Books 書籍

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Talking White 談白

Talking White is about the journey taken by Christopher Doyle and Jenny Suen to make the film The White Girl. It was published in November 2017 alongside the film's theatrical release, and quickly became the best-selling book in the arts section at the Eslite Bookstore in Hong Kong. Here is an excerpt: 

"White Sea

The year was 2010. I had just come back to Hong Kong after eight years of living in America. I was home but I felt adrift. I looked outside my window. There were a few fishing boats. A reservoir. An old white house. A fishing village. I started to write. What I wrote that day eventually became this film. 

When I was a kid, I often took a kayak out to explore that village. The grannies washing their clothes on the waterfront would wave hello to me. The fishermen on the dinghies would cheer me on as I rowed out to a nearby sea cave to watch the waves.    

That fishing village is empty now. Nobody lives there anymore. It feels out of space, out of time.

For much of its history Hong Kong was just a cluster of fishing villages. If you go to those same spaces today, you’ll see that the fishermen’s culture, their livelihood, their language, their saltwater songs, are all but gone. 

A future in which our city might meet the same fate does not seem so far away.

This film is a search for identity and space at the moment of its disappearance. I was born here in 1983. I grew up in two languages: English and Cantonese. I felt unmoored in this translated world. But isn’t film another language? Film is a language that takes us to another world, a world of our own creation. 

All the years we spent making this film was an act of becoming. 

We shot for two days in another sea cave close to where I grew up. The sea was wild the last day. A typhoon was coming. The waves crashed high up against the rocks, exploding into white before falling back to where it came from. I couldn’t stop looking. 

That was when I decided: a white sea is what I want to be. Strong, confident, and free. A white sea reaches for great heights but always returns to its roots. 

How high did we go in this film? I don’t dare say. We tried our best. We did what we could with what we had. Now we’re back where we came from. Isn’t it beautiful here? Pearl of the East, Pearl Village... Hong Kong."

 

《談白》是一本關於杜可風和白海創作《白色女孩》的旅程。書籍在2017年11月在誠品、三聯、商務、中華、天地 KUBRICK發行,便榮登誠品書店美術類熱銷書榜冠軍。

摘抄:

“白海

那一年,是2010年。我在美國住了八年,剛回到香港。回家了,心裡卻不踏實。窗外,我看到幾艘漁船、一個水塘、一間白色的老房子、一條漁村。我開始寫;當天寫下的,最後變成了這部電影。

小時候,我常常撐着獨木舟,去漁村四處看。在岸邊洗衣服的老婆婆會向我揮手打招呼;當我撐往附近海洞去看浪,小帆船上的漁民會為我加油打氣。

現在,漁村空蕩蕩,沒有人居住了,感覺這個地方跳出時空一樣。

幾百年前,香港只是一條魚村。現在去那些空間就會發現水上人的文化、生活方式、語言,以至他們唱的鹹水歌,幾乎消失了。

或許我們的城市,在不久的將來也會遭遇相同的命運。

這部電影試圖尋找正在消逝的身份與空間。1983年,我生於香港。我在英語、粵語兩種語言之間長大,在翻來譯去的世界裡,感覺一直漂泊不定。電影,不就是另一種語言?它把我們帶到另一個世界──一個我們自己創造的世界。

這些年,我和杜可風創作《白色女孩》,是一個尋找自我的過程。

我們在我家附近的另一個海洞拍了兩天。最後一天,颱風來襲,風高浪急。巨浪湧上岸邊的岩石,飛濺起一片白色的浪花,又再回流大海。我一直看着,不能自已。

那一刻,我下了決心:白色的海就是我想做的──堅強、自信、自由。浪頂的白花往高處沖,始終都會回歸起源地。

我們這部電影沖得多高?我不敢說。只能說我們竭盡所能,把手上有的發揮到最好。現在,又回到我們的起源地了。這裡不是很美麗嗎?東方之珠、珠明村……香港。”