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.They are brought together during theBoat People Incident of 1979.28 An early scene at the Yaumatei typhoonshelter strategically introduces the main characters and subtly demar-cates the different social spaces they each inhabit in a well-designedshot sequence.After a few establishing shots of the fishing communityand the commotion of public demonstrations at the pier, the cameraslowly closes in on the child Sow kneeling in front of a funeral alter onwhich are placed photos of her family.Hundreds were killed in a firethat incinerated dozens of boat homes.Beginning with young Tung spoint-of-view shots, the camera gradually expands its vision to captureother characters in a picture befitting the clashes between generations,social groups, and moral and political beliefs.Symbolically, embeddedin this picture are the differential power positions assigned by class: Yauat the centre appears as the voice of justice and reason, but his impa-tient tutoring of the unenlightened masses betrays an arrogance thatwill become more visible later on.Father Kam comes into the picturefrom the lower right, singing and playing a guitar on a small boat, atypical man of the people image he carries through to the end.(Thesetwo fellow activists turn out to be contrastive models of political actionin and outside mainstream politics.) Around these two focal points areboat families and fire victims engrossed in traditional rituals.Visually, this early scene subtly demarcates the internal divisionsalong class and gender lines (the protestors and leaders are predom-inantly male) within a local community typical of the tension-proneHong Kong society in the late 1970s.The concluding shots of this scenefurther problematizes the political idealists assumed position of superi-ority by an ironic mix of incompatible social practices infiltrating intoone another.The chasm between the intellectual elite and the silentmasses they vow to protect is vividly presented: in slow motion, stripsof spiritual money float across a smoky screen; a fade-in of paper deitiesbriefly appears before it dissolves into a long shot of Yau and a group Cinematic Remembrances 59of clueless protestors barely able to read their lines, the spiritual moneystill visible in the sky.This shot sequence is accompanied by a diegeticsound track, mixing Yau s voice shouting through the loudspeaker andtraditional funeral music from nearby boat homes.This cacophonyof images and sounds conjure up an historical image of a particularsocial milieu in late 1970s Hong Kong, magnifying the clashes betweenthe lower-class mobilized by committed intellectuals and the colonialadministration represented by the then Royal Hong Kong Police.Thesocial and political divide is further complicated by internal divisionsamong the activist group made up of left-leaning intellectuals, a MaoistItalian cleric, the marginalized fishing community, and later on hus-bands demanding right of abode for their Mainland wives.A more directpolitical statement comes from the intercutting scenes of a street dramaabout a real-life activist and steadfast Trotskyite, Ng Chung-yin,29 whosestory bears witness to the ideological conflicts and in-fights in the left-ist camp in the 1960s, which the film suggests was the reason for theireventual break-up and oblivion.The intermittent inserts of Ng s playalso serve as a critical commentary on the differences between two gen-erations of the local educated elite: Ng s generation embraced a clearsense of national identity and patriotic mission (anti-British colonial-ism), whereas Yau and his peers display a closer emotional attachmentto the city as their hometown.In the new generation s agenda, nation-alism in the form of anti-colonial rule has largely disappeared, replacedby a deeper commitment to local welfare and social progress.This early exposition helps anchor the film s spatial representationwithin a set of social parameters.Almost all the shooting locations are inpoor neighbourhoods: the typhoon shelter, boat homes, public housingestates, temporary settlements, homeless camps under a busy flyover.These spaces cut a broad spectrum of Hong Kong s underbelly, a sub-altern space characteristically absent from the city s public images.Theonly exceptions are a few scenes of public protests in front of the Legisla-tive Council in Central and the now dismantled Star Ferry in Tsimshat-sui.This choice of setting is a practical necessity, since it is difficult tore-create the cityscape of twenty years ago in many parts of the present-day Hong Kong, a city known for rapid urbanization and redevelop-ment.Strategically, these dilapidated neighbourhoods are foregroundedas the key sites of struggle against collective amnesia, as the film s inter-titles To Forget and Not to Forget explicitly point out
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