DECAMERON

“History is not just a matter of date”, said Chris Patten in his last speech as British Governor of Hong Kong, shortly before the United Kingdom handed administration of the province back to China in 1997. In Decameron, Rita Hui Nga Shu combines this speech and other historical sources with fiction and contemporary images. Her gripping documentary takes a critical look, for example, at the question of what Hong Kong actually is at this particular moment in time.

The title of this ambitious video essay refers to Giovanni Boccaccio’s Medieval literary masterpiece, which was likewise created in the wake of an epoch-making worldwide plague. As in Boccaccio’s literary text, different stories, timelines and perspectives merge. The kaleidoscopic film Decameron presents a coronavirus-ravaged Hong Kong that is also still struggling with traumas from the recent past. The result is a valuable political document which, by placing the recent protests within a broader context, enters into a complex dialogue with the city’s present, past and future.