SOOOP: My next question concerns philosophical, narrative, and stylistic influences across cultural traditions. As filmmakers and writers who have worked across different geographic and cultural contexts, how do different narrative and philosophical traditions (such as their treatment of structure and silence) and aesthetic traditions (such as spatial composition or the use of traditional materials and image-making practices) inspire and shape your work? 

Natalie [Homecoming and Going, From Hong Kong to Raufarhöfn: the Birthday Archive]: 

Well, I actually worked on both Colleen and Kristie’s film in some capacity, so it was really great watching Colleen's film, because I haven't seen it on a big screen at all before, so it was lovely to think about where we were at when we met and talked about it. So I just helped — it’s really Colleen’s, all credit goes to Colleen — but I helped her brainstorm and figure out all the threads in the story, because when she came to me, she was like, oh, I have all this footage from twenty years ago, I have all this footage from present day, and I have the Super 8 footage I'm about to go shoot. There were just all these components all over the place that were so interesting. 

And thinking about narrative conventions, watching it back this time, I realised it is really a meditation across time and space. There's no clear plot that's supposed to bring you somewhere.

You understand the two characters, the filmmaker and her friendship with Brian, and the host family that she encounters through him. But I think that was such a unique thing to learn and explore with you [Colleen] through this story: how we can bridge these very different stories. I mean, it's one story, but they're very different places and how just through a camera, how much we can actually learn about things we otherwise wouldn't be able to. So I think that's pretty unconventional as an approach. 

And then, Kristie, I think the things we talked about a lot were more about holding space for things that are silent. Like, there's that dinner scene, where there are a lot of ways you can project onto it. And there were a lot of discussions we had about whether to shoot it like a drama or let it play out, or how we were going to handle the tension and the editing later. So I think that was unique as well, because we looked at a lot of examples of big fight scenes and more Western films and how much of that we didn't want to do. 

And with Homecoming and Going, it was important that neither of us — I mean, I've — never lived in London. Otherwise, the way we would have treated the locations and and shot them would have been too familiar. 

And I think we wanted a perspective to follow real time with the characters as they landed, how everything's kind of romantic. Because a lot of people who watch the film will say, this is not what London looks like. Like it's quite rosy and there’s sunshine everywhere. But it was nice that when we were shooting, it was spring, so I felt that kind of romanticism factored in the film. 

SOOOP: I like that idea of what London looks like, because four of us here have lived in London. And actually, Florence has a film called Elephant in Castle, set in an area of London where Ash and I went to university. And speaking of “what looks like London”, Florence’s film is all abstract, drawn animation, so it doesn’t look at all like “real” London, but it feels like London. So there’s a feeling of London that is captured in Florence’s film, which I would say you have captured as well. There are moments of romanticism in London, but certainly that romanticism is heightened when you are in that liminal state: either coming or going, seeing a place with new eyes, or having to say goodbye to familiar streets. Kristie, do you feel that your film is reflective of your experience of London? 

Kristie Ko [Homecoming and Going]: 

I actually wrote it to be set in the winter. I was going to have a very grey, bleak London, but we had a deadline and we couldn't wait for the winter. Our fund needed us to deliver by the summer, and we just had to shoot it. And I think actually it came out better than I I hoped. 

SOOOP: I was also curious about that fund, because you were working with the Tribeca Chanel Women's Filmmaker Fund, is that right?

Kristie Ko [Homecoming and Going]: 

There were two separate funds that went into this film, which Colleen also helped me with. The Tribeca Fund gave us some seed money to develop it, and then Fresh Wave gave us the money to make it. 

SOOOP: Ash, I'm interested to hear about your interview with Kristie for the SCMP [View article here]. How long ago was it, what did you guys cover in the interview?

Ashlyn Chak [SCMP]:

Mostly I was asking about inspiration and your personal, cultural background, and what led you to write this film, basically. And the personal experiences of the actresses as well. 

Kristie Ko [Homecoming and Going]: 

Oh, I can add a bit more about the cast as well. So we had cast everywhere especially for the role of Megan, the protagonist, because we really needed an authentic British accent, someone who had lived there for years. And then we found Joanne. Joanne Leung is just amazing, because the first thing I remember from her audition was that she told me when she left Hong Kong to go to the UK to study drama:

The first thing she had to do was to learn how to smoke… To blend in.

And that I remember that because I had to learn too. So it's kind of this rite of passage that I really related to, and I thought, this is a girl who has tried really hard.