Roxie Theater: Blue Island

Virtual Q&A with Director Chan Tze Woon & Producer Peter Yam
Sat, 8/6 & Sun, 8/7!!!!

Co-Hosted by:
NorCal HK Club 北加州香港會
US HongKongers Club 香港人會館
Hong Kong Affairs Association of Berkeley
We The Hongkongers and
World Affairs

“Some of my protagonists are in prison now,” said director Chan Tze Woon in his in-person acceptance speech. “I share this award with them.”

An elegiac corollary to the fiery documentaries that captured Hong Kong’s recent protest movement and ensuing crackdown, Chan Tze Woon’s Blue Island looks at the state of the region in the wake of the 2020 national security law, an era where many pro-democracy protestors have either fled into exile or are sitting in custody. Timely, resonant, and explicitly hybrid in its approach, the film not only blurs narrative and documentary, but also the years of 2019 to 2021 with a longer history of Hong Kong as a site of refuge, particularly the stories of those who fled the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen. Alongside interviews and observational footage, the film incorporates staged sequences in which the protest leaders of today are cast in the roles of student leaders from 1989 and earlier, foregrounding and rupturing its artificiality. Jesse Cumming, Hot Docs

Directed by Chan Tze Woon. Produced by Peter Yam. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan. In Cantonese, Mandarin, English with English subtitles. 2022. DCP. 98 minutes.