Author: YudanChen 

Cat Links Final Video Essay

[Video Essay] Disappearing City

Posted on u3584460@connect.hku.hk

Title: Disappearing City Site: Changsha Hisense Mall Synopsis The shopping mall is a representative scene of daily life, from which we can see people’s lifestyles and the characteristics of a city. I choose a special shopping mall, Changsha Hisense Mall, as the site for my fieldwork. The mall can be separated into two parts, one part is the ordinary modern shopping mall, and the other part is Changsha Wenheyou. Changsha Wenheyou has 7 floors, covering an area of 20,000 square meters. The decoration here is all designed in accordance with the style of the 1980s and 1990s. And it restores

Continue reading[Video Essay] Disappearing City

Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 8 Sci-Fi Technoscapes

[READING RESPONSE] CARL ABBOTT

Posted on u3584460@connect.hku.hk

The article analyses a few assumptions on ‘migratory cities’ proposed in science fiction and science fiction films, which explore the pattern of future urban development and the social development of human beings. The concept of a city on the move sounds interesting at first; however, it turns out that people are forced to migrate because of ecological damage and resource shortage. A point in the article that touches me significantly is that citizens in Terminator, a rolling city, enjoy a lifestyle similar to the present one. Hence to some extent, these works serve as a reminder for today’s people. Furthermore,

Continue reading[READING RESPONSE] CARL ABBOTT

Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[READING RESPONSE] WILLIAM M. TSUTSUI

Posted on u3584460@connect.hku.hk

The article casts light on apocalyptic imagination in Japanese popular culture and analyzes different angles of interpretation. I was not enthusiastic about this cinematic genre before. However, the article, along with the lecture, offered me a new and provocative perspective on it, where the annihilation fantasies derived from Japan’s peculiar geographical environment and historical memory. Personally, disaster films serve as a medium for psychological trauma repair in Japan. People gain confidence from the happy endings as if they made it to overcome the disaster in reality. Moreover, these movies create a theatrical stage where the contradictions in society and the

Continue reading[READING RESPONSE] WILLIAM M. TSUTSUI

Cat Links 2022 Blog, Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK] MADE IN HONG KONG, WO HOP SHEK CEMETERY

Posted on u3584460@connect.hku.hk

MADE IN HONG KONG, DIR. FRUIT CHAN (1997)        Wo Hop Shek Cemetery, North District, Hong Kong Made in Hong Kong, premiered in 1997, is an independent film written and directed by Fruit Chan. It narrates the story of a group of marginalized and disadvantaged young people in Hong Kong society — low-rent triad Autumn Moon, his retarded friend Sylvester, and his lover Ping, a patient with fatal kidney disease. Although they struggle to live, they are all driven to death in the end. With the film closely related to death, the Wo Hop Shek Cemetery1 is a critical

Continue reading[FIELDWORK] MADE IN HONG KONG, WO HOP SHEK CEMETERY