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Tammy Cheung (Cheung Hung, 張虹) is a prominent member of Hong Kong’s independent filmmaking community, and possibly the city’s only full-time independent documentarian at the time of writing. As such, she is an example of just how much — and how little — Hong Kong’s culture has changed over the last decade or so. This case study analyzes Cheung’s career and films within this larger framework, with a focus on Hong Kong’s screen culture, and particularly its independent documentary culture. Born in Shanghai in 1958, Cheung came to Hong Kong with her family at the age of three. After studying sociology at Shue Yan College in Hong Kong, she studied film at Concordia University in Montreal. In 1986, she helped to found and run the Montreal International Chinese Film Festival. But: Like everyone else, I wanted to be a director. I tried to look into the situation in Montreal. I realized there wasn’t much I could do, so I decided to come back to Hong Kong. At the time the Hong Kong industry was doing well. That was in 1994. I got 12 Hong Kong Watcher: Tammy Cheung and the Hong Kong Documentary Chris Berry * This paper grows out of a long friendship with Tammy Cheung. We were first in touch when she was running the Chinese International Film Festival in Montreal in the 1980s. More recently, I have interviewed her several times. This particular piece is part of a larger project that I am conducting with Laikwan Pang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The work was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project no. CUHK4552/06H). I am very grateful for the financial support, for the cooperation and help of all the people interviewed for this paper, and to our postdoctoral fellow Yeung Yang for her work in gathering data for the project in general and this paper in particular. ch12(213-228).indd 213 25/05/2010 3:04 PM 214 Chris Berry some work with the commercial film industry. But I realized I really didn’t like the system … you know, the traditional way of doing things … I was working mainly as a script girl, or continuity … So I left.1 While in Montreal, Cheung had been taken with uncontrolled documentary and the Direct Cinema associated with Frederick Wiseman in particular (Documenting Hong Kong, 2007). She has made a series of video films over the last decade that manifest not only a persistent interest in uncontrolled documentary, but also a tendency to stimulate public debate. Her first work, a thirty-minute documentary called Invisible Women /《看不見的女人》 , was made in 1999 and focused on the lives of three Indian women living in Hong Kong. It was financed with HK$10,300 from the Home Affairs Bureau (Kwok, 1999). Since then, the Arts Development Council has been the primary source of small but crucial amounts of funding.2 In 2002, Cheung founded her company Reality Films and the non-profit organization Visible Record (采風電影有限公司) along with her partner and cinematographer, Augustine Lam (林偉鴻). In that year she made two films. Rice Distribution /《平安米》is a thirty-five-minute video, which won the grand prize in the Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards in 2002. It documents an annual media event in Hong Kong — the distribution of rice to the poor by Taoist organizations during the Festival of the Hungry Ghost (盂蘭 節) in the middle of the seventh lunar month, which usually falls in late August or early September according to the solar calendar. Secondary School /《中學》 , also made in 2002, is a feature-length film modeled on Wiseman’s classic, High School. It documents life in Hong Kong’s most prestigious “band one” schools — schools of the sort Cheung herself attended. The Hong Kong education system is the subject of much anxiety among parents. The film therefore was in circulation for some time and attracted considerable attention. In 2003, Cheung made Moving /《搬屋》, which looks at the relocation of old people as part of the effort to improve public housing. In 2004, her film July /《七月》, about the 2003 demonstrations against proposed national security legislation, showed her commitment to documenting political as well as social events.3 It is the combination of the observational mode and her focus on Hong Kong that leads me to say that Cheung is a “Hong Kong watcher”. The only departure from this pattern during this period was an MTV montage of...

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