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A scene from the documentary “Revolution of Our Times”, which has been playing to sold-out audiences in Vancouver. Photo: Handout

Audiences sing, sob, chant as Hong Kong ‘Revolution’ film is a sold-out success in protest stronghold Vancouver

  • ‘Revolution of Our Times’ has been playing to packed cinemas, reflecting Vancouver’s status as a proxy arena for Hong Kong’s protest movement
  • 3,000 tickets for 14 screenings for Kiwi Chow’s award-winning documentary about the 2019 upheaval sold out online in about one hour, organisers say

Sobbing, singing and standing ovations are not typical responses in a Vancouver cinema, much less for a 152-minute documentary.

But Revolution of Our Times, director Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai’s visceral account of Hong Kong’s 2019 upheaval, is being received like no typical movie in a Canadian city that has served as a proxy arena for conflict between supporters and opponents of the protest movement that encompassed broadly democratic and anti-government goals.

All 3,000 tickets for 14 Vancouver screenings in two cinemas, running from February 11 until March 13, were sold out almost immediately, organisers say.

Attendees said emotional scenes on screen were reflected among audiences; some wept throughout, others chanted the protest slogan “Hong Kong, add oil”, and at the end many stood and sang the unofficial protest anthem Glory to Hong Kong.

A sold-out screening of “Revolution of Our Times” in Vancouver’s Dunbar Theatre on February 19, 2022. Photo: CanMen

The reception suggests how the protest movement – largely suppressed in Hong Kong since the 2020 introduction of a national security law (NSL) that critics say has diminished freedoms in the city – has found a bolt-hole in Vancouver. The city has more than 70,000 Hong Kong-born residents, at the highest density anywhere in Canada

All 620 tickets at four initial screenings under pandemic capacity limits were sold online in three minutes, according to organisers; 10 more full-capacity screenings were later added but sold out in just one hour.

“It is entirely out of our expectations. We haven’t really done any marketing,” said Sam Lung, a founder of CanMen, a Vancouver-based social media community that supported the protest movement and arranged the screenings.

What protest film Revolution of Our Times does and doesn’t show

Jenny Kwan, a Hong Kong-born member of Canada’s parliament, said that the screening she attended was an “emotional, heartbreaking” experience.

“You could hear people in the audience quietly sobbing. There was an intensity in the cinema, all around me,” said Kwan, the member for Vancouver East. “Knowing the outcome, knowing that these laws have been made, that Hongkongers have lost these rights … that made it even more intense, more poignant.”

Kwan, who took part in protests in Vancouver to support the movement, said the audience chanted protest slogans as the movie ended. “It touched me on many levels. I am a Hongkonger, born in Hong Kong. A part of me is always with Hong Kong.”

An audience member decorates a Lennon Wall with messages of support for the Hong Kong protest movement at a cinema in Vancouver, after a screening of “Revolution of Our Times”. Photo: CanMen

Revolution of Our Times, which last year screened at the Cannes Film Festival and won the prize for best documentary at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, chronicles a protest movement that captured global attention by filling the streets of Hong Kong with hundreds of thousands of supporters in the summer of 2019, including sometimes violent clashes with police and opponents. The film has not been screened in Hong Kong.

The protests began in opposition to a proposed extradition law that would have allowed the transfer of fugitives to mainland China, among other jurisdictions. The movement grew to become a focal point for pro-democracy and anti-government sentiment.

Pro-China protesters surround Vancouver church hosting Hong Kong prayers

Victor Ho is the former long-time editor-in-chief of the British Columbia edition of Sing Tao, a Chinese-language Hong Kong newspaper.

He had been visiting Hong Kong in 2019 and attended the largest protest, a June 16 march that drew an estimated 2 million, in his capacity as a journalist.

But he said he found himself overwhelmed as the familiar scenes from that day unfolded on screen in Vancouver. Ho said he struggled to hold back tears; at the end of the screening, about a third of the audience stood to sing Glory to Hong Kong.

“The images recalled a lot of very bitter, very symbolic resistance of Hong Kong people … they know they will not succeed. But they tried to speak out,” he said. “I was so touched.”

A still from “Revolution of Our Times”. Photo: Handout

CanMen is among several Vancouver-based activist and social media communities that supported the Hong Kong protest movement and have tens of thousands of followers and subscribers; of CanMen’s 27,000 followers on Facebook, Lung estimated 60 per cent are Vancouverites.

