Prologue Journal

Hong Kong filmmaker duo on city’s ‘political colours’ and winning at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards

• prologu5
• 12/14/202412/14/2024

Hong Kong Free Press

Growing up in Hong Kong, documentary makers Chan Cheuk-sze and Kathy Wong have come to understand colours as political symbols through the city’s pro-democracy movements over the past decade.

In 2019, both were reporters covering the months-long protests and unrest. Hong Kong was then divided into political “colour camps” – pro-democracy protesters identified with yellow, while those on the pro-establishment side were labelled blue.

That colour divide could be traced to the 2014 Umbrella Movement, in which protesters used colourful umbrellas to protect against police batons and tear gas, and later wore yellow ribbons to mark their political stance.

But when Chan and Wong travelled to Taiwan – a self-ruled democracy which China claims as part of its territory – they found themselves in a place where colours carried vastly different political connotations.

In January 2020, the pair were on a reporting trip in Taiwan, which was about to elect its president. At different rallies, candidates and their supporters wore vivid and distinctive colours that together made up the island’s political spectrum.

“Tsai Ing-wen was green, Han Kou-yu was blue, and James Soong was orange,” Chan told HKFP in Cantonese, referring to the three candidates in the 2020 election and the respective colours of their political affiliations.

“As we make reference to a colour, it also represents the political ideology behind a person,” she said on a video call from Taiwan, where she now studies film and art.

Last month, the duo’s debut film Colour Sampling Ideology.mov – a 59-minute visual analysis of colours and politics in Hong Kong and Taiwan – won the best documentary short film category at the prestigious Golden Horse Awards.

Their film followed a Hong Kong politician who visited the island to observe the 2020 vote, and whose political stance would be considered blue in Taiwan due to his affiliation with the Kuomintang (KMT), despite falling into the yellow camp in the Hong Kong context.

In recent years, Hong Kong’s yellow camp has faded. Businesses once known for their pro-democracy stance have closed following frequent inspections from authorities citing anonymous complaints, and a once vibrant “yellow economic circle” has retreated from visibility.

Protests and political opposition have been muted since a Beijing-imposed security law came into force in 2020, effectively quelling political dissent. Authorities say the law has restored order and stability to the city.

Under the law, prominent democracy activists and ordinary citizens have been prosecuted.

“While we see many political colours in Taiwan today, we don’t see them anymore in Hong Kong,” Wong, who studies political science in Taiwan, told HKFP a week after winning the Golden Horse Award.

“The biggest feeling we have in Taiwan is that you can argue, you can at least fight for yourself. Whereas in Hong Kong, if you say you are yellow, people may not dare to talk further,” Wong said.

Chan added: “Throughout our film, we are trying to say how to see light while in darkness.”

‘Story of Hong Kong’

In the days following their Golden Horse win, the pair were busy responding to people’s congratulatory messages, some of which thanked them for “speaking up for Hong Kong.”

But Chan, a former creative media student and an aspiring artist, said this was never her intention. “We may not be the right people to speak up. To be honest, we are nobody,” she said.

Initially they did not even consider competing for the award, concentrating instead on screening their film at Taiwan’s many independent bookstores.

“There was a very pragmatic reason: we did not have money, we had no income,” Chan said.

The screenings were “hard work,” with the pair having to lug around equipment and watch the film repeatedly, but Chan said they were also “the most fun” they ever had.

“You never know who will come,” Chan said. “They may be interested in things completely unrelated to aesthetics and filmmaking. But it just makes you happy. It is a genuine exchange.”

The film was motivated primarily by the pair’s discontent after moving to Taiwan – Wong arrived in 2021 and Chan joined a year later – where they found people had a limited understanding of their home city.

“Hong Kong is just a failed case,” Wong said of how her political science classmates in Taiwan saw the city. “That’s their discourse.”

“They would ask you about what is going on in Hong Kong … and I thought, why should I expose my trauma so casually while you don’t actually care.”

To Chan, talking about her home to people in Taiwan inevitably ended in either side getting emotional.

“The conclusion has always been that ‘you have suffered and we really wish to support Hong Kong’,” Chan said. “But an emotional conclusion is pointless.”

“Are we doomed to depict 2019 as a story of Hongkongers’ suffering? … But it was never that simple,” she added.

“It’s always been about how to tell the story of Hong Kong.”

‘Visual essay’

Golden Horse judges described Colour Sampling Ideology.mov as a “visual essay,” calling the film rigorous in its analysis and rich in political sensitivity.

The film has various components documenting the major political colours in Hong Kong and Taiwan: red, green, blue, orange, and yellow.

The pair followed the 2020 and 2024 Taiwanese presidential elections, as well as major court cases against pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, such as the one that saw 45 sentenced to up to 10 years behind bars for conspiring to commit subversion last month.

Chan and Wong used an innovative narration method – by scanning printed images taken from their footage on a library scanner.

Chan said the method allowed them to capture subtle differences in colours that may not be immediately recognisable to the human eyes.

“The colours we know, the colours being perceived, and the colours being presented are all different. Colours have great tolerance,” she said, likening the method to “visual studies.”

“And it is the same for political colours,” Wong added.

The film attempts to document the nuances of people’s political stances hidden behind crude colour associations.

A case in point is when two supporters at a rally for the KMT blue camp in the run-up to the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election quarrel over their difference opinions on the protests in Hong Kong. One was on the side of the demonstrators – the yellow view – while the other was anti-protests – the blue view.

“Colours are ambiguous and politics is never simply black and white,” Wong said. “The key is that you have the right to speak up, and others have the right to rebut… It is in such rowdy arguments that we experience freedom.”

Censorship fear

Despite their film being in part about Hong Kong, Chan and Wong said they had no plans to screen it in their home city.

An amendment to Hong Kong’s Film Censorship Ordinance in 2021 enabled authorities to ban films deemed contrary to national security, and since then a number of independent films have failed to pass the city’s censors.

See also: How Hong Kong film directors are navigating a new era of censorship

Earlier this year, another of Chan’s films failed to pass authorities’ vetting and was withdrawn from a short film festival in the city, according to Ming Pao.

“It will be a waste of time,” Chan said when asked if their award-winning documentary would be sent to censors in Hong Kong.

That did not mean Hongkongers could not see the film, though, with the pair saying they had met many at screenings, most of them tourists from the city.

Chan and Wong also received messages from fellow filmmakers, who told the pair that their acceptance speech had motivated them to continue creating. Upon receiving the award, the pair said: “When a place loses its colours… perhaps what we can do is to preserve the memory of its colourful past.”

“Seeing Hong Kong requires new perspectives… and this is what every Hong Kong filmmaker has been working on,” Wong said.

“You can see a momentum being built up. I believe there will be more new creations in the next few years,” she added.

Chan hopes that Colour Sampling Ideology.mov will one day occupy a place in a catalogue of Hong Kong documentary films, alongside other titles such as Blue Island, Inside the Red Brick Wall, or even earlier unpublished materials about the city’s political movements.

“Together they create a large folder, a folder that allows people to see what is Hong Kong.”

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https://hongkongfp.com/2024/12/14/hong-kong-filmmaker-duo-on-citys-political-colours-and-winning-at-taiwans-golden-horse-awards/