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Apart

Revolution is pursued for a better love, yet love gets lost in the unpredictable tides of revolution. Veteran actor Lester Chan Chit-Man directs, using the emotions of young people as a thread to connect the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-Extradition Bill protests. When emotions meet politics, social movements and love become intertwined, as four college students drift through their youth. Whispers and embraces, gazes or walking together—the nights in the occupied zones once brought us together. Documentary footage and fictional stories alternate, perhaps evoking memories of the happiness and sorrow of these past years. We thought revolution would ultimately succeed, that it didn’t matter whether we gathered or dispersed. But in the end, we became strangers scattered around the world, only then realizing that regret is inevitable in youth and that looking back always brings a sense of emptiness.

Apart

NR 2020
Cockroach

In February 2019, the Hong Kong government proposed a bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to face trial in mainland China. The controversial bill sparked immediate outrage over widespread fear of arbitrary detention and politically motivated trials that would decimate Hong Kong’s autonomy under ‘one country, two systems.’ Protests escalated into epic pro-democracy demonstrations, in part led by young people connected via social media. COCKROACH, filmed during the height of the protests, captures the extraordinary intensity of an unprecedented era in Hong Kong’s history.

Cockroach

7.0 2020
We Have Boots

The Umbrella Movement of 2014, also known as the Occupy Movement, paved the way for Hong Kong’s current upheavals, but unfolded in significantly different ways. This creative documentary focuses on the intellectual, political, and discursive underpinnings of the social and political actions of 2014, before fast-forwarding to 2019. A range of thoughtful and engaged intellectuals, students, scholars, activists, and artists including Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man, Ray Wong, and Agnes Chow (many of whom are facing imprisonment for their democratic activism) articulate a range of philosophies, viewpoints and emotions, set against Hong Kong’s spectacular urban background of skyscrapers, night lights, and street-occupying mass movements.

We Have Boots

7.0 2020
Inside the Red Brick Wall

In 2019, Hong Kong was swept by demonstrations against the controversial extradition bill. At the Polytechnic University, a group of students also takes a stand for freedom and democracy. Negotiations with the police are chaotic and aggressive, conducted via megaphones and politically charged music played over loudspeakers. The colorful umbrellas which the young people use to protect themselves against the brutal police actions emphasize the group’s bravado, which borders on recklessness. What begins as an energetic battle against the establishment turns into a lopsided game of cat and mouse when the police decide to surround the building. Within its red brick walls, the university building becomes a prison. Over the nearly two weeks that follow, as fear and exhaustion grow among the hundreds of students, so does the uncertainty. Should they hang on inside, or leave the building to face the armed police?

Inside the Red Brick Wall

6.5 2020
Flesh

Wing Sum, a little girl frequently neglected by her mother, is sent to her grandmother's mansion for a temporary stay on a stormy night. There begins a series of queer events. First there is a power outage, then her grandmother reveals her most well kept secret: she is a cannibal all along, and tonight she is having her grand daughter for dinner. Chased by a maniacal cannibal in her own territory, there is seemingly no escape for Wing Sum. She is however miraculously rescued by the queerest turn of events.

Flesh

NR 2020
Jugaad

Jugaad is a Hindi word that can be translated as "innovative or effective solution that bends the rules". It refers to the extreme capacity developed by Mumbai's inhabitants to adapt and get around any type of constraint or obstacle posed by the city's urban structure. In a relatively small piece of land where 21 million people live today, the inhabitants of Mumbai demonstrate great creativity when it comes to managing the spaces (for sale, for prayer, for traffic) and the flows that cross them every day. Without using language, Hong Kong artist Chak Hin Leung brings together in this video a dozen unique situations in which people, animals, vehicles and natural elements intermingle and brush up against each other, without ever colliding.

Jugaad

NR 2020
Hong Kong Moments

As pro-democracy activists and armed police battle in the streets of Hong Kong, ordinary citizens are choosing sides. Historically an outlier of both western and Chinese power, Hong Kong wields its own economic force, affording the city and its people a spirit of independence that has now erupted into clouds of tear gas. Filmmaker Bing Zhou uses a nimble camera to follow a group of protagonists—two opposing political candidates, a tea shop owner, a cab driver, a police officer, a paramedic—on two separate days of conflict. On September 21, 2019, protestors from three districts join forces, resulting in unprecedented violence. Just 10 days later on October 1, the National Day of the People’s Republic of China, previously undecided onlookers show their stripes. Thoughts transform into action in this demonstration of how mercurial and personal Hong Kong’s politics have become.

