Open Road After Harvest
Fredie CHAN Ho-lun
Release year: 2015
Run time: 100 minutes
Film type: Documentary
Synopsis
In such a difficult situation in Hong Kong agriculture, to local farmers, before expecting a good harvest, they have to first overcome the problems caused by agricultural policy implementation, land policy and urban development in Hong Kong. This film is about three middle-aged local organic farmers and their farming stories: A peasant leader, who faces political infiltration in organization, decides to quit and focuses on his farming; a rural woman who fights against North East New Territories development plan and taking care of her sick husband at the same time, decides to combine family life with her home farming; a sixty years old truck driver who decides to have a career change, trying to live a fearless and free life as a farmer.
Director biography
Born in Hong Kong, Fredie Chan is a documentary filmmaker and teacher. He has been appointed as Part Time Lecturer by HKU MA Literary and Cultural Studies Program to teach a course on Participatory Media and Cultural Studies in 2024. Received Andrew Grant PG Scholarship to study MA Film-Directing at the University of Edinburgh in 2021, and he began to be involved in Living Rent, a Scottish Tenants Union, to advocated housing justice. The movement inspired him to make his first award winning British documentary film “The Dispute” in the UK which connects with nation-wide grassroots community movement. The Dispute won the Best Director’s Award in Cyprus Archeological, Ethnographic and Historical Documentary Film Festival 2023.
As a socially-engaged artist and teacher, equality of opportunity, dignity, and respect are fundamental rights for all people, he preserves these rights and empathy as his first principle in filmmaking. He started curating “Grassroots Filmmaking Project” and “ Grassroots Video Arts Festival” from 2013 to 2018, plus his full time Film and Video Arts work, he has nurtured more than 600 amateur filmmakers.