Jacky, a Vietnam-born Chinese man, lives under the flyovers in Sham Shui Po. Despite living on the streets, he still has the aura of an ex-triad leader. However, he has lost his will to live after being tormented by a chronic illness. (華語紀錄片節 Chinese Documentary Festival 2014, 采風 Visible Record) Dir. 徐智彥 / Chui Chi Yin 香港 Hong Kong / 2014 / 37 min

No one knows the slope of a refuse chute, the angle a worker bends to pick up a garbage bag. No one heard the noise from the refuse room, is it the glass broken or the worker fallen? 10 years of collecting the waste, being disrespected, having a sore waist and an aching back. It is a degrading job, but I will still go on.

Working as the lowest denominator of the society, wandering about in the streets, sleeping in the filthiest corner of the city – living people who look like they are dead make their living in the darkest places and fondle in wastelands with their half-awaken dreams.

People in a red-brick-walled compound are barricaded by a group of mysterious men who threaten those in the compound day and night, telling them not to escape and act as if everything is normal. The people inside muse on the drastic changes in their lives, as their limits are constantly being tested and pushed. Some risk their lives trying to escape, while others lose their will and dwell in the surreal realm between dream and reality.

No one knows the slope of a refuse chute, the angle a worker bends to pick up a garbage bag. No one heard the noise from the refuse room, is it the glass broken or the worker fallen? 10 years of collecting the waste, being disrespected, having a sore waist and an aching back. It is a degrading job, but I will still go on.

Lee Wai Shing’s short film focuses on family in response to Huang Canran’s poem ‘So Close’, narrating a son’s journey to visit his mother in North Point

Via Dolorosa captures director’s journey in reconnecting with Vietnamese homeless persons whom she filmed for another short film two years ago. While she accompanied a man in his final days, Jo searched within herself to resolve the original sin of the documentary filmmaker as a bystander to the suffering of others.

After years of silence, the director and his friends return to fragments of a youth shaped by imprisonment, scars and dreams. Lingering with fading images and fragile memories, they together build a space where unspeakable collective traumas can exist and be held.

The last Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong was shut down in 2000, leaving a big group of refugees living on the streets. Some of them chose to live under the flyovers in Shum Shui Po. 2 or 3 things abt the bridge is a documentary short film on the Vietnamese migrant community that congregates under the Shum Shui Po flyover, in one of the poorest areas of Hong Kong.

Stagnation in the body cannot keep up with the changes in real life. When memory of the trembling hand constantly haunting, when the cavity is filled by artificial materials – if body remembers, how should it response with the years of traumatic past? Three of us, describe the indescribable body changes try picking up the hints and signs.