Covid Numbers Climb; Oscar-Nominated Ascension

Babies and toddlers seems more at risk of Covid-19 now

Hong Kong had another record day of cases -- 7,533 -- and sadly 16 deaths, one of which was an 11-month old baby girl. There is a big concern now about children becoming infected and how they are not getting vaccinated or are too young to be vaccinated in the case of this baby.

Meanwhile the government is still going ahead with the vaccine pass that starts on Thursday. In order to get a haircut or go to a religious service you must have at least one jab and have this vaccination certification uploaded on your LeaveHomeSafe app.

Uploaded vaccine passport is on left, none on right

If you are going to a shopping mall, supermarket, department store or wet market then you may need to show your vaccine pass if a security person stops you. So there may be some people who are not vaccinated and may take the risk of going into a supermarket without having to show anything. How is this helpful?

And perhaps even worse, no vaccination is needed at all to go into a hotel! Why is that when almost all hotel staff were pushed to get the jab? It boggles the mind.

Something completely unrelated to Covid -- I watched a documentary called Ascension that was nominated for Best Documentary at this year's Academy Awards.

I didn't know quite what to expect and was surprised at the end and how it all came together.

Oscar-nominated documentary Ascension

There is no one main character, no particular storyline, but it becomes more apparent the longer you watch it. It starts off with scenes of people looking for jobs and those trying to entice them with decent labour conditions, like free wifi, air conditioning in the dormitories, but the pay is very low at around 20 kuai (US$3.15) an hour. We are not sure what the jobs entail, but some say you get to sit while working, others say the job is in an office.

People get rounded up and taken in coaches to their new destiny.

Some make rugs for Ikea, components for spray bottles, bottles of water, others make microchips, Christmas trees, jeans, and shirts. 

Perhaps the most amusing scene is watching mostly women putting sex dolls together. They are made of silicone, with large pendulous breasts, and curvy bottoms. They have permanent surprised expressions on their faces. Each one is custom made -- "Her nipples need to be pink!" one worker says, another has her wig changed from blonde to brunette. Another flings the doll's legs apart to inspect her down there. Each one is photographed to make sure it is correctly done up.

Worker checks the sex doll's face with the order

An interesting tidbit is that director Jessica Kingdon said a subsequent talk that all the sex doll factories they went to were owned by women.

Then the film shifts to jobs that have been created in the last few years, such as cryptocurrency mining (mostly young guys playing video games and eating lots of junk food), men collecting rented bikes that are dumped in a pile, people talking into their smartphone streaming online to sell things, and what looks like a pyramid company, where everyone is aiming to make over 10 million yuan in three years.

There's also people who are training to be bodyguards, hitting each other until there are scratches and bruises on their chests, and to be professional-looking assistants where they should smile to show eight of their upper teeth, while others are training to be butlers, measuring the distance between glasses and plates. The instructor asks them if they have ever watched Downton Abbey and none of them have, leaving them with little understanding with what career they have chosen.

It's an interesting look at what Chinese wealthy people think what being rich should look like, and the butlers trying to fulfill that fantasy. They probably assume everyone in England lives like that, ringing a bell for the butler to appear. 

People waiting around to get work in factories

This is similar to the aspirations of China's middle class. They think they have made it when they buy luxury brands or they go to a water park and sharks swim around them in an outer pool. It's all quite overwhelming the sheer numbers of people all trying to enjoy themselves at the same time.

Kingdon herself has an interesting background. Her father is Jewish-American, her mother is Chinese. Her brother went to China for a few years, learned Mandarin and persuaded his sister to come look at the country.

Before Covid-19, Kingdon and her small crew filmed in 51 different locations around the country and she says in interviews she had the best Chinese food. Kingdon also managed to meet relatives on her mother's side, one of which is now a cousin who works in Silicon Valley in the US.

Nevertheless, the title of the film comes from her great grandfather who wrote poems. One of them is Ascension, where he writes that the higher one climbs, one is horrified by what they see down below.

Director Jessica Kingdon, her mother is Chinese

This encapsulates the film -- how people are struggling to get ahead in some way, whether it's factory work to escape the poverty in the countryside, or to become a butler in the hopes of getting away from a terrible work environment. And with all this production and capitalism leads to terrible environmental damage, climate change, and exploitation of labour.

But Ascension doesn't preach a particular message, nor is it judgemental -- it has a fly-on-the-wall approach to the film and lets the viewers see what is going on and decide for themselves what they see in the documentary.

Ascension

Directed by Jessica Kingdon

97 minutes

HK Protest Documentary Wins Golden Horse

A still from Chow's Revolution of Our Times documentary

Tonight the Golden Horse Awards, the Chinese-speaking world's equivalent of the Oscars was held tonight and the Hong Kong documentary on the 2019 protests was named Best Documentary.

