WOMEN TALKING

Tai Kwun museum’s Gender & Space exhibition revisits Tai Kwun’s history from 1841 to 1941 during which the site was Victoria Prison. Hidden or missing from historical representation, women played a crucial role within the prison and in the city.  

We were honored to collaborate with the Tai Kwun Heritage Department’s curatorial team again. We followed the journey of 17 women representing 11 cultures and 3 generations in Hong Kong, during a 4-week-long community workshop centering on how women create cultural spaces for themselves in contemporary Hong Kong. 

Being surrounded by a documentary crew can be an intimidating experience for most people.  We used a human-centric approach, dialing up our gender and cultural sensitivity for this project to create a collaborative experience with all of the participants. We made it a ritual to engage with participants during e the workshops, sharing our own experiences in conversations when it was appropriate. Our production designs were embedded as practicals into the workshop landscape before participants arrived, making both the filming and workshop experience feel natural and interrelated. In the end, we produced a 20-minute verite-style documentary, which was exhibited at the exhibition’s ‘Gender Salon’ – a space for visitors to connect and reflect on what could be done collectively and individually for gender equality in Hong Kong.