PRESENTER:

If you know Hong Kong well, then this striking installation might seem strangely familiar to you. It’s called ‘Cities Without Ground’, and it represents the unique urban infrastructure of the city—those covered walkways, bridges, and escalators which give people a way of getting around without ever having to touch the ground or go outside. Take a look around, and you’ll see many of these thoroughfares in the video display above the piece.

All these scenes show the daily, lived experience of millions of people, and are taken from films which perfectly capture the ebb and flow of these walkways. Among them, you may spot a sequence of the Central Mid-Levels escalator, shot by Christopher Doyle, a renowned cinematographer who has lived in Hong Kong for decades. We spoke to him to find out what his thoughts were on these networked walkways.

CHRISTOPHER DOYLE:

It's this astonishing view of the passage of life. I think that there are many spaces in Hong Kong where the pleasure of people passing gives you some kind of confirmation of life, you know, and, and they're all different and they're all doing different things. But I think that of course is also the pleasure of filmmaking that is to observe, is to celebrate.

PRESENTER:

Ever since the Mid-Levels escalator took centre stage in one of his earliest films, Chungking Express, Christopher has felt that these pedestrian routes are the beating heart of the city.

CHRISTOPHER DOYLE:

And it's such a metaphor for Hong Kong, it’s like the bloodline that runs through the city. It is a bloodline, but it's also, is it an artery or vein, because it comes and goes. And that's when I just happened to move into an apartment right beside the escalator. And I said, wait, hey, this is the biggest metaphor we've ever made. You know? This is really what Hong Kong is about. This is the vein and the artery. This is the West and the East. This is the conflict. And then their collusion.

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