When the film Revolution of Our Times was announced as the winner, it prompted a long round of applause and shouts of support for Hong Kong from the audience in Taipei.

Director Kiwi Chow sent a pre-recorded message from Hong Kong. He expressed thanks for the award, dedicated the film to Hong Kong people, saying he hoped it would bring them some comfort.

Chow speaking via a recorded message in HK

"I cried a lot when I produced this film; several times I comforted myself with this film, to express my anger, hatred, to face my fear and trauma," he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

The 152-minute documentary follows several protesters and documents their clashes with police in the 2019 anti-government protests. 

Revolution of Our Times was a last-minute addition to the Cannes Film Festival lineup in July, but it will never be shown in Hong Kong because of the national security law which prohibits any hint of secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

As a result those in the arts and culture fields are worried about work being misconstrued as contravening the national security law. Most recently the opening of M+ contemporary art museum resulted in photographs by dissident artist Ai Weiwei not being displayed even though they are part of a collection donated by well-known Swiss collector Uli Sigg.

This big win for the documentary comes days after the second anniversary of the District Council elections where 71 percent of registered voters turned the city's electoral map yellow except for one district. It was an unprecedented win for the pro-democrats, but the victory was short lived, again because of the national security law.

A poster of the documentary

Since then the city's institutions are being dismantled from the district councillors themselves to grassroots organisations and unions, as well as a pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily.

Chow's film is a reminder of what happened and to never forget.

Fallout Two Years After 7.21

Commuters in Yuen Long station were attacked two years ago

 

It's hard to believe it's been two years since the horrific attacks on commuters in Yuen Long by men in white T-shirts armed with long wooden sticks and metal rods. What has happened since then?

Last month five people were convicted in the attacks and will be sentenced tomorrow, another man was acquitted on the lack of evidence. That is only a tiny fraction of the people involved in the incident that left 45 people injured and shocked Hongkongers who watched it unfold in real time.

Ho livestreamed the attack, was later arrested

The brave journalist Gwyneth Ho of Stand News who kept live streaming the incident as she was being attacked became a politician in the hopes of running in the Legislative Council elections in 2019 that were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

But in January she was arrested along with 52 others for organizing and participating in the pro-democracy primaries last July. Ho was released on bail.

Another now former pro-democracy lawmaker, Lam Cheuk-ting, who rushed to the scene and was injured himself, was arrested for the same charge.

Lam was also arrested earlier this year

RTHK did an extensive investigation into the Yuen Long attacks, but one of its producers, Bao Choy Yuk-ling, was arrested and convicted for "submitting misinformation" when she requested ownership information of some of the vehicles used by the white-shirted men.  

While she was fined HK$6,000 for two violations of the Road Traffic Ordinance, Choy is appealing the decision because she feels she has done nothing wrong.

The RTHK documentary, 7.21: Who Owns the Truth? won a human rights prize and journalism nods, but public broadcaster refused to accept the awards and even tried to withdraw the application beforehand.

Choy does not believe she did anything wrong

But on that same evening in Western district, another attack was happening at the liaison office. Protesters defaced the Chinese emblem with black paint and it was then that state media began reporting on the anti-government protests and described the participants as rioters.

This incident may have set in motion the beginning of plans to implement the national security law less than a year later.

Now two years later, after Apple Daily shut down, laid off its staff and turned off the lights, the former executive editor was taken away by police, along with three others who reported to police following their bail conditions. They are expected to be charged under the national security law.

Lam Man-chung was arrested today

Eight in total have been have been arrested since last month, including two editorial writers, while Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was arrested last year for violating the national security law.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association said it was shocked and puzzled by the latest arrest, describing freedom of the press as the "cornerstone of an international city".

"The association urges the government not to keep arresting journalists in the name of national security in a bid to create white terror in the field," it said.

What will happen a year from now?

 

HK Censors Movies for National Security

The dystopian film Ten Years would be banned

 

The Hong Kong government has now focused its attention on censoring movies because of the national security law just to make things even worse for the local film industry.

Under the Film Censorship Ordinance, public screening of films will not be allowed if they are found to be "endorsing, supporting, promoting, glorifying or inciting" acts of subversion, secession, terrorism, or collusion with foreign forces.

This documentary was nominated for an Oscar

Films like Ten Years, which was made in 2015 that speculated what would happen to Hong Kong in 10 years (and some of it already came true), would be banned from being screened.

The latest move would ban films like this as well as documentaries like the Oscar-nominated Do Not Split and Inside the Red Brick Wall that covered the 2019 anti-government protests would never be allowed to be shown in Hong Kong.

This kind of censorship was seen earlier with M+, the contemporary art museum due to open at the end of this year was under pressure to now show work deemed anti-China.

