Devil’s Peak
Director
Simon Liu
USA / 2021
30 min.
/ Original version
Original language
English, Cantonese
DEVIL’S PEAK reflects on recent unprecedented shifts in the socio-cultural fabric of the artist’s homeland of Hong Kong and a nagging anxiety that hangs over daily life in the former British Colony. Highly condensed glimpses of cityscapes and everyday life form a collage of overlapping poetic narratives and coded references. The film cycles through ominous sites of social tension, lush urban spectacle, relics of imperialist legacies, and places of personal significance—such as the artist’s 500-year-old ancestral village—at a rapid, frenetic pace. By interrogating highly subjective experiences in the context of a seemingly insurmountable change in the political and cultural fabric of his native city, Liu creates a site of remembrance for a time and place that may never be as it was.
Simon Liu is a film artist who seeks to build a lyrical catalogue of the rapidly evolving psychogeography of his place of origin in Hong Kong through alternative documentary forms, abstract diary films, multi-channel video installations, and 16mm projection performances. Liu’s work has been presented at film festivals and museums globally and will be in an upcoming solo program at the MoMA, New York. Liu is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a teacher at the Cooper Union School of Art, and a member of Negativeland: an artist-run film lab in Brooklyn. Liu is currently editing his first feature film, STAFFORDSHIRE HOARD.
Production Rachael Lawe. Production company LiuFilmsLiu (New York, USA). Director Simon Liu. Cinematography Simon Liu. Editing Simon Liu. Music Simon Liu. Sound Simon Liu. Production design Simon Liu.
World sales LiuFilmsLiu
2009: Flyer Boy (11 min.). 2012: Ditchwork (24 min.). 2014: Donkey Riding (8 min.). 2015: Harbour City (14 min.), Shuffle Cove (7 min.). 2016: Sneyd Green (10 min.), Cluster Click City Sundays (19 min.). 2017: Highview (20 min.). 2018: Star Ferry (8 min.), Fallen Arches (11 Min.). 2019: E-Ticket (13 min.), Signal 8 (15 min.). 2020: Happy Valley (13 min.), -force- (9 min.). 2021: CONVICTION (9 min.), Devil’s Peak.
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