"Hong Kong Strong" Director Brandon Li Tells Us How He Shot His Viral Video
"Hong Kong is a challenge, but one definitely worth taking," says the nomadic filmmaker.
Why Hong Kong? I chose Hong Kong because I wanted to explore the place where my dad grew up, where half of my family lives. I'm half-Cantonese but was raised in the USA in St. Louis, Missouri. I spent most of my life in the US and only visited Hong Kong a few times when I was very young. For the last few years, I've been living nomadically, flying around the world and filming the locations where I travel. I decided I wanted to finally explore Hong Kong and get to know my own family and culture.
My relationship with the city is very mixed. Part of me absolutely fell in love with Hong Kong—the vibrancy, the energy, great food, incredible architecture, beautiful nature right around the corner. A part of me was shocked at things like people chopping up fish on the street, the extremely tiny apartments, the pushing and rudeness in crowds, the yelling and cacophony. Hong Kong is a fascinating but exhausting place. I was very relieved to get out of the center of town and visit places like Sai Kung and Lantau Island where the pace is a bit slower.
The title: Why call it Hong Kong “Strong”? I wanted a title that simply, bluntly and powerfully captured the surging energy of Hong Kong. The city felt like a force of nature to me, with an identity sharply defined in spite of all the outside cultural influence. People in Hong Kong have to be strong to survive, to get ahead in life, even just to navigate the city day-to-day. To me it didn't feel like a chill, easy place to live. Hong Kong is a challenge, but one definitely worth taking.
Which shot are you proudest of? And which was the most challenging? At 1:13 in the video, when we zoom from an exterior of an apartment building and tilt down to a person sleeping in a makeshift bed. This is actually a composite of several shots and took me many hours to stitch together in editing. I love the dizzying effect of the changing perspectives—it conveys the way I felt when I explored the city, looking up in awe at the massive buildings. It also shows the harshness of some of the living conditions of the city, the cramped quarters. I didn't want to pass judgment about the way people live in Hong Kong; I just wanted to show the way things are for people from all strata of society.
Do you think Hong Kong is easier to make look good than other cities? Hong Kong is a dramatic, unique city full of character, and for that reason it lends itself well to film. So many other cities are rather generic in appearance, or lack the sheer energy of Hong Kong. I was amazed every day at the scale of the buildings, the density of the people, the beauty of the nature and dramatic skyline... I just couldn't put down my camera. Hong Kong is larger than life, and it's a filmmaker or photographer's dream.