the unshakable destiny_2101
16mm film transferred to 2K digital with sound
2021
Director/Writer/Editor/Producer: Nikki Lam
Cast: Ching Ching Ho
Cinematography: Bonita Carzino
Production Design: Scott Heinrich
Costume Design: Al Chan
Sound Design: Ben Harb
Colourist: Abe Wynen
Camera Assistant: Drew Collins
Lighting/Gaffer: Francis Healy Wood
Art Department: Andrew Huynh, Jaime Powell, Cheralyn Lim, Kelly Chan
This project was commissioned by TarraWarra Museum of Art for Victoria Together and is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and The SUBSTATION.
All political views suggested or depicted in this project belong to the artist-director only. The project does not represent the views of its casts, collaborators or presenters.
︎︎︎please contact artist for online screener
︎the unshakable destiny_2101 has won the Best Audio Visual Project at Jakarta Independent Film Festival 2022, officially selected in GRRLHAUS Cinema Berlin, Revelation Perth Film Festival, Arthouse Asia Film Festival and shortlisted for Incinerator Art Award, Footscray Art Prize and Wyndham Art Prize.
Now, Hong Kong people are to run Hong Kong. That is a promise. And that is the unshakable destiny.’
— Chris Patten, Last Governor of Hong Kong at the Handover Ceremony in 1997.
the unshakable destiny_2101 is the opening film to the expansive video trilogy that explores the misalignment between histories and cinema; memory and grief. As Hong Kong transforms its resistance from political to the personal, how are our relationships to our own image shift over time? Transforming symbols of memories, protests and cinema, the trilogy contemplates on body and time, examine nostalgia and the colonial gaze, as an attempt to speculate a different future through subjective and collective memories. A brief ode to Wong Kar Wai cinema and Asian-Futurism, the 16mm film presents an imaginary space where the body is opaque and cyclically reflective. While the project is set to challenge the colonial nostalgia of Hong Kong in cinema, the film gazes upon memories and events where the personal meets the collective.
Image: Installation view at Primavera 23: Young Australian Artists at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2023. Photo credit Zan WimberleyAn anchor to the project, this first film is set to be remixed and re-imagined in the modular series. Performing with and through language adopted, the viewer is invited to witness the artist’s endless negotiation of subjectivities and truths.
Image: Installation view at Primavera 23: Young Australian Artists at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2023. Photo credit Zan Wimberley
Image: Installation view at Primavera 23: Young Australian Artists at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2023.