A recently produced short film from GVAcreative has gone viral, built on the idea that Hong Kong, since being “passed over” to China in 1997, is becoming less like what it was and that its past will eventually be gone. “The city is dying, just like a man who has lost a lot of blood,” says one of the characters in voice-over.
In the seven-minute, 28-second film, Hong Kong is threatened by a meteor predicted to hit in 33 years, 2047, exactly when the constitutional principle “one country, two systems” is scheduled to end. With this threat, 70 percent of the population flees and multinational companies retract their businesses. The film directly cites black traders from the mainland as a source of evil.
Eventually, Hong Kongers save themselves by inventing a laser to destroy the meteor.
At this point, the film is nearing 650,000 views on YouTube, with more than 1,400 comments — though many of them appear to be completely oblivious to the political message, per YouTube commenters.
The meteor as metaphor for China wasn’t lost on mainland censors, however. As the Diplomat reports:
After telling the relevant media organizations to delete “information related to supporting and rescuing Tang Jitian and other missing lawyers,” the message from the propaganda authorities ordered the deletion of “video, text, etc. that advocates the short sci-fi film about Hong Kongers ‘saving themselves’ titled Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed in 33 Years.”
Yik Kan Cheung, a VFX artist and post-production supervisor with GVAcreative told The Diplomat, “The reason the video is being censored by authorities is, we believe, that they think what they’re doing is keeping the society peaceful. But, what we think they are doing is keeping people away from knowing the truth, that China is trying to suffocate Hong Kong to death by importing Mainland Chinese into Hong Kong until there’s enough people for them to control the elections. After that, there will be no open elections in Hong Kong.”
Indeed, the movie is inaccessible on Chinese websites. (Searches for the Chinese name, 香港将于33年后毁灭, do return results on Baidu and Sina Weibo though.) Still, just because this satirical sci-fi short can’t be watched within the mainland doesn’t mean the question shouldn’t be asked: what will become of Hong Kong’s future? And on that note — what was the deus ex machina in the form of a laser supposed to represent?
(H/T Global Voices)
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