Black Bauhinia | ChangeX Beer
Films screened
Black Bauhinia
Black Bauhinia is the first feature documentary about Hong Kong localism and the independence movement — a movement that entirely changed Hong Kong's internal politics and its relations with the world. Because the subject is complex and sensitive, many Hong Kong filmmakers chose to avoid it. As director and co-producer, Dr Malte Kaeding, making his first film, brings a balanced and critical analysis to the movement. Having researched Hong Kong localism for more than a decade, he followed two young localist leaders through a passage that ran from electoral victory to imprisonment or exile. The film was made collaboratively, which left more room to reflect on the cost of resistance, on self-sacrifice, and on what home means.
Over the three years of production, localism drove the eruption of the 2019 protests, and the government crackdown that followed made the documentary itself part of the resistance. Black Bauhinia captures a new generation in Hong Kong willing to challenge an authoritarian China, while engaging international arguments about identity and nationalism, the effects of a globalisation increasingly dominated by China, the pressures driving emigration, and everyday life in a divided society.