They may have gone to school on different sides of the globe, but undergrad and graduate students from Hong Kong and New York came together to share their passion for filmmaking at the Film Festival Exchange run by the college’s Department of Film and Media Studies. Students from Hunter joined students from the Academy of Film of Hong Kong Baptist University, both of whom had created short films aligning with this year’s theme: borders.
The program was created by professor Martin Lucas and director of the Film Academy, Eva Man.
The similarities in the films did not go unnoticed. Students from both groups shared their struggles with the borders between cultures, life and death, sanity and dementia and sexual identity. The filmmakers interpreted the theme based on their own backgrounds and life experiences. With film topics ranging from immigration policies to same-sex marriage, postpartum depression and race, the film festival and exchange covered it all.
The work of Hunter students included “Strays,” a narrative created by Jaylin Pressley. The short film followed two teenage friends after one had just learned that her parents were taken by immigration. She is left alone in her apartment, not sure where to go or what to do.
The Hong Kong Baptist University also offered topics ranging from the loss of a pet to a person taking their own life. He Xiaomin and Chen You Jie created an experimental film, “Last Words.” The film is about Dan, a man with an everyday job in an office. Tired of the routine and what life has to offer, Dan records his final words on the computer while on his birthday.
This exchange began two years ago when Lucas was told by a colleague from the College of Staten Island that Glenn Stive, an American working in Hong Kong, was eager to create an event with a film program in New York. Stive works with US Fulbrights in Hong Kong. He found himself in Hunter and shared his idea with Lucas.
Excited about the idea, Lucas got support for the exchange with the then department chair Shanti Thakur and funding from the Office of Strategic Scholarships. This event would be the first of its kind at Hunter. Rather than studying abroad for a semester, students from Hong Kong would visit New York for less than a week and vice versa. It was decided that six films from each school would be produced by students. The first theme would be “home.”
Many films humanized issues going on in the world today. The filmmakers made it clear that the topics were not so much political issues, but human issues.
Both film programs are housed in urban public universities and have a mission to educate their students about media production not only in their own city, but globally.
“A student noted that it was interesting to travel as part of a Hunter College group exactly because we are not NYU or USC,” recalled Lucas of their trip to Hong Kong, “and that we challenge stereotypes of American students and their concerns.
