GROUND 0101 (The Fall Issue)

education, arts and artistry, gender, age,
and physical dis/ability, these films articulate
further the tensions and dialectics
involved in the power dynamics and ethical
encounters circulating around and
through the networks of work.
Lee and Leong also engage with
their concern for social justice issues
and situations through a number of films
dealing directly with recognized regimes
and attendant political structures. Their
first film, Passabe, is the story of a border
town between Timor-Leste and Indonesia.
The town is scarred by its past as
the site of paramilitary massacres during
East Timor’s fight to become an independent
nation. Here, the political place and
social position of storytellers and testimony
become central to finding a way
to engage with community tension and
identity. How and why we tell stories matters
very much to our collectivity. Wukan:
The Flame of Democracy (2013) explores
unlikely populist challenges to staid—
and corrupt—political structures through
the story of a 2011 uprising in a fishing
village in southern China. Along the way
of reporting on the direct challenges, the
film also begins to address questions of
what happens after an uprising, after the
confrontation—when the difficult work of
solidarity and governance begins again.
Focusing on Hong Kong, two other
films also fit this connection between
visible political struggle and story telling.
Muzzling the Messenger (2015) asks after
the state of the press since the city
state returned to centralized control by
Beijing in 1997. Hong Kong’s world press
transparency ratings were once the highest
in Asia; since the turn of the century
they have been steadily falling. For six
intense months in 2014, central Hong
Kong was the site of one of the most interesting
and complex protests in Asia.
Hong Kong: Occupy Central (2015) is a
three-part documentary of the “Umbrella
Movement,” its working strategies and
arrangements, its antagonisms and frustrations,
and its overall attempt to alter
the political landscape—to make Hong
Kong politics under Beijing as transparent
and openly democratic as possible. The
reunion of Hong Kong with the People’s
Republic of China was officially touted as
a move toward, “one country, two systems,”
where the “special administrative
district” would have allowances made for
its differences—historical, social, economic—from
the rest of the nation. Following
a central-party decision to alter
Hong Kong’s election process—a reform
seen by many as a restriction on electoral
autonomy and transparency—two
groups began to work to challenge the
state apparatus. A group of academics
and a group of students confronted the
system from different directions, not always
agreeing on practices nor demands.
Overall, though, they held referendums,
meetings, demonstrations, and, eventually,
occupied the central business district
of the city. The protests were noted
locally and internationally for their nonviolent
and environmentally aware tactics.
They also became known as the “Yellow
Umbrella Revolution” when, in response
to police teargas, protestors stood their
ground using their ubiquitous umbrellas
as shields. While the immediate effects
of the demonstrations remain uncertain,
this documentary shows the complexities
of working for change from within larger
social structures as well as on the edges
of those structures. The government
agrees to meetings, but there seems little
change in official positions. While most
of the protests and reactions remain civil;
the police do assault the student leader.
How many counter protest are legitimate
remains ambiguous. In the end, the
film focuses on the difficulties of activist