Written by: Serena Fung (PENG, Year 2, 2024/25)

Edited by: Rachel Li (PENG, Year 2, 2024/25)

On February 3, 2025, the PENG Student Association The Hummingbird successfully held a guest talk, inviting director Miss Lai Yan Chi to be the keynote speaker. Through the sharing and discussion of culture in film and television, she presented a feast of ideas with the audience.

Miss Lai shared her understanding of culture and art based on her own experiences working in the local film industry. She firmly believes that culture is defined by patterns of human activities. Thus, whenever she goes to a new country for travel, she would immediately visit the cinemas and watch a film. This helps her discover the local values, language, religion, and the country’s uniquely ingrained culture; this has formed her identity as a filmmaker who is distinctly aware of the cultural influence within various art forms.

Miss Lai has always been committed to writing about local issues through films and transforming Hong Kong’s local stories into an artistic language with universal value. Take the masterpiece N+N for example, which tells the emotional experience of a grandpa and a granddaughter in the demolition of Caiyuan Village, reflecting the impact of urbanization on the lives of ordinary people in Hong Kong and depicting their helplessness and persistence through the cinematic language of the camera.

The original iteration of this work, named 1+1, was completed during her university years and recorded the imagery of Hong Kong through her approach based on simplicity and authenticity. As she discussed, film allowed her to record the current look of Hong Kong, as that even as decades have passed, people can look back and see how Hong Kong used to be.

Miss Lai also draws inspiration from her observations of cultural differences in daily life. She shared about an interesting phenomenon in particular, expressing how despite the genre’s prominence, the musical film always failed to break ground in the local film industry. Her belief that music is a unique language led her to create Band Four, a perfect combination of music and emotional narrative, reflecting the problems of getting along with family members and the deep-rooted culture behind family affection.

At the end of the talk, Miss Lai concluded her sharing with a reminder to the student attendees: “Don’t put limits on your life.”