Club Screening – ‘The Fence’: A Documentary About POW Camps in Hong Kong
Date: 29 Nov 2021 06:30 PM — 10:00 PM | Venue: Dining Room
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| CLUB SCREENING ‘The Fence’: A Documentary About POW Camps in Hong Kong |
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| Eighty years ago, on the same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the British crown colony of Hong Kong. The territory was being defended by 2,000 overwhelmed Canadian troops, some of whom went on to suffer the longest POW incarceration anywhere during World War II. Written, directed and researched by filmmaker Viveka Melki, The Fence investigates this difficult chapter of history and includes never-before-seen archival footage. The product of nine years of research, the documentary features interviews with George Macdonell and George Peterson, two of the last surviving Canadian veterans who witnessed the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army inside the barbwire enclosure, as well as Hong Kong historian Dr. Kwong Chi Man and Japanese professor Yuki Tanaka. Moderated by FCC President Keith Richburg. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dr. Kwong Chi Man is an associate professor in the history department of Hong Kong Baptist University. He specializes in the military and naval history of modern East Asia, particularly from the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) to the 1970s. He has published Eastern Fortress: A Military History of Hong Kong, 1840–1970 (coauthored, Hong Kong Book Prize 2019) and War and Geopolitics in Interwar Manchuria. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Viveka Melki is a Canadian filmmaker, curator and producer based in Montreal. Co-founder of Tortuga Films in 2006, she produced Hippocrate and Campesinos and then went on to direct the two-part series War Correspondence. Her 2015 feature-length documentary After CIRCUS received acclaim at several North American film festivals, and her 2017 documentary Carricks: In the Wake of the Irish tells the tragic story of Irish immigration to Canada in 1847. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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