Poetic elusion and subtle absurdity play an important role in Fow Pyng Hu's videos and films. The viewer is allowed a look at the 'in between', at the moments which may have otherwise been edited out. Moments which Hu has instead pulled to the forefront. These seemingly carry little significance on a grander scale but, through their careful subtlety, transform the mundane into the mystical. In Sunny Afternoon a Japanese woman is seen and heard talking on the telephone in her native tongue. The camera sweeps long and slow, divulging her surroundings. The room is typically Dutch. The view outside the window equally Dutch. She hangs up the phone and walks towards the window. There is no story-line -not in the traditional sense of the word - yet somehow, through its almost painful absence, we are confronted with its implicit allusion. Cultural confusion, the strange mix of Japanese and Dutch, becomes the film's theme. But more importantly, the very play of the ’it-doesn't-fit’-quality, or of the bizarre ‘I-can't-quite-place-it’-mood becomes the film's subject. And instead of wanting to tackle the profound problems of alienation or of cultural identity crisis, Hu juggles subjects more abstract and more general. This is not a lesson in anthropological discourse. Hu presents reality, unmanipulated, unforced and directed from a grin's perspective.
– Maxine Kopsa
|
Thanks to Stichting Film Stad, The Hague.
|
|
1 9 9 7 
