DECAMERON
日常
2021, Hong Kong, Color, 4k
Language: Cantonese
Duration: 107 min
Synopsis
故事大綱
「我們怎樣可以再過正常的生活?」年輕人無法離開過去的抗爭運動創傷,依然走上街頭,但街頭光景不復當初;一對家庭疫情下嘗試生活如常,但小孩已經無法上街玩耍,困在家中眼看新聞上的死亡數字。情侶雙雙失去工作,又忙於為疫情張羅口罩,生活變生存,日常如此荒謬;我們一直以為陳同佳在台灣殺了女友,是引發反送中運動原因,我們只想到答案,原因可能是陳同佳,又或者我們根本知道他不是原因。
2020年,我們問得最多的一句:「我們可以回到從前?還可以過正常的生活嗎?」或者,大部份的香港人都不會想回到2019年之前。在抗爭創傷下,進入瘋狂的2020年,我們會有何樣的日常?整個社會的死亡陰影是來自政權還是疫症?《日常》結合劇情、紀錄和歷史的電影,與角色、新聞、舊報紙剪報,到回溯香港歷史來嘗試紀錄2020年的當下。
“History is not just a matter of date”, said Chris Patten in his last speech as British Governor of Hong Kong, shortly before the United Kingdom handed administration of the province back to China in 1997. In Decameron, Rita Hui Nga Shu combines this speech and other historical sources with fiction and contemporary images. Her gripping documentary takes a critical look, for example, at the question of what Hong Kong actually is at this particular moment in time.
The title of this ambitious video essay refers to Giovanni Boccaccio’s Medieval literary masterpiece, which was likewise created in the wake of an epoch-making worldwide plague. As in Boccaccio’s literary text, different stories, timelines and perspectives merge. The kaleidoscopic film Decameron presents a coronavirus-ravaged Hong Kong that is also still struggling with traumas from the recent past. The result is a valuable political document which, by placing the recent protests within a broader context, enters into a complex dialogue with the city’s present, past and future.
Festival and Screening
2021 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Harbour
2021 Nuremberg International Human Rights Festival
2021 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival