real teens themselves, shows the audience a slice of Singapore many has yet to see.
Dandelion – an interlude of life and death; here, there and everywhere.
Mother and daughter – sharing their past and future, sorrow and laughter – and life, is but a memory.
Dandelion – a thousand flowerettes in the sky, and a drop in their memory.
- A reflection on the definition of animation
When selfless devotion gets beyond a certain limit, it becomes slavish transformation.
You never know how much one can stand until the day one takes off.
You curse, you cry. It’s useless since no one’s going to care, not anymore
The endless echo contrasts your hollow soul, overfloods your place, & gets you killed.
This is a documentary about colours, the colours in life that are left forgotten.
Walking on Edinburgh Avenue, amid the wind and snow, looking for the new, off-stage THE OVERCOAT. A documentation of searching, a searching documentation.
Walking in our shoes everyday
What do you see beyond them
Have you ever heard of
The stories of shoes
Wear the same shoes
Pass the same places and
Encounter the same faces
Day after day
Where has your mind sailed
The city grows
With the rhythm of our pace
Fragments of forgotten memories
Sketch the stories of
Urban landscape
You have birthday cakes on your birthdays, and I don’t know if that is enough;
There are seven days in a week, and your handprints are on my hands;
Wash your hands before every meal; something just can’t be washed away;
Reflect and regret on what you have done over the week; but then, who are you?
There is an answer to every puzzle; guess what is ours?
Public defacement is a criminal act in Hong Kong. Well aware of this and afraid, yet the graffiti writers are not so intimidated as to give up their dreams of “conquering the train”.
The graffiti writers in Hong Kong are all young in age and green in graffiti painting. To them, work and study are not where their dreams are and graffiti is what they strive for.
We have visited several teams of graffiti writers in Hong Kong to hear their rationale, and to document their way of life an what they get from painting graffiti on the street.
The word “director” is becoming more prestigious and romanticized. Knowing that someone has made some sort of movies, we would like to greet him/ her “Director!” or ask “When can I star in your movie?”… It is pretty fun indeed. However, if taking it seriously, why do I make movies (create)?
I believe good art is such that after it is “penetrated through” (It is “penetrated through” but not “separated from”) all the artistic judgment, something good remains.
What is the thing that remains?
Goodness.
In Chinese, the word “goodness” always comes after “truthfulness” and before “beauty”. I would say, “goodness is truthful, it brings along with it the gift, beauty.”
A good movie should make you see the landscape in the midst of life.
a video that is structured like a triangle,
repeating and broken and connected
the relationship between daughter and
mother is like a triangle?
The story of the mermaid is nothing but a tragedy.
In the fairy tale, the prince saves the mermaid from the coast. Then the mermaid, the prince and the princess lapse into a triangle relationship. The princess believes the love of the prince will return to her when the mermaid is gone. Actually, nothing remains the same.
Then another story begins, the princess herself plays the mermaid, waiting for another prince to come.
Keep running, running and running every day.
Finally, we even forget what we are chasing.
Take a breath, take a rest.
A layer of colour, a slide of film
A piece of paper, a movie scene
Prime
White, painter, black
Between black and white
A Red spring
A Green summer
A Blue autumn
A nightmare winter
Flow…
Waiting for the return of a lover
A boat came across the door
Unloaded three bags of sigh
Two bags of thinking
A bag of undischarged blast hope
Shedding tears torms an ocean
Swim in your arms
Say, “it is time to come home”
There is not always peace and love between a son and a mom.
I love = I hate you = I kill you
Life is short.
But hatred is forever.
At least, it may last for more than 1,000 years.
Do boys and girls release a secret and attractive power? If the answer is yes, where does this power come from? They are as beautiful as fairies. Because of them, people are confused about whether it is right or wrong to love them. How do we explain this?
No feedback.
In this story, if the boy, the main character, tends to love the same sex, and also the girl, another main character, has a fairy body, do we long for entering their realm?
Dangerous.