Vancouver has long served as a transnational extension of Hong Kong, having attracted a large flow of immigrants ahead of the 1997 handover. Many later travelled back and forth between the two cities; Canada’s government believes it has 300,000 citizens in Hong Kong, most of them returnee immigrants and their children.

Those close ties were reflected in 2019, when rallies were staged in Vancouver and elsewhere in sympathy with the Hong Kong protests. There were also clashes with counterprotesters waving Chinese flags, further echoing scenes in Hong Kong.

Director sold rights to protest film shown at Cannes, but ‘won’t leave Hong Kong’

Lung, who immigrated to Canada in 2017, is a former journalist for Apple Daily, the Hong Kong newspaper that was shut down last year after authorities used the NSL to freeze its assets.

The NSL, passed by China’s government, aims to prevent, stop and punish secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and foreign interference in Hong Kong. Critics see it as a sweeping measure to suppress dissent. (Read the full text of the National Security Law here.)

“In Vancouver, every Hongkonger still has freedom of speech, the freedom to enjoy the movie. Now, those Hongkongers here are thinking – how can we support Hong Kong in the future?” said Lung.

A still from “Revolution of Our Times”. Photo: Handout

“There are a lot of social media groups. The protest movement in Vancouver is still going on, every single year. It’s like Tiananmen. It’s the same thing. They won’t forget.”

Ho agreed, and said a substantial amount of the protest movement’s activities had shifted to Canada after the NSL rendered it too risky in Hong Kong.

He called Vancouver the movement’s “optimal stronghold”, citing its relative proximity and historical links to Hong Kong.

Canada’s freedoms helped protect the Hong Kong protest movement, said Ho, but many activists were still afraid to reveal their identities, even in Vancouver.

Hong Kong protest film wins prize for best documentary at Taiwan awards

“The National Security Law in Hong Kong is omnipotent. They can arrest people, in theory, for things everywhere, anywhere,” Ho said, referring to provisions in the law that claim jurisdiction over offences committed anywhere in the world.

Lung said that when he first set about organising the screenings, he did not fear any repercussions.

“There is freedom of speech in Canada, so I don’t think about it too much. But after the successful showings, some of my friends in Hong Kong tell me that I might not be able to go back,” he said.

A still from “Revolution of Our Times”, a documentary film directed by Kiwi Chow. Photo: Handout

Screenings of Revolution of Our Times have been held in other Canadian cities, coordinated by CanMen and other groups. They include five sold-out shows in Toronto.

But it is in Vancouver that the response has been strongest. Lung said further Vancouver screenings were being planned for the end of March, if slots could be found.

He said proceeds were being used to cover costs, and it was unclear if the shows would turn a profit. “The money is still flowing, so it is still too early to conclude,” he said.

Kenny Chiu, the former Conservative MP for Steveston-Richmond East, attended the Vancouver premiere last month, and said patrons sobbed throughout. “It was very emotional,” said Chiu, who came to Canada from Hong Kong as a teenage student in 1982.

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Chiu suggested Canada could play a role in the fate of Hong Kong, citing Sun Yat-sen’s visits to Vancouver and other diaspora strongholds as the nationalist leader built resistance to the Qing dynasty around the turn of the 20th Century.

Might Vancouver play a similar role again? “I don’t know about that, but Vancouver could be a place for political discourse that you can’t have in Hong Kong,” said Chiu.

Kwan, a member of the left-leaning New Democratic Party, suggested that Vancouverites serve as a “voice for the people of Hong Kong [and] not let them be forgotten”.

She suggested “humanitarian” immigration measures to help Hongkongers move to Canada beyond existing programmes that prioritised economic benefit.

Vancouver police separate a group of counterprotesters from a rally in support of the Hong Kong protest movement on August 17, 2019. Photo: Agence France-Presse

Neither the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Vancouver, not the Chinese embassy in Ottawa, responded to queries about the screenings.

In a statement, director Kiwi Chow said that while the film “cannot be released in Hong Kong [it] can be shown to Canadian audiences.

“This documentary is a film by Hongkongers.”

“I hope it is not just me, but every Hongkonger would feel that people now understand us more because of the release of this film,” he said. “I hope that this understanding would transform positively and become our hope.”

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