Kowloon Walled City Documentary (English Subtitles)

Credits go to cameraman Hamdani Milas. Christina Wesemann for creation and direction of the film and also to Hugo Portisch for production.

Milas was one of the people that helped filmed this 1989 documentary about the city. I spoke with him recently and he said that he is interested in a follow up video of some sort so we may expect something new on the way.

He mentioned how it was an incredibly tough shoot. They were a five person crew; himself as cinematographer, a camera assistant, focus-puller, sound recordist, a researcher, production assistant and the director, and a very nice Austrian lady who was most willing to collaborate and listen to crew suggestions.

They shot for 6 days continuously, 10-12 hours a day, at the height of the summer of 1987. He mentioned how it smelled very bad inside from the open drainage, the heat was stifling at plus 32ºC with little to no air circulation, also not knowing whether it was sewage or clean water dripping on their heads occasionally, they regularly had to wipe the camera and lens dry.

The claustrophobia- you could hardly turn around in some places with a 7kg Betacam SP camcorder on your shoulder. They had a tripod with them but hardly used it inside because there was nowhere to position it without blocking the narrow passageways.

They also frequently got lost and had to ask the locals for directions. Lunch was much-anticipated each day when they could take a break outside in the fresh air. After a day’s shoot they were absolutely dripping with sweat and the first thing they’d do after getting home was to put all their clothes straight in the wash and have a long shower. Working in those conditions was an immense challenge technically and physically but, as is often the case, none of that shows in the resulting footage.

Here we have a very interesting first hand account of what Hamdani Milas experienced in the walled city itself when he was filming this video. So by what he’s told me we can understand just how much of an incredible risk it was to film inside this city, even though it was near to when the city was demolished and the place was seen as safer it was still a high risk no go area.

I took it upon myself to re-sub the video as best as possible, the 4 part version is hard-subbed on a version of this film with very poor quality, the subs are also worded incorrectly in some places. So all I've done is re-subbed the whole thing and put it onto a better quality video clip. Since the subtitles are not hard subbed you can now use auto translate as well should be fairly accurate.

Note: about the section of this video where Jackie Pullinger is speaking, I’m sure anyone can see the subtitles are a transcript of Jackie Pullingers actual words in English and not the narrators. I’ve noticed a comment mentioning how the subs are way off in that part. While subbing this video I realised the narrator wasn’t giving an exact translation so took it upon myself to decipher what she was actually saying over his voice. Sorry I just couldn’t help it but it was out of boredom 😉