Hong Kong Moments

7.5 2020
MMA Diva

In order to take the precious plaque, you can only win on the ring. Yao Qingwei (Lin Huiqian) defeated the pressure that could not be given by the mother, and left the home to rely on the integrated fighting boxer who retired due to the foot injury (Yang Liuqing). At this time, Fighting Queen He Hua (Jingju) gave birth to the letter of the fist, for the guarantee, two women found the movie star Zhang Lei (Guo Silin) to go to the iron cage. At the crucial moment, there is no way to retreat, the blue blue decides on behalf of the friends and Taiwan ·····

MMA Diva

NR 2020
At Some Point In Time

The matter of growing, which we always understand afterward, is driving us far away enough to not having a good farewell. The story begins with a day that Hong Kong experiences a magnitude 4.5 earthquake. It brings almost no impact to the city but a beautiful yet untouchable year to a form-one boy name Kwok Pak Chi. Due to the unadaptable school life and his introspective character, he starts to imagine animals escaped from the earthquake as his friends. However, the more he immerses in his fantasy, the more he is pushed by the reality. With the pressure from his unsatisfying homework, schoolmates’ opinions and caring from others, how should Pak Chi confront himself and his imaginary friends?

At Some Point In Time

7.0 2020
Outcry and Whisper

Shot over an eight-year period (2007-2015), this documentary film aims to present women’s struggle in the private and public spheres, both in China and Hong Kong. It offers a view into the lives of female factory workers, artists, rights activists, and intellectuals – whom deal with political violence, sexual harassment, online bullying, long-term separation from family, arbitrary treatment by transnational factory management, and/or poverty in their home villages.

Outcry and Whisper

NR 2020
Electric Signs

The film's narrator, an observer modeled on the critic Walter Benjamin, takes us on a journey through a variety of urban landscapes, examining public spaces and making connections between light, perception and the culture of attractions in today's consumer society. Structured as a documentary essay in the spirit of city symphony films, ELECTRIC SIGNS features footage in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. Also featured are interviews with prominent lighting designers; advertising and marketing professionals; urban sociologists and visual culture experts; and community activists.

Electric Signs

NR 2020
Mong Kok First Aid

Mong Kok First Aid investigates the experiences and unheard stories of a group of young volunteers who provided First Aid services to wounded participants during Hong Kong’s landmark Umbrella Movement of 2014. Just half a decade later, their first-person narratives reveal an intense feeling of time passing and memories fading, as this documentary seeks to challenge history by intervening to supplement the record. After all, who decides whose story can be a part of history?

Mong Kok First Aid

NR 2020
Those Who Do Not Remember the Past Are Condemned to Repeat It

Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It (2020) is an experimental documentary investigating the intersection of People’s Temple (Jonestown) with the first-person survival horror game Outlast 2 developed by Red Barrel. Departing as the digital study of the game, this project attempts to recontextualize the relationship between the mass suicide of People’s Temple in 1978 and the game’s narrative. Composed by the archival materials from FBI and machinima made with the game, this work conveys uncanny audio and visual journey in the understanding the self-destruction, the religious utopia, the binary between capitalism and socialism.

Those Who Do Not Remember the Past Are Condemned to Repeat It

4.5 2020
After the Riots, Before the Liberation

2019 in Hong Kong, protests become our daily life. The stuffs in the streets after each protest are changing our urban landscape, and they become the view of our everyday life. Graffitis on walls, unscrewed railings, bricks, respirators, safety goggles. Everything records what has happened in the city and witnesses our beliefs. I walked through the streets with my camera after protests. Mr. LIU Yi Chang let the objects tell the story in his nouveau roman short story, Riot, in 1968. Likewise, I let the objects play the narrators and tell us about the protests. Moreover, there are conversations and dialectic between different narrators…

After the Riots, Before the Liberation

NR 2020
Meng Lang

People leave, taking much with them and leaving much behind. The poet Meng Lang passed away from illness in December 2018. He was forced into exile by political oppression in Shanghai, fled to the United States, then arrived in Hong Kong, and finally chose to settle in Taiwan. Throughout his life, Meng Lang pursued freedom with the will of a poet and lived passionately. He opposed tyranny through his actions and celebrated the power of literature through his poetry. His life was a journey of wandering and migration, and along the way, those he met and came to like were mostly poets. His wife, friends, and comrades discussed poetry and politics with him, and all felt the warmth and kindness he brought to his interactions. In a noisy era, everyone is hurried along by fate. At some moment, with deep reluctance, everyone bid farewell to Meng Lang and set out again on their journeys.