Apparently films will be censored by a panel of 40 people appointed by the chief executive. They will review the films and then classify them based on depictions of sex, violence, crime, or any insult to race or religion, among other concerns.

Ai Weiwei's political art puts pressure on M+

The censorship guidelines are developed by the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau.

While Tenky Tin Kai-man, chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers says movie professionals will need to seek clarification of the guidelines by the authorities, he said filmmakers would make sure they are not crossing any red lines if they wanted their movies to be shown across the border.

Crucindo Hung Cho-sing, chairman of the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, said it would be in the best interests of filmmakers to not touch sensitive topics as their livelihoods are at stake.

"But I believe filmmakers in our association aim to make money. They definitely won't make movies endangering national security," he said.

This protest documentary will also be censored

Grace Leung Kai-kuen, a lecturer at Chinese University's school of journalism and communication, said few movies had been banned in the past, and if they were it was because it was related to pornography.

She worries this latest censorship salvo will further weaken the local film industry.

"Hong Kong movies are already dying. With this, it will worsen their challenges," she said.

Leung noted some local movies carried more critical perspectives than mainland ones.

"Now they will be the same," she said.

Chloe Zhao's Big Oscar Win Muted in China

Zhao gives her acceptance speech with a saying in Mandarin

 

The results of the Academy Awards this year were such a breakthrough for Asian stars and films -- but no one in Hong Kong could watch them on television.

On March 29, pro-establishment broadcaster TVB announced it would not show The Oscars -- despite airing the awards show for the past 52 years -- saying it was a "purely commercial" decision.

Protesters shield themselves in Do Not Split

Perhaps it was following an edict from Beijing telling mainland Chinese media in February not to transmit live coverage of the Academy Awards this year because of the nomination of Do Not Split, a 35-minute documentary about the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and remarks made by Beijing-born director Chloe Zhao back in 2013 that were deemed controversial by Chinese internet users.

In the end China was the sore loser -- Do Not Split did not win after all for Best Documentary Short, losing to Colette about a French resistance survivor who returns to Germany for the first time since World War II, while Zhao, 39, won two Oscars for Nomadland. She is the first woman of colour and second female to win Best Director, and she also won for Best Picture, while actress Frances McDormand also won Best Actress for Nomadland.

While Asians on Twitter rejoiced Zhao's historic win, the Chinese on the mainland were completely silent, either unaware or instructed not to make any comments on social media, or if anyone tried to post something about her or her film, it was immediately censored.

A widow drifts around the US in Nomadland

Nomadland was supposed to be released in China on April 23 and it may not even happen.

Nevertheless, Zhao seems to have taken things in stride and in fact took the high road.

"I've been thinking a lot lately of how I keep going when things get hard. I think it goes back to something I learned when I was a kid," she said in her acceptance speech.

"When I was growing up in China, my dad and I used to play this game. We would memorize classic Chinese poems and texts, and we would recite them together and try to finish each other's sentences.

"There's one that I remember so dearly, it's called the Three Character Classics. The first phrase goes, '人之初，性本善', 'People at birth are inherently good'. Those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid and I still truly believe them today.

Zhao's win was censored in China today

"Even though sometimes it might see like the opposite is true, I have always found goodness in the people I met, everywhere I wen in the world.

"So this is for anyone who had the faith, and the courage to hold on to that goodness in themselves, and to hold on to the goodness in each other, no matter how difficult it is to do that.

"And this is for you. You inspire me to keep going."

In that thoughtful speech Zhao demonstrated she was a well educated woman who learned Chinese classics and has kept those values as an adult. 

Why wouldn't Beijing want to uphold her as an example of a worldly and successful Chinese person who has conquered Hollywood? 

But no, it would rather not showcase someone who left China and became an independent person with an independent mind. And she's a woman.

Zhao's next movie is Marvel's Eternals, starring Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Kumail Nanjiani and Richard Madden that is due out in November.

Will Beijing ban that too?

 

Review: Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark

Piazzolla (right) with his son Daniel in New York

 

A week after attending the Hong Kong Philharmonic's tribute to Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola, I went to see a documentary about him as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Called Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark, it uses extensive film and recording footage from the family to reconstruct his life.

Before the movie started, we were supposed to be treated to a musician playing the bandoneon, the accordion-like instrument Piazzolla played, but this was cancelled due to social-distancing. Nevertheless we were told that the bandoneon is not like an accordion in that there is no keyboard, but lots of buttons on each side and you can't see them so you have to know how to play the bandoneon well.

Piazzolla and his bandoneon

It is also quite heavy, which is why many bandoneon players sit down, but Piazzolla preferred to stand. When playing the instrument moving the bellows in and out can result in key changes, playing one note then changing to another which was interesting to learn.

