Chan Hau Chun

Hong Kong, at the height of the protests. A young woman visits her father, whom she has not seen for a while. Her plan is to have lunch with him before the Umbrella Movement reaches a critical juncture. Celebrated, committed filmmaker Ying Liang contributed with a beautiful moving short with an special angle asking: Where do we live, and what is citizenship?

What’s the price one will pay for one’s beliefs? Chan Siu-yau’s life is forced to a halt after being charged, somewhat belatedly, with unlawful assembly and assaulting a police officer during a demonstration in support of striking dock workers over a year ago. In the eyes of fellow activists, she’s no radical, just a concerned citizen singled out for punishment amid an escalating tug-of-war between law enforcement authorities and rights advocates. While Yau is working her shift in a restaurant, busy taking orders and sorting out dirty dishes, the annual June 4 candlelight vigil takes place in the pelting rain, bodies soaked but high spirits undamped. Having missed her university admission exams with two criminal charges looming over her head, what does the future hold for her? Is she guilty as charged?

310 Tung Chau Street is a tenement building in Sham Shui Po. Three Vietnamese from the same province share a subdivided flat. Unemployment, drug addiction, and arguments brew and breed incessantly in this heated environment. During filming, the two young directors were encumbered by a series of obstacles, which turned the process into a chance to reflect on documentary truth.

Ka-long, a wanderlust graduated from the University of Hong Kong, always dreams of backpacking to many countries with his guitar. While he believes he is trapped in Hong Kong, his family thinks that he is simply wasting his life and not settling down for a better future. He is getting more uplifted after he meets Wen-wen, a girl speaks with a Taiwanese accent. While they are dating, Wen-wen makes an effort to hide her true identity from Ka-long. Can they finally resolve the undercurrent of their relationship? Let’s Get Lost ultilises the thematic motif of road movie genre – both protagonists have to embark on a journey of revealing their true identity. As a result, the film widens its scope to the geo-political differences between Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.

Lee Wai Shing’s short film focuses on family in response to Huang Canran’s poem ‘So Close’, narrating a son’s journey to visit his mother in North Point

People in a red-brick-walled compound are barricaded by a group of mysterious men who threaten those in the compound day and night, telling them not to escape and act as if everything is normal. The people inside muse on the drastic changes in their lives, as their limits are constantly being tested and pushed. Some risk their lives trying to escape, while others lose their will and dwell in the surreal realm between dream and reality.

Via Dolorosa captures director’s journey in reconnecting with Vietnamese homeless persons whom she filmed for another short film two years ago. While she accompanied a man in his final days, Jo searched within herself to resolve the original sin of the documentary filmmaker as a bystander to the suffering of others.

Folding together a mediated memory of a Hong Kong thoroughfare, missives to an imprisoned acquaintance, and an artist’s subversive street art, Chan Hau Chun’s Map of Traces is at once precise and slippery in its exploration of presence and absence.

The director spent her childhood living apart from her family and knew very little about its history. This changed when she graduated from college and decided to face her parents with her camera in a search for answers to questions about her past.

After years of silence, the director and his friends return to fragments of a youth shaped by imprisonment, scars and dreams. Lingering with fading images and fragile memories, they together build a space where unspeakable collective traumas can exist and be held.

"5 cops only in Sham Shui Po tonight!" PC46700 said. In the deep of the night, a police officer was dispatched to an old building where he found a Vietnamese drug addict in a partitioned room. His investigation was inexplicably filmed by a would-be documentarian, which led to a conversation with the police constable recollecting his early days and involvement with the Vietnamese refugees more than twenty years ago. An apparently unrelated group of people had this unexpected encounter when the majority of the police force gathered at Mongkok during the Umbrella Movement.

Cheung Sha Wan, an old district of Hong Kong, is now undergoing redevelopment. Aging buildings were replaced with modern ones that are not affordable for most of the people who lived in the area. Some of the old buildings house many more than they were designed for. An apartment may be subdivided into around 10 rooms with wooden boards. This film documents the daily life of the tenants of one of these buildings.

Stagnation in the body cannot keep up with the changes in real life. When memory of the trembling hand constantly haunting, when the cavity is filled by artificial materials – if body remembers, how should it response with the years of traumatic past? Three of us, describe the indescribable body changes try picking up the hints and signs.

Working as the lowest denominator of the society, wandering about in the streets, sleeping in the filthiest corner of the city – living people who look like they are dead make their living in the darkest places and fondle in wastelands with their half-awaken dreams.

No one knows the slope of a refuse chute, the angle a worker bends to pick up a garbage bag. No one heard the noise from the refuse room, is it the glass broken or the worker fallen? 10 years of collecting the waste, being disrespected, having a sore waist and an aching back. It is a degrading job, but I will still go on.