The street view, use of proper names, the walking pedestrians and their speech, numbers and memories makes a city a city. Films taking place in cities captures an assortment of different fragments of residents’ lives; together all of these collage into an archive that represents urban city life at the setting.
Residents are the water that brings life into a city. They move through architecture, resides in it and uses it. They infiltrate alleyways, parks and crossroads to reach destinations via routes that aren’t designed to (e.g. in Chongqing getting to places could be much faster via elevated roads between buidlings instead of pedestrian streets). Their daily commutations somehow “erodes” the city and forces it to make transitions (e.g. need for spaces for extensive financial activities in Hong Kong transforms the city from low-storey buildings to tall skyscrapers and trading centres we now see today in Central). They give different urban spaces a function (a bench is to sit, alleyway as a free storage spot, outskirts of the pedestrian road to pass the person in front). Thus, memories of spaces’ usages, past or present, develops. Affection of the space, a.k.a the city, grows among users that help construct it.
The film connects the city as such the film provides alternative viewing points of the same city. We commonly perceive the city with streetview, while films construct a city by combining streetview, skyview and montage; older movies could serve as an archive of city view of their period.
Chan Long Hei
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You address the route, destination, transition, movement through the city and activities of urban spaces as the key themes. I appreciate that you present your own reflection on film and contemporary Hong Kong context making connection with the reading. The references you raise on Hong Kong and China are meaningful and relevant in illustrating your points so you can discuss them more fully in your reflection instead of only in brackets.