Adrian Lo

Film

Lo’s film directing began with the documentary short A PORTRAIT OF SUN WAH KEE, a joint effort with school friend Tian Macleod Ji, which focused on a notion of sustainability in food within the context of Cantonese cuisine amid Hong Kong’s urban gentrification. An auspicious start indeed as the film ended up winning the top prize at a short film competition at the Milan Expo 2015, leading to considerable news coverage, including even a special TV feuilleton way longer than the film itself appearing on all the public buses in Hong Kong.

This led to two further award-winning short films together with Tian Macleod Ji in A WAY OF LIFE, produced by Waka Artisans, about Japanese ceramicists in Tochigi and Ibaraki, and the self-produced follow-up to the first film A PORTRAIT OF LINVA about the iconic Chinese dress cheongsam amidst the ongoing urban redevelopments in the Mid-Levels on Hong Kong island.

In 2017, Lo began directing alone and created two projects about Hong Kong heritage. PRAYER OF PEACE was the herculean task of documenting Shek O’s traditional Taoist festival Tai Ping Ching Chiu. This was a very special occasion as this five-day festival is organised only once every 10 years. Adrian Lo, together with Director of Photography Ho Kin Man, captured what is the first-ever complete documentation of a festival of its kind. Lo edited this into a comprehensive 21-hour video archive of considerable ethnographic and historical value, as well as a more digestible 15-minute documentary short, which he also scored.

CHEONGSAM: LOST & FOUND was a 30-minute program commissioned by Hong Kong Arts Centre that sought to tell seven seemingly disparate stories about how the cheongsam became the Hong Kong cultural icon that it is today. Weaving together interviews with famous cartoon artists, tailors, and enthusiasts, the film continued an exploration of a question central to Adrian’s documentaries, namely, how do you preserve the essence of heritage while at the same time allow it to renew its relevance in society?

This very same question formed the basis of his 2020 documentary project LIVING HERITAGE which put the focus on Hong Kong’s rich heritage of traditional Chinese handicraft. Given the context of a society battling for its own identity and political future, political slogans and fiery images of protests are conspicuously absent from this documentary. Instead, the film presents a Hong Kong of quaint elegance and humble stories of little known artists pursuing vanishing traditional crafts.

Scroll through and discover more about Adrian’s documentaries. Many are made available to view online, otherwise a password can be provided upon request.

Selected Works