Tag: 2022 Blog

Cat Links 2022 Blog, Final Video Essay, Uncategorized

[Video essay] Hybrid City

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Video: https://youtu.be/M0tu4hwFMBM Theme: As the political and cultural center, Beijing represents the history of more than 5000 years of China. It contains The Imperial Palace, The Tiananmen Square, and countless traditional alleyways. I took the first part of the video shots in Houhai, which is a Lake Park with a long history. Many old hutongs and courtyards still sit around the lake and store the old memories back in the 1980s. Although there were countless skyscrapers and modern buildings built within 50 years, the area around Houhai has never been destructed. So it can be said that Houhai still reserves

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK] TEN YEARS – EXTRAS, CLASSROOMS

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Ten Years 十年 – Extras 浮瓜 (Kwok Zune, 2015) Ten Years is an anthology film composed totally five films. The story’s background is set in the year 2025 and mainly discusses the autonomy of Hong Kong from the aspects of culture, human rights, and politics. The film I chose is “Extras”, directed by Kwok Zune. The story takes place in a school building while the plot is about the government officials creating a planned assassination on two leaders of political organizations in order to arouse the public’s panic so that the National Security Law can be easily legislated. There are two

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Cat Links 2021 Blog, 2022 Blog, FIELDWORK, Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK] INFERNAL AFFAIRS, GUANGDONG INVESTMENT TOWER

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Infernal Affairs, DIR. ANDREW LAU AND ALAN MAK(2002)      Guangdong Investment Tower, Central and Western District, Hong Kong It is a story about Lau and Yan, who are both a mole, but on two opposing sides– the police and the gangster. The movie at the beginning gave the two characters a close up shot, representing that their faith is completely different. It is an exciting story between the searching and fighting against the two, and their “boss” behind Hon Sam and Wong Sir. There is a significant place which appears frequently in the movie. The “Guangdong Investment Tower” is

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Cat Links FIELDWORK

[FIELDWORK] Kong Fu Hustle

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Kong Fu Hustle is a comedy-action film produced, directed, and co-written by Stephen Chow in 2004. Most of the scenes in this movie were filmed in Shanghai Chedun Film Park, where many old shanghai buildings were constructed or rebuilt for filmmaking and exhibition. These days, when visiting the Shanghai Chedun Film Park, people can also identify many buildings or facilities that appeared in the film; for example, figure 1 shows a traffic light, and it is used by Stephen Chow to detoxify himself from the snake venoms. Many other spaces and buildings are also worth discussing, such as Cage walled

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Cat Links Lecture 5 Urban Infrastructure as Event

[FIELDWORK], DUMPLINGS, SHEK KIP MEI ESTATE

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DUMPLINGS, FRUIT CHAN (2004) Shek Kip Mei Estate, Sham Shui Po District, Hong Kong Dumpling 2004 is a Hong Kong horror film. It is expanded from a short segment in the horror compilation, Three…Extremes, and first released in Germany [1].  In the film, Mrs. Li, a former actress who is losing her beauty yet still longing for old-days passion with her husband, seeks help from Aunt Mei, a local chef who makes special dumplings with fetus inside for rejuvenation. The story begins with Li first coming to Block 40 of Shek Kip Mei Estate, the apartment where Mei lives, and

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Cat Links Lecture 5 Urban Infrastructure as Event

[READING RESPONSE] DE CERTEAU, M

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This article explores how narrative structures could create spatial scheme in terms of how each story at core is a travel story and a spatial practice. The author argues that space could create narrative through providing a theater of actions and actuating a contradiction between frontiers and bridges. The author starts by enunciating several ambiguous terms, like “place” and “space”, or “map” and “tour”. Whereas “space” is composed of when various mobile elements intersects with each other, a “place” is an instantaneous configuration of position, which implies stability. One thing I find especially intriguing for me is how stories could

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Cat Links Lecture 5: Urban Infrastructure as Event

Reading Response: Jennifer Yoos and Vincent James

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It’s worth embracing a length of critical history of the multilevel urbanisms by knowing so many talented designers and architects who have made contributions to the experiments of multilevel urban transformation. The authors introduce to us several cities which first deployed multilevel urbanism by telling the stories of some great architects. Then, they took Manhattan and Hong Kong as two specific examples of three-dimensional urban complexity. These great architects, the creators who master the tools of public policy, all had a shrewd understanding on urban economics, and this would be the reason why they are so trusted to “create” and

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Cat Links Lecture 4 Everyday Spaces as Narrative

[READING RESPONSE] NEZAR ALSAYYAD

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The article examines the relationship between voyeurism and urban society amid widespread surveillance systems through films Rear Window, Silver, and The End of Violence. These films demonstrate the altered use of camera lens during distinctive urban periods and geographic spaces. One thing I find in common of all these films is the power inequality arise when a person or a group of people, usually males, could gain access to view, interpret, or even interfere with affairs of others being watched. Even so, women being viewed in films are sometimes willing to be objectified, which further empowered the individuals who control

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