First aid workers from Hong Kong 2014 protests front lines have stories told in new documentary
- In Mong Kok First Aid, filmmaker Mavis Siu documents the experiences of voluntary frontline first aiders during 2014’s violent Mong Kok street protests
- One speaks of how they used mobile phone torches to examine injuries, ranging from open head wounds to extensive bruising on protesters’ bodies
The opening scenes of documentary Mong Kok First Aid takes the audience back to Hong Kong’s 1997 handover ceremony. Watching the historic moment 22 years later, it seems life was much more innocent back then.
He is followed by then Chinese president Jiang Zemin, who reads: “I guarantee that Hong Kong will now adopt ‘one country, two systems’ and Hong Kong people will rule Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy. This will remain unchanged for 50 years.”
Mong Kok First Aid focuses on an earlier conflict – the “umbrella movement” that erupted in 2014 – and the first aid volunteers who tended to the injured during protests in Mong Kok, a densely populated neighbourhood in Kowloon district that was one of three places in Hong Kong that saw unrest.
The documentary had its world premiere at the 43rd Margaret Mead Film Festival in New York on Saturday. Mavis Siu Mei-fong, the director, was six years old in 1997. In the film’s narrative she recalls learning about one country, two systems from textbooks, and how in 2003 half a million people took to the streets to protest against a proposed anti-subversion law, Article 23.