Never Rest/Unrest
28m
Directed by Tiffany Sia • Documentary • 2020 • 28 minutes
Never Rest/Unrest is a hand-held short film by Tiffany Sia about the relentless political actions in Hong Kong, spanning early summer to late 2019. The experimental short is an adaptation of the artist's practice of scaling oral history, utilizing the vertical 16:9 aspect ratio as a vernacular form. Never Rest/Unrest takes up the provocation of Julio Garcia Espinosa's "Imperfect Cinema" on the potential for filmmaking that aims towards an urgent, process-driven cinema. Dominant narratives of crisis pushed by news journalism are resisted. Instead, crisis poses ambiguous, anachronistic and often banal time. Subtitles are intentionally omitted as a means of interrogating the cultural proximity or distance of the viewer from Hong Kong.