Hong Kong filmmaker Ellen Pau on embracing her identity as an artist, a woman and a lesbian
- The visual artist says she has felt close to death since childhood, when she was plagued by asthma
- She has maintained her job as a radiographer throughout her creative career
Near-death experiences: My father was a doctor and worked at Grantham Hospital, and my mother was a midwife. I was born in 1961 and my younger brother and I lived with our parents in the hospital quarters near what is now the Aberdeen Tunnel. In those days, there was no tunnel, just a hillside, and it was a quiet place to grow up.
There were six units in the building, but only two families living there and aside from my brother and I there were no other children. I was quite happy to play by myself or ride my bicycle. When I was seven, I got a camera and started taking photos. I had asthma, so during school sports lessons I’d sit outside the field and watch my classmates. I’d have lots of different thoughts in my head. It led me to feel I was different from them and weird.
At weekends I often had to stay at home in bed because my asthma became serious. My parents got used to it and would go and visit my aunt for four or five hours and leave some medicine for me on the bedside table. During that time, I’d sometimes get really sick and afraid. I had to sit up to breathe. If I laid down, I’d see the idea of death projected on the ceiling. At those moments, I couldn’t even open my eyes. I just felt I was different, I felt I was close to death.
Chaos theory: In secondary school, I got an inhaler, which made things a little easier, but the asthma never went away. When I moved out of my parents’ house and was living independently, I was wheeled into A&E many times, and twice I had to be resuscitated.
I quickly realised that film production was a man’s world. If you are a woman and want to be a director you have to argue with them
I went to St Stephen’s Girls’ College. I was the only person making mix tapes and my classmates remember me as a DJ. I loved physics. It’s a poetic medium and quantum physics is the most romantic part, where you see the world as chaos, there’s a lot of uncertainty. Every atom is just a possibility, nothing is real, there is no real world – I think this idea is crazy, I like it.