Author: Wan Suet

Cat Links Final Video Essay

[Field-Homework 3] Disappearing City: Payphone Booths, Central

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  Disappearing City: Payphone booths, Central Written, Directed and Edited by Cheung Wan Suet, Yvonne, 3036234401 Video link: https://youtu.be/aOsq34dxst4 Theme and Description Central district, crammed with bustling traffic and looming skyscrapers, is the heart of this metropolitan and cosmopolitan city. Everybody here is occupied and is supposed to be occupied with something, living at the fastest pace, embracing the newest changes. All the happenings in here are in an indifferent state of transience and a non-occurrence. The existing payphone is also in a state of transience, silently waiting for its impending death. In the 90s, it was at its prime

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response 2] Oh No, There Goes Tokyo by William M. Tsutsui, Cheung Wan Suet

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There is a thematic parallel between Japan’s calamitous historical past and its visual culture and artistic creation, predominantly characterised by the doom-laden fictional apocalypses. From natural disasters to the nuclear threat, to the burst of a beautiful bubble of economic prosperity, the historical vulnerability led to the perceivable pessimism and unhealable trauma expression in most aspects of its cultural output.  However, the reading expresses an interesting point of view to challenge the very established notion of the gloomy “aesthetic of destruction” with a contrasting kind of optimism and hopefulness that lay underneath the seeming surface of pessimism. For films of

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Cat Links Lecture 6: Housing Stories

Moving House Reflection — Cheung Wan Suet

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The constant change of society leads to the constant change of the usage of the land. People are to compromise and to accommodate in the expense of their tradition. The demolition and the moving of the tomb could be seen as a demolition of tradition and history and the unavoidable gradual change of people’s value in the modern era. Convenience, comfort and efficiency become the priorities, religious ritual and traditional practice are being disposed as they are incompatible with the modern value.

Cat Links Workshop 2: Dreamland Film Screening + Director's Chat

Question for Director Steve Chen

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Do you think the theme of real estate in the film seems to highlight a feeling of urban emptiness in a rapidly developing country like Cambodia? Because real estate itself is a representation of materialism and consumerism, acquiring properties equates to acquiring a sense of urban security.  The film also features traditional Cambodian elements eg. traditional architectural structure like Angkor Wat and Cambodian ancient tales, they all play an interesting contrast with the rapidly developing modern Cambodia, Was it in your intention that the film is also a representation of the struggle between the past and the present in terms

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Cat Links Fieldwork

[Fieldwork Report] Vanishing City — Telephone booths, Cheung Wan Suet & Wong Chun Fung

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Yvonne Cheung Wan Suet 3036234401 & Derek Wong Chun Fung 3036237831 Video link: https://youtu.be/CDAfq33wIrw This short film is about the vanishing telephone booths in Hong Kong. It explains payphone’s past, present and future through a story of a short-lived urban romance. It also aims to examine the reasons for the gradual disappearance of telephone booths in the city, their importance and uselessness, and people’s attitudes towards their disappearance.  TeleRomance Scene 1(1997) D: Oh! Finally, I can call you back. You can’t imagine how long the queue is… Y: Okok no bullshit, we only have five minutes to talk, the man

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 4: Everyday Spaces as Narrative

[READING RESPONSE] Cuts through Hong Kong by Eunice Seng

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Cheung Wan Suet, UID 3036234401 The reading discussed In The Mood Of Love and the 1960s Hong Kong characterised by its state of temporality and conflicting existence. The impermanency awkwardly puts everything into ambiguity — the ambiguity of love and the ambiguity of this city. Even in a more modern context, I still wonder what defines as characteristically Hong Kong. Is it the Chinese culture, the coloniality, or is it a subtle blending of both? There are no definite answers, as Hong Kong still struggles with the constant phenomena of appearing and disappearing: the Kowloon Walled City, Kai Tak Airport, Edinburgh

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