Screening & Discussion : YP1967

【YP1967】
Directed by Can TO │Written by Jenny LEE

＊Nominated for The Best Film in London International Filmmaker Festival 2018＊

Everyone has secrets. Everyone has the past no one’s heard about. But what makes a group of young prisoners sit in stunned silence with unmentionable hesitation to talk about their past?

Six ex-young prisoners, who were jailed after Hong Kong 1967 leftist riots, face harsh realities of alienation, rejection and being forgotten, but decide to disclose their stories after half a century of silence.

Back to the British Hong Kong in 1967, as talk of anti-colonial sentiments filled the air, pro-Beijing supporters began stirring a small labour dispute into a political struggle. The most violent riots ever in Hong Kong’s history move into full swing.

Eight months of bombings and mayhem resulted in 51 people killed and 800 more injured. Thousands were convicted of offences and imprisoned. Among them, hundreds of minors were jailed for the crimes of opposing schools, possessing seditious propaganda, participating in union activities and others crimes.

Nobody knew how many of the teenagers ever had a brush with the ideology they claimed, or for what ground they were locked in an adult prison. They ended up working, suffering and growing up there. They found themselves sandwiched between leftist Anti-British heroes and violent rioters. Imprisonment was unfortunate but it might not be as bad as the decades-long struggle, discrimination and hardship faced by them in everyday life.

Forgetting the past seems easy. Yet, still being abandon but surviving, even living with labels, ex-young prisoner endures complex entanglement with family, schools, workplace, unions and the country. 

Five decades later, despite the city’s 20th handover anniversary, six ex-young prisoners speak out for the first time about their personal experience. This documentary film tells their love and hate towards their country, their honour and dishonour as a convicted criminal, their condonation and condemnation of the parties involved, and their truth-seeking and reconciliation with the past.

About Director Can To

Can To is an award-winning documentary film director and producer with twenty years’ experience. Before founding CANTO WORKS, she was a senior TV producer at RTHK where she produced over 20 episodes of the acclaimed documentary series Hong Kong Connection.

Can’s production has won great international acclaims for the last two decades. In 1998, Where Women Ruled, a documentary film on Moso Tribes in Yunnan Province in China won the New York International Film Festival Finalist Award. A War Without Guns, a documentary film about AIDS orphans in China, won the Silver Award of United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI) in 2005. In 2010, Little Photographer an independent documentary film on children photographers in Sichuan province in China after 512 Earthquake, won the New York International TV and Film Festival GOLD Award.

Can holds a Master degree in Communication Studies from the Leeds University in the UK.