These tips helped us appreciate the film more, particularly watching Piazzolla play -- it's quite heavy and early on in Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark, after he was born, his right leg was disfigured because of polio and it took seven operations to fix it, though not completely; his right leg would forever be thinner and shorter than his left.

After having gone through so much when he was young, his parents decided not to have anymore children, but also his father may have felt Piazzolla learning an instrument would be better for him career-wise. After those operations in 1924, the family moved to New York from Buenos Aires by ship, and his father worked for a barber. 

He bought his eight-year-old son a bandoneon from a pawnshop and Piazzolla learned how to play it and was pretty good at it. He wanted to play JS Bach on the bandoneon as well as his teacher did on the piano.

Piazzolla's teacher Nadia Boulanger

When he was 17-years-old, Piazzolla was itching to perform and have his own orchestra and on his own moved back to Buenos Aires. He played with some bands -- the youngest of the group. Piazzolla had always had dreams of becoming a concert pianist and one time boldly met Arthur Rubenstein, who in turn introduced the young musician to teacher Alberto Ginastera, who taught him composition and the fundamentals of music.

In 1946 Piazzolla started his own band, though later focusing only on compositions, not wanting to play the bandoneon anymore.

It was winning a composing contest in 1951 that awarded him a scholarship to study in Paris under Nadia Boulanger, whose students include Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Quincy Jones and Burt Bacharach.

She looked at the Argentine's scores and said this is not Piazzolla. She asked him what instrument he played and he said the bandoneon and she made him play some tango pieces.

This, she said, was Piazzolla.

He said from then onwards he never stopped playing the bandoneon.

In 1955 Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires bursting with creativity and created his own style of tango, where the rhythm kept changing, more upbeat and experimenting with different sounds from instruments. 

Daniel did not speak to his father for 10 years

Traditionalists hated him -- even a taxi driver refused to pick him up for what he felt was ruining tango.

His personal life was also full of ups and downs. He married Dede Baralis and had two children, Daniel and Diana. But later on Piazzolla announced to the family he was leaving his wife and met his second love, Laura Escalada.

Needless to say the family was shocked -- his wife Dede sank into deep depression, after having supported her husband's career.

His son Daniel, shown in the film, had a falling out with his father at one point, claiming the music they were making was backwards. That led to a 10-year estrangement. Daniel goes over old tapes, recordings, family movies, as a museum prepares a major exhibition about his father.

Piazzolla perseveres, but not without health issues (smoking a lot and suffered a heart attack). One of the final scenes in the documentary shows him in a tuxedo performing with an orchestra, making his music legitimate in the classical music world, though he had been experimenting with all kinds of musicians and different styles throughout the decades.

Piazzolla is known for revolutionizing the tango

He was so passionate about his music, writing 750 compositions, many of them themed around the tango. In the end he was grateful to his father for giving him the bandoneon, for without it he would not know what he would have done with his life.

Director Daniel Rosenfeld went through a lot of raw material, tapes, recordings, family films, using archival footage to put most of the documentary together. Piazzolla's son Daniel is a vehicle to move from one aspect to another, and sometimes he says things, and other times it's recordings of his father and sometimes it was confusing to follow who is speaking. 

Not once does any subject do a straight-up interview to the camera. It is either narrated or clips are found from actual archival footage, which makes the film flow. And yes there's lots of Piazzolla performing, making it a film filled with music, music and more music.

Piazzolla: The Years of the Shark 

Director: Daniel Rosenfeld

94 minutes 

In Spanish, French and English with English subtitles

 

 

Review: Gorbachev. Heaven

Gorbachev's sad, quiet life is captured in Manksy's documentary

 

Back in the 2019 Hong Kong International Film Festival I watched the documentary Putin's Witnesses by Vitaly Mansky, giving viewers insight into the Russian President and how he functions. Mansky also made it to the city to talk about his film afterwards, feeling free to talk about authoritarianism, though who knew Hong Kong would be quickly sliding into this situation two years later?

Mansky has produced another documentary called Gorbachev. Heaven, about the former leader who ended the Soviet Union, but what has happened to him and Russia since then?

Just before the film started, the director sent a personal video message to viewers in Hong Kong, saying at first he was sad he was unable to come to the city to attend the festival because of the pandemic. 

The dining room only has one person eating

Then Mansky said that he keenly watched the 2019 protests and how the people were trying to protect their freedoms, and so he believed they would be interested in watching Gorbachev. Heaven, seeing how freedom that Gorbachev gave when he declared the end of the Soviet Union, soon dissipated.

Not having seen recent pictures or videos of Gorbachev, it was quite shocking to see the 90-year-old overweight and bloated, and in frail health. He uses a walker to get around, very slowly. Luckily his former aides are there to help him, otherwise he is very much alone. They even helped install an elevator in his home outside Moscow, that the state lent for him to use "temporarily", in other words, until death.

