Ballad on the Shore (岸上漁歌)
Ballad on the Shore (岸上漁歌)
[2017, Cantonese, Tanka dialect Chinese & English Subtitle]
Screening and discussion with filmmaker MA Chi-hang
October 6, 2:30pm
721 Broadway, Room 674
The film follows the daily rituals of three old fishermen/fisherwomen couples living in fishing villages on Grass Island and in Aberdeen, Hong Kong. These elderlies are the last living links to the distant past of Tanka fishermen songs in the region. Recorded over four years, Ballad on the Shore is an engaging film documenting their arranged marriage, their back-breaking working days, their joy and sorrow, and their singing of these traditional ballads of a water world linked to the past yet immediately present.
Presented by Asian Film & Media Initiative, at the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, NYU
Free and open to the public. RSVP required.
About the filmmaker:
MA Chi-hang (Machi) received his B.A. in Fine Arts and M.A in Philosophy from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ballad on the Shore, his first feature-length documentary, was selected by 16th Royal Anthropology Institute Film Festival (U.K) and received the Intangible Cultural Film Prize and Ethnomusicological Film Award (Commendation) and has also been featured in other festivals. His recent short documentary, Elephant Not for Sale (2020), depicts a robust bonding between the elephant caretaker (mahout) and the giant animals in Phuket, Thailand. His latest video, Chuen Kee Ferry (2021), now showing in the public arts event “Lamma Mia,” applauds the resistance and dexterity of the family run ferry on the verge of its retirement. Ma is an Asian Cultural Council grantee in New York this fall.