I’ve always been a big fan of audio docs, the sort that you hear on NPR and the like. There’s a part of me that always wanted to be the interviewer; the guy sitting in a room with interesting people listening to their life stories. With this project, I figured I’d give it a shot. I wanted to do something in the participatory documentary mode, so I sat down with my friend Ysabeaux Ng and talked a bit about the current state of Hong Kong. With the protests that are going on over there and her connection to them through her own heritage, I figured that it would be a good chance to get a perspective on a topic that I otherwise am limited in my understanding. With Ysabeaux’s father being from Hong Kong, she’s much closer to the conflict than I am, as a white dude living in the middle of America.
To make this work, we ended up sitting down and talking for about 30 minutes (although I only recorded about half of that). I took the opportunity to just ask Ysabeaux questions about Hong Kong, media representation of the conflict, and her own personal connection to it through her father and the time that she lived there. I’m grateful that she was willing to talk about it at length; there was a lot that I learned.
With this as a participatory mode of documentary, I left myself in as a character with the recording. Since I was just sitting, talking with a friend about a topic instead of a subject matter expert, the whole process reminded me of films like Time Indefinite. That film has a very personal aspect to it, through Ross McElwee’s ruminations about his own life. If I had more time to work with in the project (I’m a bit over the expected time as it is) I might have added some more commentary after the fact, similar to how McElwee would record commentary over his own conversations with other people.
