Written by Pluto Williams
Chan Tze-Woon’s 2022 film Blue Island has been shown as part of the Cinecity film festival in the Attenborough Centre.
Chan Tze-Woon, who was an exchange student at Sussex, uses the 2019- 2020 protests in Hong Kong to explore the city's history of protest and the identity of its residents. It does this via a unique framework- it gets 2019 protesters to re-enact past historical events including people fleeing the cultural revolution and coming to Hong Kong in 1973, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre which included students from Hong Kong who went to Beijing to show solidarity with the fight for democracy and 1967’s riot’s which were anti-colonial demonstrations against British rule.
It goes against the usual documentary re-enactments which are often embarrassingly bad and add nothing to a film. In fact, the most poignant scene is where Raymound Young, who spent time in jail for participating in the 1967 riots, speaks to Kelvin Tam Kwan-Long, who is awaiting trial for rioting. They sit in a historic jail in their reenactment costumes and speak about what it means to be from Hong Kong. Raymound Young is very firm in his belief that to be from Hong Kong is to be from China whereas Kelvin Tam Kwan-Long states that he is a Hong-Konger and thinks Hong Kong should be independent. This self-reflexivity makes the re-enactments an effective basis to discuss these issues.
The technique is held back by the non-linear narrative which can be hard to follow if you are not knowledgeable in the history of protest in Hong Kong. If the narrative could be more concise and flow better, I think Blue Island would be an even greater film.
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