It was a warm Friday afternoon in April, when a telephone call to the Hong Kong Film Archive put paid to acquisition officer Priscilla Chan Choi-yuk's plans for a relaxing dinner with friends. '[The caller] said he saw someone tipping films into a rubbish collection point in Mei Foo, and that we should really head there quickly to look at the stuff being ditched,' says Chan.
Swinging into action, Chan and her colleagues were soon sorting through rubbish in search of potential gems.
'It was hardly an enjoyable experience,' she says, laughing. 'Everything is dripping wet and the three of us were moving about among these piles of rubbish, salvaging tapes and papers.'
They eventually recovered 140 Betacam tapes and video discs of local 1990s productions, later traced to a businessman who distributed movies to Indonesia during Hong Kong cinema's heyday in the 1980s and '90s.
It seems an unimpressive haul for the effort, but Chan says she wasn't too disappointed.
'It is part of what we do, although I recall thinking that it would have been embarrassing to meet my friends with this funny smell on me.'
