British-Chinese filmmaker and cultural strategist Rosanna Lee stayed at Eaton HK while working on her short documentary film project “Heart Of The Lion”, which chronicles the story of Kelvin, a young British-born Chinese man who is obsessed with lion dance, and his search for purpose and belonging. The film is a story that explores intergenerational attitudes to work and identity, immigration and integration, and reflects the poignant struggles faced by many second-generation immigrants and members of the diaspora. 

The film production was led by women of East Asian heritage, including Producer Cici Peng, Director of Photography Kia Fern Little, and Editor Amy Dang. We invited Rosanna to document the creative, collaborative process for a unique behind-the-scenes glimpse for Eaton Stories. 

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To talk about the site-specificity of ‘on-location’ filmmaking might sound like tautology - if you’re ‘on-location’ you are, by definition, outside the studio and using real-life settings to create the world of your film. Yet there’s a profound difference between utilising the aesthetics of a place and more consciously engaging with the phenomenology of site - what it means to be present in space, to experience it, respond to it, bargain with it, as part of the creative
process.

In May 2024, I returned to Hong Kong to film the second half of my short documentary Heart of the Lion. The film is a short narrative documentary that follows the story of Kelvin Chan, a British-born Chinese man as he follows in his father’s footsteps, refining his skills as a lion dancer and exploring what a move to Hong Kong could mean for both his lion dancing and his sense of identity. Having filmed in London through the start of 2024, including LNY celebrations in Chinatown, I decided it was crucial to come to Hong Kong to follow  Kelvin as he performed at the Tin Hau festival in Sai Kung and trained with his sifu (master) in Fanling. I wanted to explore how this dramatic change in setting would impact his relationship to lion dancing and to the notion of ‘home’.

Ahead of our film shoot, the weather forecast had promised a fortnight of relentless rain and thunderstorms, threatening to derail our plans. The day before our shoot, I stood on the rooftop of M+ gallery and watched a dark roll of cloud unfurl across the pins and needles of the Victoria Harbour skyscrapers, making mental calculations about parts of the shoot we might need to cut or move and how to obtain waterproof coats and boots for the crew before the morning.

Our shoot began on the day of the Tin Hau festival, which opened with a worship ceremony to Tin Hau, Empress of Heaven and Goddess of the Sea. Kelvin and I were invited to participate in bai san (worshipping ancestors), lighting incense, presenting a suckling pig and red eggs (traditionally dyed red using wet calligraphy paper). Gathering at the waterside, we were greeted by humid but calm conditions. We set up our cameras, donned the lion group t-shirts we’d been gifted and began filming. We quickly realised our headsets were struggling to link up in the melee of the crowds so reverted to abstract hand gestures, calls and generally running around to coordinate our shots. Filming the lion dance parades against the shoreline of Sai Kung, with the warm mist coddling our faces and the boats bobbing in and out of our peripheral vision, I was struck by the sense of purpose the lion dances embodied, more directly and intentionally than is possible for the London groups. Lion dance performances in Chinatown are impressive and rallying, acting as an emblem of the determination and solidarity of Chinese communities in the city. But the lion groups are forced to fight for space, the performance is physically demanding not only because of the dance, but because it plays out in a city that is constantly trying to close in upon it, swarming and suffocating. In Sai Kung, there was a feeling of spaciousness. Despite the bewildering scale of the festival, the number of participants and the length of the day, the lion dances felt intuitively of place: the silk tail rippled against the movement of the sea; the tall silhouettes of bamboo offering towers mimicked the shape of the trees lining the harbour, their branches laced together above us; there was an ebb and flow to the performances - a logic to the circular performance route that cycled through the temple, past the temporary bamboo opera theatre and back to the harbour.

As we paused for breaks, our film crew, tired and adrenalised from pressing their way through the crowds, gravitated to the water’s edge, seeking the solace of the foggy horizon and the mimetic coolness of the water. When we set up an interview with Kelvin, we were periodically interrupted by fishermen that padded up and down the harbour steps, mostly unphased by our activities but occasionally throwing an exquisitely unimpressed glance in our direction. Baby
squid fidgeted in tanks in the restaurants next to us and so the mechanisms of the harbour persisted while we fussed and hurried to capture footage before the light faded. 

