LUNATIC STREET MAGICIAN David Blaine received plenty of attention last year when he imprisoned himself in a Perspex box and hoisted himself up a crane in central London for 44 days. And yet all he was really doing was taking an unfortunate aspect of modern life a little too literally. Look around Hong Kong for example: people are doing their best to avoid you. On the MTR, on the streets, on the buses, even in restaurants: headphones, ear pieces and ear plugs are the tools with which we create our own little universes of sound, our barriers against each other. There seems to be a generation unable to leave home without plugging something into its ears first. German philosopher Martin Heidegger observed that technology threatens to become the filter through which we sense the world, and although he died in 1976 - long before the impact of portable devices and gadget-baggage could be realised - the world he predicted is seemingly here today. When the Walkman was launched in the late 1970s school children everywhere were scolded for their anti-social, headphone-wearing behaviour. Now it seems de rigueur: when we're not listening to music on our iPods, we're on mobile phones. When we're not on the phone, we're listening to music. When we're doing neither, we're probably wearing headphones just so we don't have to talk to that person in the elevator. The emergence of technology such as the Blackberry - the pocket-sized phone and e-mail keyboard - makes it easier than ever for your office to follow you around. And easier, therefore, for us to not have to acknowledge the world around us, in order to remain further immersed in our own. Something that brings this nightmarish vision into sharp focus is a series of films unearthed by the Hong Kong Film Archive that offer a glimpse of life here from 100 or so years ago, when we had no such methods of avoiding each other. Pearl River Delta is a series of films to be shown starting this week as part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival. A programme devised to celebrate 100 years of cinema in China, it includes pioneering works by the likes of Lai Man-wai, regarded as the father of Hong Kong film. A section called Early Sights of Guangdong & Hong Kong also features some of the oldest footage of Hong Kong ever shot, with some murky reels of film dating back to as early as 1898. And while the quality of those works is unfortunately poor, other parts of the programme point back to a seemingly simple world free from the social oblivion being embraced today. 'Life was probably tougher then, but there were so many things that you didn't have to worry about that we do now,' says Bede Cheng Tze-wang, programme assistant for the Film Archive. 'And most people didn't have a phone, let alone five phone numbers like they do today. It was a much simpler lifestyle, and after watching these films, that's what appeals to me.' Some things are strikingly obvious: A Trip Through China, made in 1915 by American filmmaker Benjamin Brodsky, provides glimpses of Hong Kong harbour where it appears to be more like a flat, calm sea as opposed to today's choppy, flustered channel. Elsewhere, every man in the film seems to be wearing a hat or a cap; the roads are quiet thanks to a lack of cars. Animals are everywhere, and in one sequence Brodsky observes that 'Chinese pigs - like the Chinese government - seem to bend in the middle'. And in a time before fast food and globalisation, everyone is thinner. Or maybe that's just the poverty. Look closer, however, and people are walking around in groups, stopping here and there, and acknowledging those around them more. Instead of the gym, we're shown the Women's Health and Beauty League, in which Miss Mavis Wong drills ladies through light workouts that include a spot of catching and skipping. 'In these films I see a life where you go to work, you get your reward, you go home to your life again,' says Cheng. 'It seems that things are not so simple now. It's harder to leave work, technology has enabled it to follow you around. What does all this information do for us, why do we need it?' Compare it with today, however, and you get the impression of how concepts of social space have changed; when people are talking to each other on these films, they're actually talking face to face as opposed to today's practice of having private conversations in public places. Lai Man-wai's A Page of History provides a more direct insight into the things that have changed over the past century or so, a visual representation of rural China before the Cultural Revolution. It records Dr Sun Yat-sen's - the founding father of modern China - activities in Guangdong, and includes a gruesome execution scene where a prisoner's spine is snapped in a process typical of the day. 'Lai Man-wai was the father of Hong Kong cinema, a big supporter of Sun Yat-sen and an intellectual who supported this ideal of building a better China,' says Cheng. 'In the mid-1920s China was ruled by many different warlords while Sun Yat-sen was leading a campaign to unify the country. Lai Man-wai took his camera with him and shot footage. Before he passed away in the early 50s he asked his wife Lam Chor-chor to give the footage to the official Chinese film archive. It wasn't until the 90s that Lai's sixth son, Lai-shek, looked up the footage and tried to recover it.' Elsewhere, Tang Xiodan's Roar of the People explores the harsh realities of life for the refugees of Guangdong in the 1940s, whose narrative supports 'the people against the corrupted privileged few'. Brodsky's A Trip Through China serves as a tourism advert for Hong Kong aimed at Europeans, 1915 style. Parallels can be found in the way the city markets itself today: a diverse melting pot where people play hard. While the differences are striking when watching the older films, the similarities are even more so. The sedan chairs and rickshaws that zip across the screen provide the wealthy white pedestrian with a more literal bubble of self-absorption than headphones do today. 'You see how it's portrayed as being exotic to live here,' says Cheng. 'You see that mentality in what is really a promotional film done by the Hong Kong tourist association - it claims to have spent $2,000 or $3,000 to make that film, at the time. 'It makes the place look like a lot of fun, and the funny thing is we are still promoting the same kind of message today with Asia's World City - how Hong Kong is so dynamic, that sort of thing. It is a very shallow perspective, but one that we've had for longer than we might think.' How history will look back on today's street scenes in 100 years time, is anyone's guess. If the present is anything to go by, however, you wonder if anyone will be listening by then. Early Sights of Guangdong & Hong Kong, Thur, Apr 3, 9.30pm, HK Film Archive, 50 Lei King Rd, Sai Wan Ho, $30. www.hkiff.org.hk