Mansky is off camera the whole time, asking Gorbachev lots of questions, recounting his personal life as well as his political career without using any archival news footage, though there are a few footnotes of people mentioned to help people understand the context of the conversations.

In the mid-1980s Gorbachev introduced perestroika, or democratic reforms, which led to three eastern European countries free from Communist rule (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), and eventually the collapse of the Soviet Union caused by the August 1991 coup that forced Gorbachev to resign, and Boris Yeltsin took power.

Lots of food (and booze) is featured in the film

While Mansky admires Gorbachev, he also doesn't let him get away easily, asking him tough questions about the messy end of the USSR, and the former leader doesn't give straight answers, to which Mansky prods him more, and Gorbachev refuses to reply, saying he's answered them already.

But perhaps it's the long shots of Gorbachev that give viewers a better idea of him these days. Mansky focuses his camera a lot on Gorbachev's face and his hands look so big on the big screen. He likes to eat too -- he's seen snacking, discussing the dinner menu with his chef, dining with friends to mark the New Year. And yes there's vodka and beer too.

Always in the background, though, is Vladimir Putin, usually on television. Just before midnight January 1, 2020, Putin gives a sombre address on TV and he finishes just as the clock strikes 12. "Very precise," remarks Gorbachev, and resumes eating his late night dinner.

Also having a presence in the film is Gorbachev's wife Raisa, who died in 1999 of leukemia. There are portraits of her in his home and office, and he speaks fondly of her, saying, "the meaning of life is gone", though it has been 20 years without her.

Mansky with Gorbachev during filming

He sings a song a few times that he would sing to his wife, which talks of a forest being heaven, and hence the title of the documentary. One scene shows Gorbachev visiting her grave and notes he will be buried with her.

Watching Gorbachev. Heaven is his last will and testament, and it is sad to see the leader who so profoundly changed Russia to be mostly alone, frustrated by his physical limitations and politically shut out, as he is the polar opposite to Putin.

He does speak out, but the media are scared of publishing his opinions. There isn't much he can do about that.

Nevertheless, Manksy's portrait of Gorbachev is an intimate one and good record of his life -- in his words.

Gorbachev. Heaven

Directed by Vitaly Mansky

100 minutes

Film Review: The Kingmaker

Imelda Marcos tells her side of the story in The Kingmaker

As a teenager in the 1980s, I learned about Imelda Marcos and her husband, then president of the Philippines, through my two classmates. I later found out they and their families had fled the country to get away from Marcos, and later watching news reports of their wealth excesses, it was a wonder how they amassed so much wealth, while most the country was literally dirt poor.

My first (and so far only) visit to the Philippines was in 2017 for a food trade show in Manila. What shocked me the most was seeing metal detectors everywhere -- including our hotel The Peninsula Manila -- and we were lucky to be staying in Makati, the business district, but also where the wealthy live.

Greenfield reveals Marcos' inconsistencies

Our escort on the trip from Hong Kong was staying with her uncle and she told us they hardly every went out of their family compound. But if they did, her uncle always brought his gun with him...

So I was very curious to watch The Kingmaker, a documentary by Lauren Greenfield about Imelda Marcos. At first I thought it was just going to be about her, but it was much more than that.

The opening scene shows a drone shot of the shanty towns in the foreground, with glimmering towers in the back. Imelda Marcos is in a chauffeured car and when it stops at a red light, she opens the door and hands out crisp bills to poor children with outstretched, dirty hands.

She later says that the Philippines was not like this when her husband was in power.

We see her in her home, immaculately dressed, an army of nervous servants attending to her, from holding her arm to adding more powder to her face that still retains her beauty.

When she was eight years old she was orphaned when her mother died, but later became a beauty queen who caught the attention of Ferdinand Marcos who was a senator at the time. Eleven days later they were married.

Marcos enjoyed being First lady

One can tell Marcos is keen to tell her version of the story, how she was "a mother" to the country and gave it love. She did this buy buying wild animals from Africa and had them deposited on an island, but not before kicking out 254 inhabitants there; she bought at least four properties in New York City, a home in Beverly Hills that was strangely in actor George Hamilton's name, and the numerous dresses, thousands of pairs of shoes and the jewellery!

When the country revolted against the Marcoses and they had to flee to Hawaii in 1986, she slipped lots of glittering baubles into bags holding baby diapers that was put onto the plane. On camera she says that jewellery helped pay for legal fees. Yowsers.

Marcos also likes to boast who she knew, and Greenfield finds the archival footage to prove she met people like Muammar Gadafi, Saddam Hussein, and even Mao Zedong, where there is a clip of him kissing her hand. She considered them all friends...

