untitled1 & winter festival
 view untitled1
 view winter festival

 Celebration in Times of Bitter Songs (Music Video) segment
  segment 1 segment 2

It is a work that is about Hong Kong in Transition during the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. A personal history and personal involvements to political issues VS grand narrative history (this is especially vital in 1996-7 when there are too many sudden upraise of Chinese-ness and Hong Kong identity grand discourses. From this work, I started to work on cultural issues that mixed personal feelings to political actions and social issues. From the very private domain to public realm of Hong Kong as a revisit, I wanted to experiment a new way to theorize and practice documentary video in Hong Kong.

There are 3 sections all together. Here, you only see some part of the 2nd section and the whole of 3rd section. The first section is about moving homes. I always moved home in 1995-1997. Don’t want to “explained” it by words and “justify” it here though. The second part is about street actions, and the ways people could “play” in street actions. Hopefully, from there we could emphasize the importance of street actions, power of the people and the notion of differences in “one” rally. Also, it is about how music was embed in the street actions, like a celebration, with the bitter songs bitterly celebrating the seemingly worthwhile celebrations of the hand-over in 1997. The third part is about how I feel about traveling, echoes with the first part of moving homes. Moreover, one of the most important events in 1997 was the closing down of “Lai Yuen” (Lai Chi Kwok Amusement Park). It was sold to a developer (ai ya, lee ga shing’s group again) as re-development project in the property market which was the hottest industry back then. Guess it is the biggest irony that property market in Hong Kong has been dropping after 1997 until now, for over 60%. And negative assert problems affected so many people, including my family.

About the work
30 something shots, in 60minutes. Most of them are empty shots, and yet they are so solid. They are long takes and yet seem to be so short. Besides, the empty shots, there are segments of buddies chatting and the documentation of movements by a slow shutter 360 degree pan in the place I lived when I was a child. I don’t know what to say more as the work speaks for itself and I did try to write the background information of this work in the director’s note. If it is necessary to be concluded by English words, it is merely a combination of some “terms” (that need to be re-inscribed though): it is about corporeality, sickness, associations of sickness(es), cities, and the notion(s) of space and time in a personal diary documentary, if the conflation all these “terms” make any sense.

Director’s note:
There is no music in this work as NOISE is the melody and TEXT is the rhythm. I’d rather name it as a personal, poetic and discursive documentary, if naming is necessary.
In 1998-99, I was deadly sick. Ever since then, I started to rethink about sickness, bodies and cities and hypersensitivity. Responding to my own body is very difficult. And this work is a response and a revisit to corporeality, its subjectivity and the notion of time and space.
There are quotes about the notions of time and space. I might not agree with them but I think it is good to raise questions from them and contextualize the discussions about them here.
The cityscapes are from Macau, Shanghai, Hungzhou and Hong Kong.