SYNOPSIS

Director: Yarli Allison

Screenwriter:  Yarli Allison, Yin Lo

Cast: Kay, Laura, Lo Yu, Y

Producer: Yarli Allison

Cinematographer: Yarli Allison, Joy Chao, Nizah Elias, Yin Lo, Piotr Sell

Genre: Short Documentary

Length: 24min18s

Year: 2021

Dialogue: English, Cantonese

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Region: UK, France, Hong Kong China

Production Company: None

In Virtual Return You (can’t) Dehaunt / 於虛擬的彼岸 迴魂（不）散 traces the real life stories of four queer Hong Kong transmigrants born in the 1980s, for whom lived migrant and diaspora experiences exist alongside memories of childhood homes under British colonial rule that no longer exist.

Deploying ethnographic research, digital modelling, extracts from interviews, docu-fiction writing, choreography and performance, Yarli Allison has reconstructed their childhoods in virtual reality (VR). Working with writer Yin Lo and anthropologist Dr. Haro Matas, the interviewees revisit their memories of ‘home’ – virtually reconstructed as a synthetic yet nostalgic space, filled with familiar yet depersonalised objects and possessions.

阐述

In Hong Kong, there is a cultural belief in ghosts having the desire to return to their origin after death – or else suffer the fate of ‘wandering’. Here, it is expressed as a phantasmagoric urge from within to ‘return’, that haunts in its desire to bridge the senses of ‘longing’ and ‘belonging’. With Hong Kong’s complex political history, including several past ‘Mass Migration Wave’ events since it became a British colony in 1841, the unceasing debate on migration remains, and is further exacerbated by the recurring political turbulence still experienced today.

林雅莉、Joy Chao、尼扎·伊莱亚斯、卢妤、彼得亚雷·赛尔