Young Hong Kong filmmaker reveals the city’s hidden soul

The colourful and showy neon signs hovering above the streets and the most breathtaking panoramic views of the city’s stunning skyline are something most Hongkongers get accustomed to and may take for granted, but not 20-year-old filmmaker Sam Robinson.

Robinson, who has lived here all his life, sees the city from many different perspectives. He looks for what lies hidden through his camera lens to reveal the soul of the city. Through his short film Focus Hong Kong he hopes more people can appreciate the large and heterogeneous collection of underlying messages so that they can better understand the city they live in.

Robinson was working in a restaurant by day when he borrowed some camera lenses from a friend and started chasing the many faces of the city by night.

The idea for the film was prompted by friends abroad who would repeatedly ask him the same question: “What is it like in Hong Kong?”

“From afar, people could only see the skyscrapers and the glitzy malls,” Robinson said. “I wanted to show them what it really is like to walk down the streets at night.”

Starting from scratch with just a bunch of random ideas scribbled down on a notepad, the film has been widely lauded online for taking the viewers through the city’s major districts, branching off from Causeway Bay to the suburbs, from Wan Chai to the New Territories.