Documentary director’s struggle to find footage of Hong Kong’s 1967 riots exposes problems with archives

Connie Lo Yan-wai entered “San Po Kong” and “artificial flower factory” anxiously at the Public Records Office in Kwun Tong, hoping to dig out records on the 1967 anti-colonial riots which turned the city upside down half a century ago.

To her astonishment, not a single result popped up.

Yet the factory was an integral part of the riots, after a labour dispute quickly snowballed to citywide disturbances when leftists and Communist Party officials seized the chance to stage a struggle against the colonial government.

The veteran journalist and director of the documentary Vanished Archives went on trying other keywords to look for footage, but all she found was a 21-second clip featuring pedestrians but no conflict scenes.

Convincing participants sceptical of people outside their social circle to speak in front of cameras was tough enough, but what truly frustrated her were the missing public records, making it hard to verify interviewees’ account.

Lo ended up relying on newspaper clippings and records of the UK Foreign Office.

“It wasn’t until I studied the records [from the UK] that I realised how many files went missing in the city’s archives,” said Lo.