BLUE ISLAND
DIRECTOR: Chan Tze Woon
97 MINS, Hong Kong, Japan, 2022, SUBTITLED
Winner: Best International Feature, HotDOCS Canadian International Documentary Festival 2022
Official Selection: BFI London Film Festival 2022; New Directors New Films Festival, NYC 2022; Busan International Film Festival 2022
The screening will be introduced by emerging filmmaker Diana Cheung.
This programme is curated by Chris Berry.
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IFI DUBLIN
The original Chinese title of Blue Island specifies its blueness as melancholy reflection. Indeed, Chan Tze Woon’s beautiful film extends the run of excellent recent documentaries on the 2019 protest movement such as Inside the Red Brick Wall (2020) beyond in-the-thick-it documentary. Instead, Blue Island contemplates recent events as part of Hong Kong’s long struggle against external hegemony, including during British rule. The comparison of today’s protestors with the young leftist demonstrators of the late 1960s has been controversial. But Chan’s film has two strokes of brilliance. First, he casts today’s young protestors in re-enactments of the events of the 1960s and asks them what they feel. Second, he brings them together with the now middle-aged men and women they are impersonating. The results are thoughtful, tender, resolute, and heart-breaking.
NOTES BY CHRIS BERRY