There is merely one reason to explain. It is because there is “Beauty.” This is one of the important human elements that human require. This “Beauty” comes from everybody’s heart. There are different definitions of “Beauty” in different people’s hearts. Actually, this “Beauty” includes beauty and ugliness, love and hate. All these are just means to achieve the satisfaction of the human spirit.
The word “director” is becoming more prestigious and romanticized. Knowing that someone has made some sort of movies, we would like to greet him/ her “Director!” or ask “When can I star in your movie?”… It is pretty fun indeed. However, if taking it seriously, why do I make movies (create)?
I believe good art is such that after it is “penetrated through” (It is “penetrated through” but not “separated from”) all the artistic judgment, something good remains.
What is the thing that remains?
Goodness.
In Chinese, the word “goodness” always comes after “truthfulness” and before “beauty”. I would say, “goodness is truthful, it brings along with it the gift, beauty.”
A good movie should make you see the landscape in the midst of life.
The word “director” is becoming more prestigious and romanticized. Knowing that someone has made some sort of movies, we would like to greet him/ her “Director!” or ask “When can I star in your movie?”… It is pretty fun indeed. However, if taking it seriously, why do I make movies (create)?
I believe good art is such that after it is “penetrated through” (It is “penetrated through” but not “separated from”) all the artistic judgment, something good remains.
What is the thing that remains?
Goodness.
In Chinese, the word “goodness” always comes after “truthfulness” and before “beauty”. I would say, “goodness is truthful, it brings along with it the gift, beauty.”
A good movie should make you see the landscape in the midst of life.
The summer has just begun, it seems like I am walking towards the end of my life.
What should I do?
Strange things happen every day.
Is this the start of an eminent century, or the end of the millennium?
Passion sprung tranquilly in my life, and ceased.
There is no definite “possible” or “impossible” when it comes to affection.
There is only “willingness” and “unwillingness”.
What if I see you again?
I am still the same, as innocent as before.
“Government is not the solution to our problem…Government is the problem.” The ex-American President Reagan.
“Climb up a tree to find a fish.” Mencius.
Darkness – void and coldness, yet, we stay and find the shelter to hid our sins and imperfectness.
Φ had to choose between the two – living under the real sun or the one that only existed in memory.
What created man?
God molded Adam and Eve out of clay? Or the interaction between the 2 fluids, Yin and Yang and Heaven and Earth?
Whatever the truth is, here we are, alive. But how do we get along with the other human beings?
Being dumb is the easiest way. Being dishonest and distrust are effective.
How to live a happy life? By having no dream.
Who is important? Myself.
Are you listening? Nobody is.
You are sick. Everyone is!
Inside the dark cape
city is blinking
with twinkles flashing
The untamed yees, trapped in foreign time, are glancing
every one-eighteenth second
To escape from an alien summon she runs
runs into a toddling elf
When the night comes…
the enchanting psalm accelerates the vibrating wings
her tear descends when she weeps
is it her nostalgia before floating to the Newfoundland?
Is it her ecstasy after enrolled in the Noah?
When the night comes…
Asleep planet they wander with wings
A shout
the smoldering thunder
catalyzes the ten fingers to blend slowly, slowly
Who the angel the elf the human are
doesn’t matter anymore
Suddenly, she marches across the awaken city
can’t even sense her elf three feet away
Was the angel drowned with the ordinary beings?
or has she flown far away?
Who knows the answer?
Only if the Angle doesn’t die
Snapshots mean pictures taken spontaneously using Polaroid or non-professional cameras.
Yan meets Ming when he is at his lowest and doesn’t know what to do with his life. Yan herself, who emigrated to Germany from Hong Kong with her family, has run away from home on finding out that she has a terminal disease. In this way she and Ming come together. Two lonely and helpless people joined by fate, offering each other comfort and support. And in the end they are left with snapshots in their hands to remind them of a beautiful time together. Only you yourself can fulfill your own dreams and hopes, it cannot be done for you by someone else. The story of Ming and Yan is only a beginning. Later they must seek a new lifestyle and that is the most important thing.
Stanley, Wendy, May, Nelson and Ulli, I love you all!
