Documenting Anti-colonial Social Movements in Early 1970s Hong Kong with 16mm

Abstract

In early 1970s Hong Kong, independently made documentaries were rare. Conventional film distribution channels, which opened doors to public screenings, were closed off to independent filmmakers, and financing was difficult for any filmmaker not backed by a big studio.1 Furthermore, the colonial film censors would ban or censor material they deemed critical of the state; anticolonial sentiments were especially unwelcome. Into this treacherous terrain stepped the social activists Ng Chun-Yin and Mok Chiuyu, coeditors of the radical internationalist leftwing The 70’s Biweekly (70年代雙週刊), a bilingual periodical published in Hong Kong that focused on political issues, social movements, and art.2 The 70’s Biweekly’s writers connected various sociopolitical struggles and problems in their magazine, including global issues of civil rights, feminism, poverty, and the severe, local injustices of the colonial regime.3 In 1971, Ng and Mok decided to extend their publishing project to include filmmaking.