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Personal Memoir of Hong Kong: Still Love You After All These

Director: Stanley Kwan
Script: Elmond Yeung
Photography: Kwan Pun-leung
Producer: Peggy Chiao
Production Company, Source: Taiwan Film Center
4th Floor, No.19, Lane2, Wan Li Street, Taipei, TAIWAN
Phone: 886-2-239-6026 / Fax: 886-2-239-6501
e-mail: tfc@transend.com.tw
TAIWAN / 1997 / Chinese / Color / 35mm / 43 min

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Stanley Kwan

Born in Hong Kong in 1957. Studied communication at the Baptist College of Hong Kong. First sought a career as an actor, then moved on to work as assistant director for Tshui Hark, Ann Hui and Patrick Tam. Directed his first feature Women in 1985, and quickly established himself as one of the leading filmmakers of Hong Kong's new wave, especially as a women's director. In 1991, his film Actress, a half-documentary, half-fictional portrayal of silent film diva Ruan Ling Yu, won the best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival.

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Director's Statement

All of us in Hong Kong have grown tired of questions about the "1997 issue" in recent years. All the expectations, all the fears and paranoias have been voiced; all the speculations have been made. Now that the hand-over has happened, all we can do is wait and see what happens next.

I made this documentary during the final months of British rule, and chose to look back at the Hong Kong I grew up in rather than forward to the future under China's sovereignty. In some ways, this film carries on what I began in my previous documentary Yang and Ying: Gender in Chinese Cinema; it also has a close relationship with the short play I created for Danny Yung's "Journey to the East 1997" theatre project. All of these projects are rooted in my own memories from childhood: my experience of growing up in a poor family, my feelings towards my parents, my discovery of my own sexual orientation. The touchstone is my deep identification with the local tradition of Cantonese opera, and particularly with the opera Princess Chang Ping, in which the climactic line "I deny, I deny, but in the end I can not deny" has resonances not only for me personally but also for all Hong Kong people.



 




Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Organizing Committee