While she maintains she and her husband did everything for the good of the Philippines, others say otherwise in The Kingmaker.

One of the giraffes caught in Africa for Marcos

When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he claimed he did this due to a "communist threat" though opposition leaders said he used this to consolidate his power and shut down criticism. Fourteen out of 15 newspapers were shut down and those rebels trying to oust him were summarily executed.

One journalist recalls being physically tortured by having to crouch and his shins were beaten; his younger brother worked for the resistance and was caught and killed. A teacher recalled being tortured by electric batons -- by her own students, and an activist talked about being sexually assaulted by a group of men.

These testimonies are a stark contrast to the romantic picture Imelda Marcos tries to portray about her and her husband's grip on power. 

But there is more.

She tried to engineer the continuation of the Marcos dynasty by having her son, Bongbong become president, but first become vice president in the 2016 elections, but he lost by over 260,000 votes and even refused to concede.

The position of vice president is also elected, not chosen by the president like in the United States.

Bongbong tried and failed to win vice presidency

Rodrigo Duterte came to power, but it is revealed in The Kingmaker, that he also comes from a wealthy family, his father once served in Marcos' administration, and the late president's daughter Imee helped Duterte win.

And now he rules with impunity, killing tens of thousands of people on a supposed war on drugs without trying them in court.

So the Marcoses still have their wealth and power, fuelled by selling off whatever expensive trinkets they accumulated to keep their political dreams alive, including a Monet that was sold for over US$32 million.

And what happened to those African animals, the zebras and giraffes?

No one knew how to look after them, and they were literally left on their own, inbreeding which led to physical problems in the giraffes like shorter necks and not even being able to hold them upright. The human inhabitants there are resentful of the animals given priority over them.

Marcos below her Picasso and priceless art

Meanwhile the next generation are being taught revisionist history and in class they parrot how martial law was good for the country, and have no idea what really happened. Sound familiar?

It is quite eerie to see how the Marcos' have control over numerous institutions in the Philippines thanks to their enormous wealth and influence. As one critic points out, as long as they have money, they will continue to call the shots in Philippine politics. 

As she says being First Lady in the beginning of the documentary, "People underestimate women, and sometimes that's useful." 

That was Marcos' strategy, and she will continue using it to get what she wants -- power, wealth and more power.

Review: Coronation by Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei's documentary is about the pandemic in Wuhan

 

Let's face it -- 2020 has been completely shot -- thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and we still haven't tamed the virus thanks to people in parts of the world refusing to wear masks, or governments that didn't take it seriously in the beginning.

Over 1.29 million people have died since the pandemic began December 1, 2019, when the first case emerged in Wuhan, China.

Since then it spread to over 200 countries and now there are over 52.3 million cases.

Ai and his team edited 500 hours of footage

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei documented what happened in Wuhan with the help of intrepid volunteers who managed to get unprecedented access into hospitals to record first hand what was happening on the ground months after the pandemic gripped the Chinese city.

Called Coronation, the almost two-hour documentary is a series of vignettes and interviews with Wuhan citizens who had to come to grips with the reality of the virus and the decisions local and central governments made.

I saw the documentary last night with my friend YTSL, and also in the audience was former chief secretary Anson Chan Fong On-sang, Eric Wishart of the Foreign Correspondents' Club, and lawyer and author Antony Dapiran. We were in good company.

The opening image of Coronation is stark, viewers overlooking the high-speed rail lines in Wuhan that were paralyzed by the virus, completely empty, and the dreariness of the city. Three videographers record themselves driving back to the city and encounter a lot of police checks and frozen gas pumps.

A nurse helps an elderly patient with Covid-19

There are scenes in hospital patient rooms, watching an elderly patient in critical condition because one of the machines he is hooked up to is malfunctioning, others have faces as white as a sheet and are gasping for breath while breathing in oxygen. 

One gets access to the construction site of Huoshenshan Hospital, the emergency field hospital that was built within days to house 1,000 patients. Once it's completed, one of the doctors goes inside to report to work and he walks and walks along corridors until finally he reaches his locker.

Then there is the tedious task of putting on layers of personal protective equipment. He grabs a rubber glove with air in it to make sure there are no holes before putting it on. Very smart. Another person writes with a felt tip marker on his hazmat suit that he is a doctor and what his name is.

No wonder doctors couldn't go to the bathroom with all that stuff on.

A construction worker talks to his niece

Taking the PPE off too was another routine carefully monitored by someone in another room, instructing him what to do to avoid getting the virus on his own clothes and skin. Talk about an intense and stressful procedure.

One wishes the doctor would talk to the camera, but perhaps he was too hungry, as we watch him eat. Maybe we are already lucky to have such close access that we shouldn't demand much more.

