Homecoming 似水流年 – a timeless movie set in Teochew.
1984 is forty years ago. It was a very different world with Steve Jobs launching the Macintosh personal computer in the US, the Soviet Union leading a boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, and the governments of the UK and China striking an agreement on the return of Hong Kong in 1997.
1984 was also the year when many people in the territory and the outside caught their first glimpse of life in China in the infancy of its economic reform era through Homecoming, the first Hong Kong film shot entirely in location in the mainland, primarily in Teochew.
Titled 似水流年 (“Years flowed by like water”) in Chinese, the film tells the return of Shan Shan, a sophisticated woman living in Hong Kong, to her ancestral village to mourn the passing of her grandmother. The visit after 20 years of absence rekindled her friendships with two childhood playmates, Ah Zhen and her husband Xiao Song. The reunion brought Shan Shan temporary solace from her unhappy life in a modern city, but also aroused great insecurity in Ah Zhen as the disparity between the contrasting worlds she and Shan Shan lived in confronted her.
Homecoming was directed by Yim Ho (嚴浩), a pioneer of the Hong Kong New Wave film movement. Its release stirred many emotions and thoughts in Hong Kong. In today’s globalised world, the questions of where and what home is remain relevant to many of us. Meanwhile, the setting of the movie at Tah-gang village of Gek-yor (揭陽塔崗乡) made possible the documentation of many communal life scenes of rural Teochew as China was precariously opening door its doors to the outside world. Some of these historical images would otherwise have been lost forever with China’s radical transformation over the last four decades.
Homecoming clinched a total of six awards and five other nominations at the 4th Hong Kong Film Awards in 1985. Besides Best Film, it also won Best Director (Yim Ho), Best Actress (Siqin Gaowa 斯琴高娃), Best Newcomer (Josephine Koo 顧美華), Best Screenplay (Hung Leung 孔良) and Best Art Direction (William Chang 張叔平).
To watch Homecoming in full (93 minutes) on with browser WeChat, please click here.
(Dialogues in Mandarin, Cantonese and Teochew, with Chinese subtitle)
For alternative video link on bilibili.com, please click here.
Many Hong Kong also remember Homecoming for its title song immortalised by Anita Mui.
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