This video provides a provocative look at history of Hong Kong as a British Colony in Asia as constructed by the media. It combines Hong Kong TV commercials, British Government footage, and images from films made during the Japanese occupation, in the format of karaoke—a form of popular entertainment, to evoke a “typical” Hong Kong experience. The last image is a child, unmistakably Chinese, staring back at the camera.

Ellen Pau, born in Hong Kong, began her art career while studying radiography at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, creating her first experimental super-8 film, The Glove. She co-founded Videotage in 1986 and received the Asia Cultural Council Fellowship in 1992, creating Song of the Goddess in the U.S. Her international career launched at the 1995 Gwangju Biennale, followed by exhibitions at “City on the Move”, Asia Pacific Triennial, Shanghai Biennale and Taipei Biennale. Since 1996, she has been a director at the Microwave International Media Art Festival. At the 2001 Venice Biennale, she presented Recycling Cinema. Recent exhibitions include Awakening: Art in Society in Asia 1960s–1990s (2019) at the National Gallery Singapore, What About Home Affairs (2019) at Para-site and Shape of Light at M+ Facade (2022). Her works are held in collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, M+, and Griffith University. The Asia Art Archive launched her archive in 2023.

WONG Chi-fai graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He works mainly in meida art, video, installation and theatre design. Since 1990, Wong has created stage designs for plays and performance by Hong Kong’s Sand & Bricks Theatre, as well as for theatre groups in Taiwan. He is also active in creating video art for theatre. Productions in which his work has appeared include the Altas’ Dance Art’s Memory Disorder and 2000.1.1 Unknown; Moment of Light theatre’s Deviant/Reasonant#2; Cheung Tat Ming’s Solo; and Bird, Birds by Makoto Matsushima.