However there are other stories, like the construction worker who helped build the hospital but is stranded in Wuhan and can't get out. He is stuck living in his car and charges his phone in a car park. He calls his young niece who reminds him to disinfect himself before they see each other.

It's light moments like these that keep Coronation not too sombre.

Perhaps one of the funniest vignettes is when a videographer stays with his mother, who is a die-hard revolutionary. She insists as long as you do what you are told, you will be looked after and shows off she has won many awards. 

Her son eggs her on to show them to him and she gathers a stack of red fabric books and dumps them unceremoniously on the table. There are certificates too that are rolled up like scrolls, though one is ripped and he jokes it's because it has Lin Biao's name on it.

A videographer (right) with his mother

Then there are people angry at the government regulations for not allowing them to be with their loved ones before they passed. This was not just happening in Wuhan, but around the world. Here, people openly complain in front of the camera, telling the world that they could not say good bye, or hold their hand as they lay dying.

One middle-aged son believed the government when it said there was no proof of human-to-human spreading of the virus and brought his elderly father back to Wuhan. He was soon infected and died; his son regretful, but wishes to do his duty to give his father a proper burial.

However, his father's danwei, or work unit refuses to allow him to retrieve his father's ashes alone; he must be accompanied by minders and he is adamant that this not happen. The danwei people realize they have not handled this carefully, but at the same time the son knows they are only doing their job, but he respectfully insists that he must not be accompanied by strangers who did not know his father at all.

The government tries to "disinfect" Wuhan

It's like a cat-and-mouse game that must have been infuriating for the son to deal with, let alone his regrets and mourning. He says that the government is so big there is no way one person can beat the system.

In a way Coronation is a warning for Hong Kong. We may laugh at the ridiculousness of the bureaucracy mainlanders have to deal with, but the reality is that Hongkongers will have to face this in real life very soon. In fact things are changing so fast that it is happening now, with Beijing destroying the veneer of "one country, two systems".

The mainlanders deal with authoritarian rule everyday, and some in the film know very clearly what is going on, others blindly following along. For some the pandemic has revealed the authorities' inability to humanize the situation, that everything is for the good of the state, even though it insists it is ruled by the people.

Coronation was remotely directed by Ai; the access the videographers got was impressive, though at times the camera is blurry and there are no second takes. It is a gritty film, though not as well produced as his previous work, Human Flow, about the refugees from Syria, Lebanon and Iraq who make their way to Europe.

Nevertheless, Coronation is an excellent record of what it was like in Wuhan, something the Chinese government cannot completely whitewash.

Coronation

Directed by Ai Weiwei

1hr 53 minutes

Press Freedom Under Attack Again

Bao Choy speaks to reporters after being released on bail

 

On the first anniversary of the July 21 attacks in Yuen Long last year, RTHK released a comprehensive documentary called "7.21 Who Owns the Truth" broadcast on Hong Kong Connection, which criticized the police for taking so long to respond to passengers in the MTR station who were being attacked by men in white shirts. 

At least 45 people were injured in the 7.21 attack

The emergency line was flooded with calls about the incident, but it took at least 39 minutes for the police to respond. At least 45 people were injured. 

The police have since revised its version of the story that it took only 18 minutes for the police to arrive at the scene, but there is so much footage to prove otherwise.

Nevertheless, in order to conduct research on the documentary, there was footage of vehicles carrying assailants to the station, and award-winning journalist Bao Choy Yuk-ling made a public records search to find out the ownership of these vehicles.

The documentary claims the vehicles were owned by village heads in the neighbourhood, but the owners contacted refused to go on the record.

Choy was arrested at home in Mei Foo

While being allowed to search for the information is not illegal, the police claim she knowingly made a false statement when requesting the information.

So Choy was arrested this afternoon for two counts of making false statements through a vehicle registration search.

The shocking thing is that many journalists have made requests for vehicle registration information before. Not only for vehicles but company registration and land ownership. This kind of information is publicly available; one only has to fill in the paperwork, pay a fee to have the request processed.

She did what any other journalist would have done to investigate the July 21 incident last year.

The police searched her home in Mei Foo and released her on bail this evening. She is scheduled to appear in Fanling Court next Tuesday. 

The doc asked why police took so long to respond

Speaking to reporters tonight, Choy said: "This case concerns me as a reporter, RTHK, and how every other journalist in town is going to report news in the future.

"At this moment I would like to urge all journalists to stand fast to our values and carry on our work with no fear and no favour. Throughout all my years of work, I have been following journalistic principles strictly."

While she refused to comment directly on her case, Choy said it does not serve the public interest when the police operation raises concerns and worries among journalists and the public.

RTHK has been under a lot of heat this year -- but mostly because it does good work and its critics are not pleased.

