Disappearance is a 360 VR non-fiction diving into the stories of three people who take us to places important to them in Hong Kong.

Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Shannon Walsh

Congratulations! Why did you make your film?

I was living in Hong Kong from 2013-2016 and teaching film production at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. For a few years previous to that I had been making collectively created feature documentaries about neighbourhoods I was living in. The first, A st-henri, le 26 aout, about Montreal, and the second, Jeppe on a Friday, about Johannesburg. While in Hong Kong, I started to explore what it would mean to make a film about a neighbourhood in that city. Around the same time, the Umbrella Movement erupted and hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets to assert their independence from mainland China.

I was able to learn so much from my students and colleagues over that time period about the fears and worries of Hong Kong people. There was a real story here. I had the idea to ask a few well-known locals to take me on a visit to places that were important to their sense of what it meant to be a Hong Konger, and that they were afraid may disappear. Working with some colleagues at City U, I was able to help put together a 3D printed rig for 6 Go Pro cameras.

This is my first attempt at working with 360 VR, and it was an amazing learning experience. Already the technology has advanced from how I made this piece. I ended up with footage from 6 cameras and had to stitch together the footage into the experience you see here. Working in 360 degrees is a whole new way to tell stories and I’m excited to explore it more.

Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?

Disappearance: Hong Kong Stories transports you into 3 worlds in Hong Kong you’d never get to visit otherwise, led by people with a deep sense of the places and their meaning in contemporary China on a personal and political level.

How do personal and universal themes work in your film?

Disappearance is about the intersection between the personal and the universal. These places are significant in very personal ways to each of the people in my film, but they are also representative of the larger forces at work as mainland China slowly encroaches on the territory. What does ‘home’ mean? What does it mean to have a special and unique culture, and what is at threat when that is not valued?

I thought a lot about Quebec identity and the struggles to assert cultural independence when I lived in Hong Kong, a place that also has a distance language and cultural difference from Han majority and mandarin speaking Chinese.

What type of feedback have you received so far?

This is my first public screening that I will be able to get public feedback, and I’m really looking forward to what the audience gets from the film.

What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?

What do we lose when culture difference is erased?

What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?

I just finished a short documentary called “Matsutake Hunters” and I’m completing a feature film “Illusions of Control” set for release in early 2019.

Interview: November 2018

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Disappearance: Hong Kong Stories

Disappearance is a 360 VR non-fiction diving into the stories of three people who take us to places important to them in Hong Kong.

Length: 13 min

Director: Shannon Walsh

Producer: Shannon Walsh

Writer: Shannon Walsh

Key cast:

Looking for (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists): All of the above

Social media handles:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shannon.walsh.92123

Twitter: @shannondwalsh

Instagram: @nightcannotbesosky

Other:

Hashtags you use: #Disappearance #HongKongStories #360VR #360 #VR

Where was this filmed? #HongKong

Made in association with:

Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? There will be a premiere screening in Montreal as part of the RIDM film festival Saturday Nov 10 at 8pm, where I will be speaking more about the film. It will also be available for view at the UxDoc space at the cinematheque throughout the festival.