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Direct personal experience gives authenticity to Wing Kit Hung’s new film on an unusual gay relationship

If gay relationships are difficult to manoeuvre through in Chinese society, what can be said about interracial gay relations? Wing Kit Hung’s second movie, Soundless Wind Chime, addresses just such a relationship and even uses it as a meditation on death. The filmmaker spoke to bc about his complex film and his insights into homosexuality in the Hong Kong movie scene.

Wing Kit Hung experienced death for the first time in his life about four years ago when his boyfriend’s parents both passed away in the same year. He had already started planning his first feature film a year before that, but the deaths presented him with a perfect subject for the second. ‘Writing and making this movie was sort of a therapy for me,’ he says. ‘It was a way for me to deal with the grief.’

And his personal experience of a long-distance relationship (Wing was in Chicago and his boyfriend in Switzerland) also melded with the theme of death and gave a particular power to the making of the film. ‘The idea that the person you love is not physically there with you is like the person has died,’ he explains.

Even though much of the movie revolves around his personal experience and he chose to shoot some scenes in Ersfield, the Swiss home village of his boyfriend, Wing maintains it is not a revelation of his life and relationship. ‘I wouldn’t say that it really represents my boyfriend, because it is totally from my point of view,’ he says. ‘And even though my boyfriend supported me a lot during the making of the film, he is not really into artsy movies. He really likes action-packed movies.’ And he laughs.

The film is, however, very much about his sexual orientation. He came out when he was 19 years old after realizing he was different from the other boys in his Catholic boys’ school. ‘I was working in a radio station and started to find my identity, but yet struggling to accept my sexuality,’ he says. Developing an interest in the gay community and its history, he soon found that gay characters in the movies are often misrepresented as immoral or reprehensible. That gave birth to indignation and a determination for change. ‘I feel as a filmmaker who is gay,’ he says, ‘I have a social responsibility to represent the image of homosexual people or the community in the right way.’

Wing’s short films have all dealt with the issue of homosexuality, as does Soundless Wind Chime, although this film is not thematically gay specific. ‘In the movie I didn’t talk about gender politics or the politics of being gay,’ he explains. ‘It is just any other love story between two people. They just happen to be a man and a man.’
Nevertheless, he is not happy with how Hong Kong movies broach the subject of homosexuality. Most, he says, approach gay characters stereotypically – men behave and act like women or vice versa for comedic effect rather than for any concerns about the emotional minefields around sexuality.

‘Sexuality,’ he says, ‘is still a taboo subject in Chinese society, so it’s even more difficult to address the topic of homosexuality, especially when it challenges traditional family values.’ And it was for that reason Soundless Wind Chime was created more for the international art-house circuit rather than any specific Hong Kong audience.

Nevertheless, Wing is optimistic about Hong Kong’s reception to his movie. ‘I think Hong Kong is open enough for different types of movies, and the gay movement in Hong Kong is developing. So I think people are ready to know more about the issue,’ he says.

Soundless Wind Chime opens in cinema on July 23.