A Flatfish Screening – A Wandering Eye

LEE Kai Chung, Mark LI, LO Lai Lai Natalie, WONG Yik Fung X Fringe Cinema

*Talk after screening (Cantonese)
Four directors will show up (Mark Li, Lee Kai Chung, Lo Lai Lai Natalie, Wong Yik Fung).

Guest-in-conversation: CHAN Ying Wai


He looked no different than other fish when he first came here, but his eyes were destined to draw close to each other. Looking at the surroundings, he changes his body colors and sometimes disappears in sands. In fact, the filmmakers act like flatfish too, quietly staring at those incomplete views as observers. This time, “A flatfish screening” will bring four short films from different directors and hold a talk after screening with the directors. Everyone is welcome to take a closer look on the focus of four directors, questioning their reasons of recording incomplete presentations. Is it stand for the presence of absence, or limitations of struggles?

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Learn to Unlearn by Mark Li and Wong Yik Fung
Hong Kong | 2016-2017 | Colour | 34’ 52” | Chinese and English subtitle

At the beginning of 2017, a Cantonese opera was performed in the modern theatre of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in an ordinary way. The creator, KAM Shing Hei, who is an art student majoring in Music composing, used a string quartet, gongs, drums, and Cantonese opera actors as the key elements of his show.  The creative process of the work provokes Kam’s further thoughts on the cultural issues among the art form itself. Being art students and performers, what inspiration can we gain from Kam’s reflection and experience?

Can’t Live Without by LEE Kai Chung
Hong Kong, Korea | 2018 | Colour | 19’ 47” | Korean Monologue, Chinese and English subtitle

“I sat in the archive reading room, waiting for the requested documents. The space was filled with a weighted silence, the intensity is more deafening than any sound that I have ever heard. Rather than saying it’s a sense of oppression, it is more of an auditory hallucination whirling in my head […]”

“Can’t live Without” is an ongoing project that originates from LEE’s research on art archives and their social context in Korea and Hong Kong. The artistic research started with the sonic quality in visual archive, the body of work sheds light on how power structure influences pattern of archival practice and historiography. In comparison with national archives or historical archives, contemporary art archives differ in their constitution, discipline, ways of acquisition, personnel in charge, subjects, etc. Though art archives do not diminish its social context or reduce the discursive space exclusively to a confined realm of art; nevertheless, the oscillating status under artistic and archival context complicates the constitution and representation of art archives. The project is presented in a filmatic sequence of five chapters, which covers a rhizomatic network of social movement, language, mythology, geography and archival discipline. The notion of discontinuity for historic narratives that leads to a greater consciousness of events and individuals.

Deep Flight by Lo Lai Lai Natalie
Hong Kong｜2017｜Colour｜9’40””｜No Dialogue, Chinese and English Subtitles
She became a Deep Flight in the natural environment, never saying no, delivering diverse kinds of matter and happening, including desires. This short film appeared to be a nature poem, yet it aroused puzzles and sorrows. The hidden desire became visible and turned into images and texts that the artist still could not get over them.

Voice from Nowhere (Tentative) by Lo Lai Lai Natalie
Hong Kong ｜2018｜Colour｜12’40””｜Cantonese, Chinese and English Subtitles
After the work Voice from Elsewhere (a moving image work in The Sustainable Festival 2018), the artist has planned to make a new work. She coincidentally visited the fish-farming pond in Tai Sang Wai, Yuen Long, Hong Kong. With a repeated practice on shooting and editing, she also illustrates her personal life experience. Yet, the story was more than an intimate mumbling. The film intended to suggest questions to the director and audience. The bio-chain itself was an interdependent network, drawing one’s individual perception deep into the abyss.

*Language: Chinese & Korean
*Age limit: Nil
*Duration: 2.5 hours, without intermission