Tag: 2022 Spring

Cat Links 2022 Blog, Final Video Essay

[Video Essay] Hybrid City

Posted on poying21@connect.hku.hk

https://youtu.be/59YaP758nEE A hybrid city—corridor Walking along the corridor, what do people feel? This video performs a suppressing atmosphere with various transitions between corridors. Corridors, open spaces located between different exits and joints of surrounding environments, usually long and narrow. Unlike a room, corridors are merely an access for walking through and reaching destinations. It is worth noting that a long and narrow space triggers people thinking, rendering a sense of orientation both on their thoughts and walking. Regarding the story plot, this video is not a documentary, which introduces the function of the corridors and the heritage culture exclusively. Instead,

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Final Video Essay

[Video Essay] Voyeurism by Architecture in Film

Posted on u3575590@connect.hku.hk

  The most impressive content of the field trip is voyeurism. This is because I personally think voyeurism is an original feature that only buildings can have. In this lecture, we learn about architecture and how buildings work in movies as a whole. These architectural elements play various roles. There is a role such as improving immersion by communicating the background of the play more realistically to the reader. However, I think the role of improving immersion can be brought up in elements of movies other than architecture. Thus I thought about the original role that only architecture brings, and

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Final Video Essay, Uncategorized

[Video essay] Hybrid City

Posted on u3584597@connect.hku.hk

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, Lecture 8: Sci-fi Technologies

[READING RESPONSE] Carl Abbott

Posted on kuangy1@connect.hku.hk

After reading this chapter, I was really obsessed with different cities introduced in science fiction. The author linked these imagined cities to cities in reality, and it reveals the prototypes of future cities to help us further understand them as well. One type of city is really interesting named Distributed City. It means cities are physically separate but cities still cooperate. There is no any typical distributed city in the real world, but Global City is similar to it with global economy help. Nowadays, geographical boundaries may become unnecessary due to the emergence of advanced transportation and internet. Therefore, cities

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

[READING RESPONSE] William M. Tsutsui

Posted on kuangy1@connect.hku.hk

Oh No, There Goes Tokyo After reading the article, I realized how films would be affected by history and it will also change people’s thinking or even cultures. This article focuses on disaster films in Tokyo, Japan. The question raised: why there are so many disaster movies emerge frequently in Japan? The most obvious aim is to record Japanese history. Japan was situated in such traumas, so not only disaster movies but also movies in different genres were affected by it. To face the fear, the phenomenon of more and more disaster movies’ big fans also reflects that people try

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Cat Links Fieldwork

[Field Report] Vampire Cleanup Department, Dump station in Wan Chai

Posted on u3579915@connect.hku.hk

Selected Film: Vampire Cleanup Department (2017) by Anthony Yan Site: Tai Wo Street, Wan Chai, Hong Kong         This film tells a story about imaginary zombie events happens in urban city. The scene was set in Hong Kong in 21st century in Wan Chai, when zombie activities were secretly monitored and controlled by a group of special operation organization. This group of people disguised themselves as cleaners in the city. In this story, the male lead is a new member to join the team, and later he fell in love with a female zombie. This kind of

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Cat Links Fieldwork

[Field Report] Shaolin Temple

Posted on u3595274@connect.hku.hk

The first movie that came across to my mind that is set in where I live, is a very old movie made in 1982, 《Shaolin Temple》, directed by Zhang Xinyan. The most iconic place throughout the movie got to be the temple itself. This temple is located in Ruzhou, Henan Province, which is a thousand-year-old ancient temple – Fengxue Temple, which is only one mountain away from Shaolin Temple. Speaking of Fengxue Temple, it may be unfamiliar to a lot of people, most people heard of the temple through the movie 《Shaolin Temple》. Fengxue Temple is one of the filming

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Cat Links Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK] A Moment of Romance, St. Margaret’s Church

Posted on u3584569@connect.hku.hk

A Moment of Romance， DIR. Benny Chan（1970） A Moment of Romance (天若有情) is a Hong Kong action romance film. This film was directed by Benny Chan and starred Andy Lau, Jacklyn Wu, and Ng Man-tat. It told a romantic story that an underworld rag and a rich heiress fell in love with each other, just like a Hong Kong version of “Romeo and Juliet” Wah Dee (Andy Lau), a young triad gangster, hijacked a girl named Jo Jo (Jacklyn Wu) in a jewelry store robbery. After this accident, they then experienced a range of incidents. Eventually, they were in love

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, FIELDWORK

[FIELDWORK] Echoes of the Rainbow, Wing Lee Street

Posted on mathur2@connect.hku.hk

Echoes of the Rainbow [Dir/Scr: Alex Law] (2010) In the search for a distinct post-colonial identity, Hong Kong-ers, imbued with nostalgia, turn to architectural phenomena that showcase the transient journeys of their city from a bygone era. Amongst the ever-changing high skyline, fleeting moments are littered throughout the city, anachronistic cracks that show Hong Kong’s rich past and journey from a fishing village to an urban idyll. A genre-based on this premise, “Nostalgia Cinema” has been prominent in the Hong Kong film scene since the 90s. A paradigmatic example is ‘Echoes of Rainbow,’ a winsome, elegiac tale of a family

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK]IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, Central Street, Hong Kong

Posted on pezqq@connect.hku.hk

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, DIR.Wong Kar Wai (2000) Central Street, Hong Kong; Angkor Wat, Cambodia Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 film “In the mood for love” is a love-themed film about two couples who become neighbors. The story is about two couples who become neighbors after their respective lovers cheat on them, making them meet and eventually produce a missed, unattainable love. The film was shot and edited in a collage of corridors, streets, corners and other fragmented spaces in Central and Sheung Wan in Hong Kong and Bangkok in Southeast Asia. As a result, the film is not very

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