A Filmmaker's Manifesto
Watch the 12Mins. Film HERE
TEXT from FILM SCRIPT
My Cousin was born here in the new world, his is the generation of the suburban dream, from the faceless shopping centers to the endless car parks, from miles and miles of sidewalks that nobody walks on, to the cookie cutter housing estates; the new world is never new to him, it is not surprising that when he looks at the postcards I have collected from where I come from,
he had no idea how I had missed the place where I was born. In here, in the new world, the concrete material world that is outside his living room is some place to escape from; it is someplace to be forgotten about. From the time he was born till now, not a single place is to be held dear in his memories, nor it ever occur to him that anyplace is worth remembering at all.
From the very beginning, the new world for him is wasted, whether it will be destroyed by the nuclear bomb or not, it is a wasteland.
My father came from the old world, he was a salary man working for the big company back home. When the whole family came to the new world it was simply relocating the old one for him. When he was young, he had built up his life in the old world that was his root; he had worked just like anyone would work, growing up in a place where he was born.
Now he's alone, even his family is with him here, he is alone because he had tear himself away from his root, his culture and his home. He did that for us, so that we can find a land to grow up and hopefully enjoyed the same stability that he had,
he had moved his old world and come here for us.
I am the one who is the in-between. When I was back home, the place where I was born, we watched the American TV and thought about the wide-open spaces of America.
When I came to the new world to study, I looked for that land that was in my mind long time ago. To these days I am still going on the road to find it.
I have arrived to the new world, but not quite here yet.
In the old world I would have grown up like my father, living a life provided by a place where I was born. Now all of a sudden
I realized that I couldn't be the salary man like my father anymore. I simply cannot work and get married and live and die in this place
I cannot be like my cousin neither. To see the place I have chosen to come as a place to leave. Instead of taking what is given here.
I will have to re-create a new memory.
In the course of discoveries, I've picked up the film camera to see the world anew, just like the pioneers who had shaped their visions of a new sky and earth on the celluloid, I also want to recreate a new place I would call home.
I believe that anyone who live in this place create a new idea of America everyday. Every minute and second, the New World is evolving; unfolding as every being works and lives and breathes here. It is therefore up to us to make the New World a reality.
I realize that in order to see the New World, I will have to part take in creating it.
The American experiment will never die as long as people here recreate it everyday
In film I've found a new train that takes me across uncharted space. In constantly moving forward on the celluloid highway,
I am shaping every step in making the New World for myself, and hopefully for others.
500 years after Columbus came to this land, the New World is still new to me,
and so I am still going on the road to find it.
***
Piano by Alexander Cheung
END MUSIC:
Farwell to the 20th Century
by
Kal Ng , Alexander Cheung