Set in Hong Kong, the narcotics documentary Opium: The White Powder Opera (1976-77) was commissioned by a British television station. Yung, its associate producer and cinematographer, joined the surveillance team of the Narcotics Bureau to acquaint himself with the workings of the drug trade. This paved the way for The System. In addition to the cat-and-mouse game between the cops and the druglord, a fascinating thread traces the relationship among dealers, junkies and mules in Sai Ying Pun. The title hails from Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, another tragedy concerned with a capitalist society’s oppressed and exploited nobodies.
The fantastic story of how an ancient martial art, Chinese kung fu, conquered the world through the hundreds of films that were produced in Hong Kong over the decades, transformed Western action cinema and inspired the birth of cultural movements such as blaxploitation, hip hop music, parkour and Wakaliwood cinema.
Four years later, Hong Kong’s 2014 democratic Umbrella Movement has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet political backlash against protesters has intensified.
In this special edition of Globe Trekker Chinatown, Lavinia Tan, Justine Shapiro and Megan McCormick travel worldwide to explore the magic and mystery of Chinatowns across the globe.
Made for German TV documentary about the early craze of Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema. While critical on the subject and not too well informed, it nevertheless offers some interesting insights into the Hong Kong film industry of that days.
Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo.
An average of 60,000 people emigrated from Hong Kong each year in early 1990s. An absolutely personal and biased sampling of this diaspora from an insider/outsider perspective just before the 1997 handover.
The title of Truth Through Mass Individuation references Carl Jung. An isolated figure is seen performing successively more aggressive actions — dropping a cymbal among a flock of pigeons, firing a rifle in a deserted city street.
Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie, haunting the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city.
Cornélio, an aged man and famous baritone, marries the young Angelica, who plans with her ex-boyfriend Bruno, to kill the husband with contaminated oysters, but she ends up the one who gets sick.
An extended dream sequence presents a biblical allegory about the creation, downfall and rebirth of humanity, told through a series of surrealistic vignettes and musical numbers.
Comments
Have you watched Opium: The White Powder Opera yet? What did you think about it?
