May Fung: She Said Why Must It Be Told This Way?

As a dedicated promoter of video art, May Fung holds a significant place in the Hong Kong art scene. In the past, she created many works, but often there were few opportunities for public screening, resulting in limited discussion. This year’s Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival showcases her works in three segments: ‘Images Reflecting an Era—Early Avant-Garde Filmmaking in Hong Kong’, ‘On the Clock: Reflections on Women’s Labour’, and ‘Spotlight on the M+ Asian Avant-Garde Film Circulation Library’. Fung sees this as a rare opportunity for her works to be screened at a quality platform, enabling them to be viewed in a more discursive context.

From She Said Why Me (1989), which examines how women have been subjected to the objectifying gaze in urban contexts across different time periods, to Thought IV: The Edge of the World (1989), which presents the emotional entanglement between individuals and the world, as well as the relationship between war and personal experiences, Fung has consistently reflected on the issues of her time, drawing inspiration from the social environment of that era. She reveals that these topics are often the ones she felt most strongly about, compelling her to film them: ‘You need to understand that I’m not explaining a phenomenon; it’s more about a feeling.’ If the audience can sense what matters to Fung through her works, that is already enough.

With all the content gathered and ready, what is often lacking is simply a new interpretation. Fung shares her analysis with much enthusiasm, almost as if giving a lecture: ‘Creative works generally revolve around two aspects—form and content. While everyone might be telling the same story, what we appreciate, beyond the content, is often how the creator handles it, how it is filmed, and how it is structured and narrated.’ In her creative process, Fung frequently asks herself, ‘Why must it be told this way? Why must it be written this way? Why must it be done this way? Is this the only way?’

The narrative techniques in her works are precisely where Fung experiments. After The Sea (1976) was heavily criticised by her teacher for resembling typical television shooting styles, she decided that her future works would employ narrative techniques that have rarely or even never been used. Therefore, for elements as minor as the end credits, she opts for ‘realisation by’ instead of the conventional term ‘director’. In Muse Over Independent Video (1997), a video essay, the entire discourse relies solely on her voiceover narration, and the film consists of a single shot replayed continuously—both practices are certainly unconventional. She believes that her departure from tradition is what makes her work avant-garde, a value she continues to embrace: experimentation.

As for whether the experiments are successful, Fung believes that there is no such thing as success or failure. She immediately counters, ‘What do you mean by a successful experiment?’ Caught off guard by her question, I didn’t have time to delve deeper and tentatively defined success as audience approval. Fung quickly replied, ‘Why do you need to seek the audience’s approval?’

Likewise, for In the Mood for Love, in the Mood for Life (2001), some viewers were dissatisfied that the interviewee was not positioned to the right in the frame and was oddly gazing somewhere beyond the camera, deviating from standard shooting practices. ‘If you’re constantly wondering if the experiment will succeed or whether the audience will like it, then you wouldn’t try anything at all,’ she said with a smile. Perhaps audience dissatisfaction can be seen as a sign of experimental success, as the essence of experimentation is to challenge traditional values. To find out whether traditional values have been challenged, it all depends on the audience’s response and the extent of the discussion. She hopes that in the future, she could allocate more time and space to return to her creative work while fostering more ‘differences’ by encouraging the city to embrace diverse ways of thinking and doing, leading to a flourishing of ideas.