Flâneur in modernity
IU CHUNG HONG'S FILMS & PHOTOGRAPHIES
After the Riots, Before the Liberation
暴動之後，光復之前
Year: 2020
Film Length: 15:00
Aspect Ratio: 3:2
Shooting Format: Film & Digital
Color: Black & White with Color
Director/ Script/ Camera/ Editing: Iu Chung Hong
Synopsis:
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. Graffiti 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 Yichang let the objects tell the story in his nouveau roman short story, Roit, 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.
It is a tough time in our history for Hongkongers. I cannot talk about it with merely fiction film or documentary. That’s why I choose the essay film form. “Film is truth, 24 times a second.” (Le Petit Soldat, Jean-Luc Godard) Or sometimes, a frame for 24 seconds. When we gaze at an image, not just a glance, the images tell us more.
Picking images in the city is a kind of gleaning. Walter Benjamin finds the common essence between poet and gleaner. They both walk in the urban as flâneur and find the memory trace in the city. Agnès Varda recognizes that she is a gleaner in her film Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse. It is an artistic gleaning. “You pick ideas, you pick images, you pick emotions from other people, and then you make it into a film.” After the protests, taking photos of the stuff in the street is like a kind of gleaning.
Award and screening:
2020
．"People Power" section , Kaohsiung Film Festival 2020, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
．Official Selection, Best Experimental Films Nominated, South Taiwan Film Festival 2020, Tainan, Taiwan
．Official Selection, International Experimental Short Film Competition, 38e Festival Tous Courts, Aix-en-Provence, France
．Official Selection, Seeing the Unseen Film Festival 2020, Taipei, Taiwan
2021
．Official Selection, 13th Hong Kong Independent Film Festival, Hong Kong
．Official Selection, 18th Festival Internacional Signos da Noite, Urbino, Italy
．Official Selection, Hong Kong Independent Film Festival in Japan, Osaka and Kyoto, Japan
．Official Selection, 21th NeMaf Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival, Seoul, South Korea
．Official Selection, Sendai Short Film Festival 2021, Sendai, Japan
Official Selection, East Asia Experimental Competition, 35th Image Forum Festival, Tokyo, Japan
．Programme "Made in China" édition 2021, Comptoir du Doc, Rennes, France
．Official Selection, VII Festival Cinemística, Granada, Spain
．Official Selection, 7° Festival internacional Signos da Noite, Lisbon, Portugal
2022
．Official Selection, Thessaloniki Free Short Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece
2023
Superimpose, the voices of two people who do not show up, insert subtitles full of word games, a monochrome static screen montage that is sometimes partially colored. The influence of Godard in Histoire(s) du cinéma can be seen. No, it may be called pastiche. But that fact doesn't just mean that the new Hong Kong director is an avid enthusiast of the Nouvelle Vague's "Prodigal Son." For several years from May, Godard left documentary footage around many parts of the world where politics stand out, from Prague to Palestine, but if he still has the same passion, he should have gone to Hong Kong immediately. This short film demonstrates the promising perceptions of these creators. IU Chung Hong is shooting "Cinétracts" (flysheet movie), following Godard who rolled the camera in the streets of Paris.
多重焼きつけ。姿を見せない二人の声。言語遊戯に満ちた字幕の挿入。ときおり部分的に彩色される、モノクロの静止画面のモンタージュ。いかにも 『映画史』のゴダールの影響が窺われる。いや、パスティシュといってもいいかもしれない。だがその事実は単にこの香港の新人監督が、かのヌーヴェルヴァーグの「放蕩息子」の熱烈なマニアであることを意味しているわけではない。ゴダールは〈五月〉から数年にわたって、プラハからパレスチナまで、政治が突出している世界の多くの場所を廻ってドキュメンタリー映像を残したが、もし彼が現在も変わらぬ情熱を抱いているならばただちに香港に赴いたはずだ。この短編は、こうした作り手の側の期待的な認識を明示している。姚仲匡はパリの路上でカメラを廻したゴダールに倣い、「シネトラクト」（アジビラ映画）を撮っているのだ。
四方田犬彥 Inuhiko Yomota
(film historian, comparative literature scholar)
〈香港映画、地下に潜る〉，《新潮》 2021年10月号
Hong Kong Movie, Dive Underground, Shincho Oct 2021 issue
The artist's choice to take the essay film format because the reality of Hong Kong can't be contained with fiction and documentary is very clever.
AHN Yaejee
(cine-media curator and program coordinator)