Homesick

HONG KONG / 2003 / Cantonese / Color / Video / 24 min

Director, Script, Photography, Editing, Sound, Narrator, Producer, Source: Lam Chi-hang
101, BLK E, Lok Nga Court, Ngau Tau Kok, Kowloon HONG KONG
Phone: 852-9502-0882
E-mail: 01508011d@polyu.edu.hk

Hong Kong in March 2003. The whole world is frightened by news of a mysterious new illness, SARS. Continuous news coverage, cancelled university lectures, people in quarantine . . . Crowds have vanished from shopping centers, familiar food stalls are shut down. Like a patient abandoned by a doctor, a closed housing complex quietly becomes a ruin. A love letter to the fleeting spring of 2003: the war in Iraq, the death of Leslie Cheung, the Academy Awards. With a naïve gaze, the twenty-year-old director laments his “home” Hong Kong.

[Director’s Statement] Homesick means I miss my home, and it also means my home is sick.
In March 2003, SARS was exploding in Hong Kong. Many cases of infection were found in Ngau Tau Kok, where my home is located.

While neighbors were suffering from both the disease and fear, I stayed at school to work everyday. TV news was the only channel between my home and me. Eventually I went home because I was homesick.

Traveling around Ngau Tau Kok, I found that the problem goes beyond SARS. Amoy Gardens (a private estate) is like a ghost town. Ngau Tau Kok Lower Estate is like a dying old man. The dam above the valley is being ignored. I found broken linkages between the land and me, between my childhood and my present, and between my parents and myself.

The SARS explosion has taught me a lesson—treasure the land and people while they still exist.

Lam Chi-hang Born in Hong Kong in 1982. Currently completing B.A. at the School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Hobbies include drawing comics, traveling and rowing. Homesick is a project from the advance digital video production course.