My Story

Everyday, moving inside and outside light and shadow, embracing the darkness, feeling the solitude, enjoying the different lives...

Once I was a movie maniac. Seeing movies became a vital part in my life. It was because I can feel LIFE from the moving light and shadow. Even though I have never the same experience, I can just FEEL it, FELL into it and IMAGINE about it. All these brought me with sorrow and laughter, emptiness and richness. All are binaries but those are the actuality of life.

From Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia, I can feel the feeling of being nostalgic. As a Hong Kong native citizen and all my family members are crowded in the places that belong to us, scarcely do I have to chance to have this feeling. Urban life implies limited spaces but everywhere is accessible. Nostalgic feeling is something strange to me. Nevertheless, in the movie, from the grayish atmosphere, from the wrinkles of the main character, from the speechless silence and refraining from the mass, I was deeply impressed and touched by the sorrow lingered in the air. I could feel the pain and uneasiness of the main character and I could totally get into it. Never could I forget this nostalgic feeling, despite I have never experience before.

I met Toto and Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso at my age of seventeen. From two of them, I understand the essence of life. Alfredo said to Toto: “Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people.” Hong Kong, as a globalized city, I understand that I am just a tidy part of this land. Living in such a fast-pace city, things are changing as fast as we can catch up with. Situations were just totally different from Alfredo and Toto’s little village in Italy. However, the essence in the same: the celebration of youth to chase with your dreams, the cherishing of the friendships we ever have. I was enlightened at the age of seventeen, with the aid of this film.

However, many years ago, I started to depart from films. Life seems to become dry from that day onwards. The reasons: maybe just because of busy in life, or the tiredness embodies no more energy to go to the cinema, or the excuse to face the losing self…… So memorize the days with films, so memorize the days with naïve charm.

The story doesn’t end, as I believe one day I can get back my losing self…