A Turn to the Politics of Place in Hong Kong Independent Documentaries

Through collating the discourse produced around the "Preservation Movement of Star Ferry and Queen's Piers" and the independent documentaries concerning spatial issues produced after the movement, this essay attempts to theorize a turn to the politics of place which has happened in the past decade in Hong Kong. This turn abandons the old mode of spatial activism and the old form of spatial struggle, and instead conceptualizes spaces of struggle as "public space" and "living space" as well as places for reconstruction of community and identity. Through Chan Ho-lun's documentaries about urban preservation and redevelopment, the essay attempts to illustrate how, after this turn, local documentary filmmakers negotiate with economic, political, cultural, and communal forces in their representation of a place, and how these forces are articulated in terms of the politics of place.