Meng Lang

NR 2020
One Country through Torture

This documentary depicts the stories of four Chinese activists—Xie Wenfei, Zhang Shengyu, Chen Yunfei, and Liu Ping—who faced torture. It also invites Hong Kong participants Chan Ho-wun, Li On-yin, Chen Hung Sau, and Cheung Chiu-hung to experience and reflect on these situations through simulated installations. The film highlights that in the advancement of human civilization, "human rights", "rule of law", and "democracy" are mutually indispensable and interdependent. In countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, the rule of law cannot be upheld, let alone the protection of human rights.

One Country through Torture

NR 2020
Trial and Error

This Anti-ELAB (Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill) Movement documentary short takes us back to the airport occupation on 12 August 2019. Although this new form of protest soon turned into a crisis, it became an important lesson for the protesters. Compared to the tension inside the airport terminal, the long walk home at sunset on the Lantau highway, which connects the Hong Kong International Airport to the residential areas, felt like a reminiscence of a school field trip.

Trial and Error

6.0 2020
Children's Game #23: Step On A Crack

A sprite in a blue pinafore, plimsolls, and white facemask flits through Hong Kong, enclosed in a quicksilver bubble of magic. Streets become the dull, slow backdrop to her vividness. Oblivious to storefronts and curious stares, seeing only the yellow lines and the cracks in the pavement, she snakes and two-steps around seams and lines without loss of élan, chanting spells that shade into vague sounds. “Step on a line, break the devil’s spine, Step on a crack, break the devil’s back, Step in a ditch, your mother’s nose will itch, But if you step in between, everything will be keen!” By igniting her route with meaning, she briefly wrests public space from the commercial values this city lives by.

Children's Game #23: Step On A Crack

NR 2020
Republic of Cynic : 1989

Yao filmed the work 1989 in the square of the C-LAB, evoking our memories of the “Tank Man” with a similar setting. It also deconstructs the significance as historic as stereotypical carried by the original image through absurd, nihilist game-playing. It is worth mentioning that the four inflatable dummy Type 59 tanks in this work were made in and delivered from China to the artist’s order. These dummy tanks are juxtaposed with the made-to-order documents, which not only reveals China’s status as the world’s factory after 2003, but also paradoxically brings a contemporary dimension to the historical image of the “Tank Man.”

Republic of Cynic : 1989

NR 2020
Not One Less

The documentary “Not One Less” records the clash in Hong Kong Island on 31st August, 2019, and the assembly on Mid-Autumn festival night supporting protestors in custody. The protests initiated by the "Extradition Bill" has continued for more than 100 days. In this period, over 1000 citizens were arrested, a number of people committed suicide, and there are rumors that some protestors are missing. In the clash scene, protestors strive to protect their comrades from being isolated. After the clash, they still care about their comrades in custody. On the mid-autumn festival night, they sang loudly outside the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre, to let their comrades know that they were not abandoned.

Not One Less

6.0 2020
Tugging Diary

Tugging Diary documents a footbridge over a year between August 2019 to January 2021. Due to social unrest and the uncertainty of various immediate happenings, both the internet and physical spaces act as critical communication platforms of its own during this period. As such, information can be circulated in the community more widely and rapidly outside of the existing mainstream media. As time goes by, these materials are continuously altered, some were renewed, while the others were removed, covered with paint, or overlaid by other information.

Tugging Diary

7.0 2020
Hong Kong Connection: 7.21 Who Owns the Truth

A year on from the 7.21 incident, the narrative of what happened that night has morphed from an attack by white-clad men on ordinary people into a violent confrontation between men in white T-shirts and men wearing black. Hong Kong Connection reviewed CCTV and online footage from the day to look for clues and track down those captured on film in a bid to understand the truth as they told it. One of the producers Choy Yuk Ling was later arrested by the Hong Kong Police Force for her involvement in this truth unveiling documentary.

Hong Kong Connection: 7.21 Who Owns the Truth

NR 2020