In March it was raked over the coals for asking WHO health official Bruce Aylward about reconsidering Taiwan's membership in the UN body. He claimed not to hear the question and then abruptly ended the video call.

Headliners frequently made fun of the police

Then the broadcaster shut down Headliner, a long-running satirical show that frequently mocked the police, and reopened an investigation into complaints of sharp reporter Nabela Qoser, who is known for her pointed questions at senior government officials. 

Before Choy was released on bail, the director of broadcasting at RTHK, Leung Ka-wing, RTHK is "afraid" and "worried" but will not alter its editorial principles or stop investigative reporting over the arrest of one of the station's TV producers.

When asked if RTHK would put a hold on any ongoing investigative reporting, Leung replied, "Why should we stop?"

"I would ask you why there be a need to stop? I cannot casually ask people to stop (working on something). There's always a reason when it comes to a pause in work, isn't there? If your boss asks you not to touch a certain issue, you would ask about the reason behind this," he said.

Leung says RTHK will continue its work

We shall find out soon enough what is going on with Choy's case. But it is definitely a massive assault on press freedom in Hong Kong. If reporters cannot be allowed to find basic information on public record, then the city's reputation for its free-flow of information will be greatly impacted.

And by the way shouldn't the police look into a Ta Kung Pao report of its reporter allegedly being followed by someone in a vehicle? Maybe that will keep them busy for a while... 

 

Chinese and Polish Docs Looking for Hope

Photo of Tereska, a Polish Jew in an orphanage taken in 1948

The inaugural Hong Kong International Documentary Festival is on and I caught my colleague's short film called Gone With the Policy.

In 2017 the Beijing government wanted to keep the capital city's population under control and shave a  million or two people off the census. The easiest people to remove? Migrant workers and their children.

A migrant school in Beijing is slated for demolition ("chai")

It was heartbreaking to watch the scene of a migrant school in Chang Ping district, in the outskirts of Beijing being knocked down and the pile of rubble was still left there months later.

The principal of the school was keen to find another space and set up another school, having taught for 10 years. But by the time he secured the space and moved the desks and other furniture there, many families had left -- some even overnight -- which resulted in only four students signing up.

Unfortunately the principal had to admit defeat, while his subordinate, the vice principal wistfully remembers how the original school they had grew and how can the government deny these students an education? He hints at economic prejudices against them.

Students enjoying school, before it is torn down

Meanwhile a migrant worker in Beijing brings his two children, who were born in the city, back to his hometown. The older daughter seems shell shocked at the reality of having to make a new life in the countryside, where her grandmother doesn't understand what laundry detergent is, and wondering how she will continue her education, let alone get into university.

The vice principal points out many of the students' parents built the Bird's Nest for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but they also built much of Beijing as well. And what do they get for their contribution? Being shoved out of the city.

While the documentary is a bit rough around the edges, it is an important piece of evidence that documents the plight of migrant workers, who otherwise don't have much  of a voice in Chinese society let alone history.

Two people try to track down Tereska in old photos

The other film presented was called Searching for Tereska, a Polish documentary that has some fictional scenes in it.

In 1948, a Magnum photographer David Seymour took a haunting picture of a young girl with a bow in her hair. She is standing by the blackboard with a mass of circles she has drawn and a disturbed look on her face.

Fast forward to today, and a young man wants to find out who this girl is and if she is still alive. He enlists the help of a woman who seems very resourceful and determined, very much like a reporter.

They are warned at first by a group of Jews that they may not find the person, but on their journey they will meet many people. The latter was for sure. Their first clue was that she wrote her name, Tereska at the top of the black board. That was it.

Through some sleuthing they identify the building and from there go to a Jewish Centre that deals with survivors, a woman there believes the girl in the picture is her friend and so the couple meet her, but she is the wrong Tereska.

The poster for Searching for Tereska

And then they tracked down what they think is the building but the nun won't let them inside. They also try to find who they think is Tereska but it leads to a tombstone. They leave a note there, hoping someone will contact them, and the grandson does.

However, when he brings out a picture of his grandmother in her younger years, she doesn't look like the girl in the picture.

Then they hit upon a school and find very old registration records and even get copies of the contact sheets of the photographs David Seymour took. They get in touch with various experts to identify the school Tereska was in or where the building was located.

Finally the woman who showed them the school registration records realizes that perhaps because of her disturbed mental state, Tereska did not graduate with her grade, but after, which leads to a massive clue to help track her down...

At first I didn't know what was going on in the story, but as it kept going on, you as a viewer become more invested in the story and wonder if they will ever find an ending to their search (which they do). It makes you realize how important records are and that when buildings are torn down, memories and information are lost forever. And not just buildings, but people too, when they pass away.

But Tereska isn't the only one who was lost. There are thousands of other people who may not have been accounted for. Will anyone find them?