Of Activism and the Land: Ecological and Utopian Visions of Post-Handover Hong Kong Documentaries

Abstract

While Hong Kong’s post-colonial identity has yet to be defined, it is clear that its destiny is strongly tied to the numerous movements and protests that have taken place since 1997. A conscious ecocritical turn—a return to land and nature and farming activities—is one of the developments in the post-handover period. It operates as a means to overturn the colonial discourse and to imagine Hong Kong apart from its economic identity. Using as examples Fredie Ho-lun Chan’s two documentaries, The Way of Paddy (2012) and Open Road after Harvest (2015), this article explores the significance of social movements intent on reimagining the relationship between the land and the Hong Kong people. The ecological and utopian visions in Chan’s films are meant to be seen not as an unreachable ideal but as a critique of the defects of the current system. This article argues that in the progression from the first documentary to the second we witness an awakening on the part of the filmmaker, one that is emblematic of the wider Hong Kong community. Taken together, the two films provide a full articulation of the nature of sustainability, both personal and collective, micro and macro, corporeal and affective.