Directing
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.
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?
The last Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong was shut down in 2000, leaving a big group of refugees living on the streets. Some of them chose to live under the flyovers in Shum Shui Po. 2 or 3 things abt the bridge is a documentary short film on the Vietnamese migrant community that congregates under the Shum Shui Po flyover, in one of the poorest areas of Hong Kong.
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.
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.
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
Jacky, a Vietnam-born Chinese man, lives under the flyovers in Sham Shui Po. Despite living on the streets, he still has the aura of an ex-triad leader. However, he has lost his will to live after being tormented by a chronic illness. (華語紀錄片節 Chinese Documentary Festival 2014, 采風 Visible Record) Dir. 徐智彥 / Chui Chi Yin 香港 Hong Kong / 2014 / 37 min
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.
"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.
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.
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.
