Yam & Yang: Experimentations in 16 mm

Born in Hong Kong, Lambert Yam and Ruby Yang are a filmmaking couple who started making independent shorts together in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s before they became a director-producer duo of documentary films. Like many directors of the Hong Kong New Wave, they received their film education in the US and experimented with analogue film in their student days.

Yam’s impressionistic essay films I Am the Master of My Boat (1976) and On the Track (1979) are infused with an appreciation for ethnic minority communities and a sensitivity towards his living environment, in particular the Chinatown in San Francisco. He was the cinematographer for Yang’s three shorts Nowhere (1979), Mirror Points (1982), and White Passage (1986). The former two are experimental works that play with light and colour, texture and pattern, sound and editing rhythm. The latter is a stylised narrative about a woman mourning the loss of her stillborn baby, shot with poetic images.

The five films will be shown in their original 16 mm format to illustrate their original quality. Both Lambert Yam and Ruby Yang will be present for pre-screening introductions and question and answer sessions, all conducted in Cantonese.