In the Mood for Green: A Study of Hong Kong Independent Eco-Cinema and Eco-film Festival

Abstract

As a small piece of land and a high-density populated place, discussions and imaginations of Hong Kong is often centered upon the various dimensions and multiple meanings of territory or land. From independent filmmakers Lai Yan Chi(賴恩慈)’s 1+1 (2010), N+N (2012), Jessey Tsang(曾翠珊)’s Ho Chung Tetralogy (2010-2014), to documentaries made by Yin-kai Chan (陳彥楷) and Ho-lun Chan (陳浩倫), land and nature recur as a motif and is invested by filmmakers to construct beliefs, meanings, and significations for structuring social relations. This ecological focus allows filmmakers to reflect upon Hong Kong’s transition to post-colonial and post-urban space and era. Upon the return of sovereignty to the motherland, activism in Hong Kong has been ignited by many controversial issues, including the construction of the Guangzhou–Hong Kong high-speed rail line, which was the source of civil resistance in 2009 to 2010. The activism inspired independent filmmakers to document the sentiments of Hong Kong people and the importance of cherishing nature as part of one’s home. Sangwoodgoon (生活館) was founded in the Choi Yuen Village Movement. It is now a place for growing fresh vegetables as well as new forms of community. The group also held the first “Food and Farming Film Festival” in 2014 to highlight the values of agricultural and food movements in today’s global world. Since then, it becomes an important event to link farming practice, films, and social movement in Hong Kong. In this paper, I will examine their conceptualization of nature within urban Hong Kong, and explore the way land becomes a point where environment and urban, local and global, clash, negotiate, and fertilize each other. This paper will first investigate the representation of land in Hong Kong independent cinema in the post-2008 era. It will then move beyond the analysis of individual films to locate the treatment of land in its historical and cultural contexts of Hong Kong, exploring the formation of a new eco-centric Hong Kong identity through the Food and Farming Film Festival. The discussion will conclude by revealing the eco-centric turn in Hong Kong independent cinema can be useful references for eco-critical studies as a whole.