The masses are queing to enter The Kwun Yum Treasury Opening Festival in Hung Hom, that occurs once a year on the 25th day of the first lunar month starting at 11 pm. They are streaming down the streets, hours before the gates to the temple dating back to the 12th century, some of them even lining up overnight to wait for the inauguration.
Obedience is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam
According to a folk belief, Kwun Yum opens her treasury on this day to lend money to her worshippers, leaning on the tale when the lives of 400 monks were saved many centuries ago. Once upon a time, the Indian male goddess who evolved into a female deity who stands for sympathy, compassion and mercy, ‘lent people money' on that particular day. This is the main reason why people are flocking to the temple in hope that the goddess will bring them financial prosperity in the year ahead.
Hong Kong director Siu-pong Wong is on the spot in Hung Hom before the festivity, observing the gathering pilgrims with incense sticks in their hands. The area is guarded by the police, and every now and then a voice from a loudspeaker warns the visitors to raise the sticks high up in the air, in order not to harm anyone.
The first twenty-four minutes of the documentary “Obedience” is of strictly observational, non-interventional nature, but as soon as the focus shifts to the poor neighborhood right across this hullabaloo, the picture dramatically changes and the faces and voices of people who are struggling to make ends meet come in focus.
In their annual ranking of the most expensive cities in the world, The Economist has listed Hong Kong as the second right after Singapoore. The prices of housing, its unaffordability and the general lack of space have become an issue many decades ago. For those at the margins, survival is an increasingly impossible task.
Here in the vicinity of temple where people seek blessing for the improvement of their material well-being, a massive development project is in process. A local recycling shop is struggling to keep the business running, and so are the street vendors who sell their goods spread on the plastic protection on the pavement. A notch below them are the garbage collectors who take the screen to present us with a world full of hard competition, rough, 24/7 running.
The said massive construction project is seen high up above from one of the still standing buildings. Planned to include a new SC-link along a hub with three railways passing through, that should ensue on the spot, it is supposed to massively increase the housing prices, and the voice of one of the developers is complaining about people preventing the projects of being finalized in due time. It's the strategic position that this particular area makes so special. A local, unnamed hero is briefly addressed: a restaurant owner who claims to have bought a few flats in the only building that can not be demolished because he owns 20% of the shares. How, and if he is going to change the state of things for good, is something we won't find out.
Siu-pong Wong gets a deep dive into the lives of the garbage collectors, almost all elderly women with health issues. One exception is a middle-aged man who sometimes seeks help from his son to get things done. “If we don't work hard, how can we feed ourselves?”, he ponders, adding that calling his boy to join him is the only way he can understand how his father earns a living, supporting the family who would otherwise live of the 2000 HDK given by the state.
The buildings are left to crumble on purpose, with the city authorities barely processing any requests to undertake repairs. The news about a balcony which collapsed from one of them is reaching us through the radio, and another one about the closure of the recycling shop that helped the local community a lot, as well.
A great contribution to the fillm is the original score that brings eerines to the screen at moments when it's needed the most.
“Obedience” is a welcome take on class imbalance in Hong Kong, and a red flag into our faces about the gentrification processes taking many victims across the world. The film has just had its world premiere in the Rotterdam Film International's “Hanrbour” strand.
