Hong Kong Mixtape

San San F. Young – Director Notes

Over the last decade and more, political engagement and the fight for greater democracy spawned the wildest of wonderlands for Hong Kong’s creativity.  An incident could turn into a poster, a cartoon and meme in minutes, street galleries popped up overnight, and the whole city could learn a song and turn up to sing it the next day.  

Artists were at the forefront of reflecting and marking our city’s fast moving changes in words, images or in how they lived. The art didn’t just respond, it sustained us.

But in 2020, a new law annihilated freedom of expression overnight.   Immediately after the National Security Law was imposed, underground artists and creatives found themselves targets.

Each passing week since, we have seen new consequences, new ways that the law has permeated and transformed so much of daily life.

Perhaps Hong Kong was always an impossible city.  An oasis suspended with a ticking clock, it was the freest city on Chinese soil, and for the outspoken and the creative, a space to say what you wanted to say.  

Made in collaboration with some of Hong Kong’s most incredible underground artists, we saw a window closing and so many leaving, so we asked, what shall we make together while we can?

Our film Hong Kong Mixtape is the result.