Fan lives with his aged father who has Alzheimer’s Disease. Rather than drawing them closer, the disease makes the already strained relationship between father and son even more tense. When Fan’s father begins collecting dirty old junk from the streets and bringing them home, Fan finds himself at wit’s end. Gradually, however, Fan sense that the battered toys and dusty vinyl records cluttering up his flat are not simply garbage, but pieces of the past – his own past as well as his father’s. Every little toy contains old memories that brings him back to the time when his father wasn’t just a broken old man but a single father trying his best to bring up his two children. The toys also conjure up happier times of growing up in government estates.
As his disease-stricken father fades, Fan begins to realise that his father’s actions are not completely senseless, but are in fact the silent voice of the old man reaching out to him. But is it too late for him to hear it?
The Gay Games is a sporting event held every four years. It was founded in 1982 by the late Dr. Tom Waddell an American Olympian who had a vision of a world of inclusion and understanding, a world where people can freely participate and be themselves.
This documentary captures the spirit of these Games. The joy, friendship, love and inspiration experienced by women from all over the world meeting each other, participating, performing and playing together in the Gay Games V, held in Amsterdam, in August 1998.
Seventy-eight-year-old Tseng Tso Choi has been writing calligraphy on the streets of Kowloon for over forty years. The self proclaimed ‘King of Kowloon’, is one of the city’s most intriguing citizens and in spite of old age, poverty and physical disability, Tseng perseveres in expressing himself with his ink brush, believing that he is the rightful heir to land in Kowloon.
King of Kowloon is a half hour documentary about Tseng’s life as well as the city he lives in. From interviews with ‘the man on the street’, to candid discussions with Tseng himself, the film examines the story behind his writing both the humour and the poignancy.
Shot over a period of one year, King of Kowloon, is the first full length documentary about this unforgettable individual. Shot mainly in Cantonese, it is a result of over one year’s work by Hong Kong based, first time filmmakers, Martin Egan and Joanne Shen.
September 95
JLM students recorded four classmates from year 1 to year 3. We decide to record the change of their attitudes towards their identity and nation.
September 98
The documentary film is finished. Some of the classmates become senseless to the society. Some are still concerned about the society. Some feel powerless to do anything for the society.
We finished the “soap opera” during the transfer of sovereignty.
Q&A
1.If life is an essay, what punctuation is denoted for 1997?
2. Who are you? A Hong Konger, a citizen of the SAR, a Chinese or a British?
3. What is the meaning of “mixed breed”?
4. What are you proud of as a Hong Konger?
Believe it or not,
everything starts from this case…..
3/8 24:00
Who’s listening? An angel? A demon?
Midnight. Dracula’s howls and cries
seethe ceaselessly in the mind. But the dismembered body
is silent.
Starry night. Who’s that wanderer among the stars?
The Little Prince?
What is he looking for?
The other half of himself?
The rose doesn’t appear.
The cat tosses and turns and falls amidst the walls.
It only wants to stretch a bit, to take a nap,
to forget its pains for a while,
to let its mind fly for a while,
to enjoy itself for a while.
Only for a brief while? Who cares?
According to the theory of Eric Berne M.D.: “We can recognize human energy in two forms: bodily energy and mental energy.” That is similar to the role of car and driver.
Actually, I want to explain, in this work, how human beings release their energy of loving – a kind of Love which is very mysterious and spiritual.
Some said a camera can freeze a moment, but what they catch is the shadow of time.
Therefore, I take up a handicap, tried to simulate time, its continuity, unchangeable and inference qualities.
But the result is, I think I’ve failed.
Maybe, nothing can use
time as a dimension.
The story is very simple. Karen will leave Hong Kong.
They have only little time.
But they cannot talk about anything.
Because they have nothing to share.
The act of planting resembles the establishments of new life in a new environment.
The film captures the character’s life in his garden in Australia. Being a migrant from Hong Kong, he retreats from reality in his Australia’s home. The character is accidentally reminded of the reality – back home, in Hong Kong, by the newspapers laid on the ground. He then is torn between the two places; confusion arises, losing orientation as being away from reality.