On the third day of filming, we travelled to Ha Tsuen where we filmed Kelvin at his family village. There was still no sign of rain, but instead we were immersed in a sticky, sweaty heat. We unpacked and started to set up our cameras. There are many factors that affect a film schedule, and one is the temperament of the kit. Camera lenses must acclimatise, too. Throughout the shoot, the camera team - Kia, Louise, Ernest and Sam - carefully laid out the lenses and monitored them while they adjusted to the conditions. I used the time to talk to Kelvin, to prep the things we had planned to discuss on camera. Elaine, the director’s assistant, held bags of ice against the angry mosquito bites I collected on my legs and I plaited her hair to keep it off her neck. We spent the day following Kelvin around his village, tracing the walkways his father had followed when he lived there. We tried to find pockets of shade inside the walled village while local aunties offered water and insect repellent. Kelvin talked us through the routine performed when a lion enters a temple, that we recorded between the noise of bamboo scaffolding being dismantled next door.

One evening, we were invited to film a training session with the Poon Bing Kwun Martial Arts group in Yuen Long. With the sun setting, Kia and her team set up lights and cameras while Elaine and I coordinated with the lion group to manoeuvre flags and props and the near 150 members of the group in attendance. As we arranged our set on the outskirts of the remote village, we were quickly surrounded by total darkness. The leaders of the group waited patiently as we adjusted light intensity and the angles of shadows, eventually beginning their training - a combination of sword dance, martial arts and lion dance. The action crescendoed in a signature performance with a lion dancer splitting open a raw coconut with their bare hands, the shards sprinkling the concrete like confetti. The end of each performance was marked by half a moment of silence, that instant between the last drum beat and the clattering of applause, in which suspense seemed to suck all the noise from the air. I realised how still the environment outside our set was, that we were a pocket of sound and colour enclosed and protected by the night. It made the action all the more intimate, exclusive, so that we, the crew, felt like we had been invited into a secret world, trying to sensitively capture the drama and emotion through the eye of the lens.

Our film shoot concluded at Tai Mo Shan, the highest peak in Hong Kong, geographically at the centre of the New Territories. With time winding down, we jumped out of the cars, set up the cameras, filled up on green tea, Pocari Sweat and onigiri from 7-Eleven and set off towards a viewing plateau. It was windy. My long hair whipped around my face and we watched helplessly as Kia’s hotel keycard bounced from her pocket and spun off the side of the mountain. Initially, we could only submit to the frenzy, leaning in and out as the blocks of wind pressed against our bodies. Refocusing, we tried to find places to set up our cameras, four of us pinning down a single tripod to try to keep the frame steady. We knew we needed to make decisions efficiently, that moving the camera would likely take double the usual time. The soundie, Saturday, hunted for pockets of shelter from the wind to record some dialogue. There are wild ox that live on the mountain so occasionally we would stop while they marched through our shot, or reroute our paths around them. There’s a certain giddiness that arises on the final section of a shoot, as you scramble for the last shots, exhausted and exhilarated. I was lucky to share my filming time in Hong Kong with the most brilliant crew that showed up to set each day with energy and optimism. Even in the short time we spent in HK, we felt bonded together - it doesn’t take long to work out the idiosyncrasies that become in-jokes. We stood at the top of the mountain, surveying views of Yuen Long (where the lion group were based), Shenzhen (across the border to China), Sha Tin (where my own family had lived), Lam Tsuen (where my family village was) and Lion Rock; I felt the nostalgia for my time filming in Hong Kong take root, before we had even called “wrap”.

When I met up with Kelvin after the shoot, I reflected upon the miraculously dry weather we enjoyed for the shoot. He revealed that on that first morning, giving thanks to Tin Hau, Empress of the heavens and Goddess of the sea, he and other members of the lion dance group had prayed to Tin Hau, asking her to bless us with good weather, protect our shoot and allow our project to run smoothly.

About Rosanna Lee:

Rosanna is a British Chinese artist, filmmaker and cultural strategist. Rosanna studied Sculpture and Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art. Her artwork has been exhibited in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Melbourne and Lisbon and selected for Royal Scottish Academy: New Contemporaries and New Scottish Artists at DRAF, London. Rosanna’s art films have been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize. In 2022 Lee released her first live-action scripted short film, Parallel 平行, funded by Arts Council England (see next slide for more info). In 2023, Rosanna was invited to be a guest curator by London Short Film Festival, producing ‘Not Too Sweet’, a series of films by East and Southeast Asian female and non-binary filmmakers, followed by a music and supper club event at the ICA. The 200 seat event was sold out and the supper club sold out in one day. Rosanna also programmes screenings for Camden Chinese Community Centre. In 2024, Rosanna took part in NOWNESS CHINA’s panel discussion at the Institute of Contemporary Arts with London Short FIlm Festival. Rosanna’s brand work has been presented to the United Nations Women’s Committee. Rosanna came second in Art Asia Pacific’s Young Writer’s Contest and has written art reviews for the HK-based Magazine. 

Rosanna’s family is from Lin Au, New Territories, Hong Kong.