Taiwan Lecture Series: Sinophone Filmmaking Filmscreening: Ballad on the Shore (2017) und Rhymes of Shui Hau (2017)

Ma, Chi-Hang 馬智恆, Ballad on the Shore 岸上漁歌, 2017. 98 mins.
On the small isle of Tap Mun, the ocean breeze gently lifts up strands of grey hair on Lai Lin-shau’s head. He quietly sings in the characteristic tones of the fisherman’s ballads. Seemingly without rules, the pitch and tones alternate and repeat themselves as if they were synchronising with the ocean waves. Lai is one of the few people alive who knows the fisherman’s ballads intimately. None of his children experienced the harsh and unforgiving life at sea. They are not even aware of his priceless knowledge of the ballads. As the fishing community shrinks, and as fewer and fewer know the harsh life at sea, these ballads are being forgotten by new generations and even the old fishermen found new ways of life on land. One performs and teaches the ballads to young children; another uses the ballads to spread her Christian faith. The ballads have become a spiritual harbour for these landed fishermen. But deaths come brutally. Lai loses his listeners and his memory of the ballads. A precious part of him is dying. This film documents the fishermen’s way of life, and these unique songs, both on the verge of disappearing in Hong Kong, a highly capitalized metropolis, where fishermen's culture has become increasingly marginalized and fading. In search of the forgotten songs, the director Ma Chi-Hang, who received his B.A. in Fine Arts and M.A in Philosophy from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, reconstructs the history of these fishermen.

Chan, Ho-Lun Fredie. 陳浩倫, Rhymes of Shui Hau 水口婆婆的山歌, 2017. 50 mins.
Rhymes of Shui Hau features the village of Shui Hau, some three hundred years old. The village is bounded by the Lantau Peak to the north and the South China Sea to the south. In Chinese, “Shui Hau” means the mouth of a waterway, which explains its geographic location. The village, or the island where it is situated, must be understood with an appreciation of the sea. Lantau Island is part of a chain of islands separating the Pearl River and the open seas. The waterway connects Lantau to Soko Islands, Cheung Chau, Peng Chau, Macau and other cities and settlements in the Pearl River Delta. Recent human settlements in Lantau can only be understood from the perspective of the sea and its seafarers. Rhymes of Shui Hau features three elderly ladies from the village. Their stories, and the rhymes they hum in Wai Tau Waa, an age-old dialect that many cannot comprehend, offer a glimpse of Hong Kong before its industrialisation and urbanisation. If their rhymes open a window to the city’s past, they are also a peephole for our future. If development and urban expansion is given a free reign, we would soon forget the vernacular heritage that we have lost.