>You reproach me because each of my stories takes you right into the heart of a city without telling you of the space that stretches between one city and the other, whether it is covered by seas, or fields of rye, larch forest, swamps, I will answer you with a story.< (Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino)
In the beginning of the year 1997, an immigrant man returns to his city of birth to look fro work. Unable to find a job, he decides to employ himself as an immigration advisor, helping people in Hong Kong to immigrate.
As he was giving out advertisement flyers for his newly chosen occupation in the busy heart of the city, he meets a girl without a past nor future. This girl sort of appears out of the blue, in the mist of all the other characters and fixtures and sort of disappears into the cold without explanation. The immigration advisor and this girl kind of meet on a bridge near a train station and kind of fall in love inside a car, on a ferris wheel in an amusement park.
A street cleaner lies on his bed with his pregnant wife, they are awake, they are not making love, they feel trapped. The street cleaner encounters the immigration advisor one day, and becomes the immigration advisor’s first customer. Frustrated with the city, it’s garbage, pressured by the burden of having to support his wife and the child he’s expecting, the street cleaner wants to escape, away to another country. As a form of protest, the street cleaner’s wife decides not to have the child anyway, maybe against her husband’s will. All the angst and turmoil seem as if it will all explode… Until the day…
>You reproach me because each of my stories takes you right into the heart of a city without telling you of the space that stretches between one city and the other, whether it is covered by seas, or fields of rye, larch forest, swamps, I will answer you with a story.< (Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino)
It is a story of speed.
“The faster we go, the less we see.”
To make people aware of the consequences of technological development, we have the chance to think: what are the gains and what are the losses in the city? Speed makes people travel fast, but we avoid other people traveling fast, it makes people avoid thinking.
To name video activism aims at social changes is not enough. To explain video activism by the language of documentary video only is again no enough. Video activism is about subject to changes, in a cultural spectrum. It is about subjectivity and political changes in a cultural context. To me, women movement and Tong Zhi movement are about women subjectivity, politicized and sexualized women bodies and how they interact with the concepts of space and time in everyday lives as well as the concepts of space and time in the existing ways of thinking about space and time in the language of video. This is especially vital when the mainstream TV is dominated by the norm from the perception of space and time that is trying so hard to REAL. Reality in video is not about what and who is real but about memories (personal stories) and representation, representation as represented as what (the form and style) and representation as represented by who (the power relationships of who has the right to speak for OTHERS and who has the right to set the rules of documentary video making in which the subjects are being placed there and displaced as objects).
This video is a stylish as well as personal (political) collage of me and my friends, as activists in the front line of PEOPLE’s movement fighting for erotic/sexual injustice, in time of celebration for the hand-over in 1997, Hong Kong.
One last glimpse of the hard-boiled-wonderland-as-we-know-it.
Hong Kong, December 1996, diary before the revolution.
We care about the colour.
Conscious of the loss of yourself? Any way out? Any attempt to find a way out?
“If you can think Before You Consume, It doesn’t matter what you Buy.” – AMK
1) My home city – HONG KONG
2) Human being
Ref:
1) Opium war, British take-over of Hong Kong, Japanese occupation – 3 years and 8 months, Japanese surrendering and leaving, British came back, water-rationing, to the affair of 1997,
*Those events seem none of our business – teenagers – seem so far away from our real world. As I grow up, I do want to know detail about those kind of events. Now, I love my city even than before.
2) Like Hong Kong history, Love was a simple thing to me when I was a child. When I grow up, I realise that it is not the perfect thing that I expect: girl & man; man & man; man is woman; woman is boy; he is her, etc.
*These make me more confused yet excited. The story begins with a beer expressing his love to a man, telling my feelings towards women and Hong Kong.
To this Boy, SOCCER IS LIFE. He lives on soccer balls, sewing them one by one, stitch by stitch with his little hands, in a dark factory a little better than Hell. Despite of the job, he still love playing soccer game. But he never gets much time to, when the Fat Boss will always pull him back to the slavery in a very ‘special’ way…
Simultaneously, one of those hand-made ball appears on the infamous TV advertisement: Million-dollar-contracted Soccer Superstars vs. Devilish Aliens. The game which decides human’s fate. It’s a game without red card. Aliens’ crashing defensive skills leave the soccer world idols laying in agony…
But life is not a spectator sport. What kind of dream can be better than stepping inside the arena and teaming up with your favorite athletes?
