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. |
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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.
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din gei ham lan
收看片段
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this video is a work done in 1996, a documentary work. at that
time, some friends and i, including gumgum, were thinking about
what could be done in a rally. besides, the serious slogans and
simply following the paths of politicians, what else could we
do? the rally documented in the video was for equal opportunities
bill. there were different parts of the EOB such as gender, race,
sexual orientation, family responsibility (to protect the single
parents), disability. however, until now, only equal opportunities
pertinent to gender, family responsibility and disability are
protected by the EO Bill, BUT not race and sexual orientations.
in this video, you can see how we, girls (very ac hot, form by
friends...) played and sang and danced in the rally. also, we
recorded our own songs to sing along... after the rally, we discussed
on the tactics of rally, on different fashions of expressions,
and the importance to maintain variety and respect differences
in ONE single rally. pls note, at that time, only very few people
pay attention to this kind of discussion.
this video is also about the problematic identity of "tung
zhi." although gumgum and i may not agree with this kind
of discussions anymore but we thought it is ok to show as some
historical path which we have talked on. and there is nothing
to hide about histories.
moreover, i did a critical comment on about how mass media represented
the event/people in limited ways in which it was about ways of
representation (as form leading to content) and power of representations
(as how the medium is used by certain people only, like journalists
and how the represented, like us, as participants in the rally
could react against their interpretations).
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