Echoes of the past

Alex Law Kai-yui's latest film, Echoes of the Rainbow, begins with the young protagonist roaming Hong Kong's streets with a fishbowl over his head. It's 1969 and Law Chun-yee is trying to emulate the Apollo 11 crew who have just landed on the moon.

The film then cuts to a montage of images showing how the boy perceives the world through his makeshift astronaut's helmet - we see archival footage of hawker-filled streets flanked by seven-storey tenement blocks, and hear a popular song of the day.

'It's the feeling that the world is opening up around him,' says Alex Law. 'The world seems so wide that it looks a bit warped, to the extent that he can't really understand precisely what he's seeing; with his head in the aquarium, there are sounds from the outside he can't hear. I guess it's one of the film's motifs - there are things in his life he magnifies beyond their real size, and others he can't really pin down.'

Echoes of the Rainbow is born out of the director's recollections of his own rite of passage in the late 1960s, when he was roused from his childhood by the trials and tribulations he witnessed at home and beyond. Just like Chun-yee, his close relationship with an elder brother (named Chun-yat in the film) afforded him a glimpse of a confused teenager's growing pains.

'I remember 1969 vividly,' says Law, who was 12 at the time. 'There was Woodstock, the moon landing, and the way student activism swept across Hong Kong. So I see 1969 as a very important watershed in Hong Kong's history.'

As evident from the juxtaposition of an English-language R&B song with traditional working class streetscapes in the opening sequence, Hong Kong was also at a cultural crossroads in 1969. Western influences on the territory were fading, slowly giving way to a more indigenous popular culture.