Sometimes violence is the solution, no matter who is guarding the Goal, the Fat Boss o the Alien King with its 10 feet wingspan…
Living in a big city at the abyss of economic depression, life is difficult especially for young people.
To survive, they have learned to have no desire and anger.
Between isolation and degeneration, the protagonist has chosen the former to keep his dignity.
He also finds it difficult communicating with the outside world.
One day he accidentally finds an audio cassette tape of Cantonese songs.
Though he doesn’t understand the exotic language, he feels that the songs are sung for him in his sorrow.
The tape also brings him a romance. He thinks his life is going to change.
But, life is out of control.
30-06-1997 will be historical too…
How about 31-06-1997???
any meaning???
just an imagination? or an expectation for a birthday present.
One person is here and one person is there…
we meet in cyber space…
this work is a cyber letter to the forthcoming generation.
To this Boy, SOCCER IS LIFE. He lives on soccer balls, sewing them one by one, stitch by stitch with his little hands, in a dark factory a little better than Hell. Despite of the job, he still love playing soccer game. But he never gets much time to, when the Fat Boss will always pull him back to the slavery in a very ‘special’ way…
Simultaneously, one of those hand-made ball appears on the infamous TV advertisement: Million-dollar-contracted Soccer Superstars vs. Devilish Aliens. The game which decides human’s fate. It’s a game without red card. Aliens’ crashing defensive skills leave the soccer world idols laying in agony…
But life is not a spectator sport. What kind of dream can be better than stepping inside the arena and teaming up with your favorite athletes?
Sometimes violence is the solution, no matter who is guarding the Goal, the Fat Boss o the Alien King with its 10 feet wingspan…
Say: “Hey Folks! ……”
The reason why people cooperate is sometimes depends on having common enemies or hidden benefits. This always happens between family members and peer groups. From there, it extends to companies and counties all over the world, or even to planets of outer space. The union of “Hatred” then becomes the motivation of destruction. At the end, people find that only certain believes: Christianity – the love with sacrifice and honesty, can give them the “True” union and a new world of peace and hope.
30-06-1997 will be historical too…
How about 31-06-1997???
any meaning???
just an imagination? or an explanation for a birthday present.
One person is here and one person is there…
we meet in cyber space…
this work is a cyber letter to the forthcoming generation.
1. My first memory of a Christian Brother was of my headmaster swimming every day in the school’s 3-feet deep pool wearing flippers. Fast forward several years: forced by my parents’ financial situation, I had to return to study in Hong Kong after having been to England for a year. Brother Raphael said, “Don’t expect me to give you any more letters of recommendation if you decide to leave again.” One day in Toronto a few years later, a newspaper reported that a home in Ontario run by Christian brothers for runaway boys had, for over a decade, been the scene of rampant sexual and physical abuse.
2. Rimbaud was born in a border town, and throughout his life he tried to search for a home – at least that’s what the critics say. The fact was that he ran away from home three times by the age of sixteen. Once his mother had him brought back from Belgium by the police. That didn’t stop him for long. Throughout his life he kept running further and further away: to Germany, Italy, and then, for most of his life, running arms in Ethiopia. At the age of 37, he returned, one-legged, to his hometown. A final attempt to escape ended in a hospital in Marseilles.
3. Chief Constable Wong of Shum Shui Po HQ, veteran of numbers anti-gay sting operations, remarks on how to impersonate a gay man, “It’s really quite easy, you don’t even have to act like a sissy. All you need to do is keep your head down and look shifty.” (As quoted by an interview with Next Magazine).
She organizes them into volumes……
Chronologically……
A man, waken by a mysterious midnight call, tries to recall certain things that happened thirteen years ago.
have
a dream
about
a
short
VIDEO
on
the making of
A SHORT film
for
Competition