Jeremy Hung conducting a film appreciation workshop for students in Yale University before classes were suspended to deal with the rise of COVID-19 cases. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The pandemic forced Jeremy Hung to cancel his plans to launch a cultural exchange program for students around the world but any sense of disappointment he felt soon dissipated when the Hong Kong-based film educator found what he describes as a “new sense of purpose.”

“My goal became basically to get more types of students involved in film,” explains Hung.

Hung had just arrived at Yale University back in March to take up a fellowship administered by the Yale-China Association and supported by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York when the health and safety concerns that followed the global COVID-19 outbreak forced schools everywhere to close. 

The initial idea had been to “promote arts and cultural exchange through film education” with US students but when it became apparent this would no longer be possible, Hung came upon the concept of an online filmmaking initiative for students that would try to help in terms of their emotional wellness during the pandemic while also fostering “intercultural empathy through filmmaking.”

Views from My Home , made by Arabella Sharkey, Grade 11 student of Canadian International School of Hong Kong. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

And so students around the world — studying at institutions such as Hong Kong’s King George V School and the New Haven Public School in the US — were tasked with creating short, personal film essays about life under the threat of COVID-19, using whatever technology they had available at home.

“I don’t see (filmmaking) as a common subject that schools prioritize so I started a workshop to bring this to more types of students and to let them know what filmmaking can actually teach them beyond learning how to use a camera,” says Hung. “That includes every single other art form.”

Four months on from its launch, Hung’s Film Stylo initiative has been able to tap into the mood of hundreds of students around the world — their anxieties, their fears, their hopes, their moments of joy — while giving them the opportunity to explore the world of filmmaking.

“When you see what they have made it is really eye-opening,” says Hung, founder also of the Babel Film Workshop, which promotes visual literacy education. “The key thing is the emotional aspect of it. Underneath it all you see the same anxieties, the same expressions of gratitude about little things. That’s consistent. The emotional aspect is the same — but they all look different.”

Chloe Wan, Grade 10 student of Hong Kong’s King George V School, made a film called How I Stay Active at Home as part of the Film Stylo initiative. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The finished films can be viewed online via www.filmstylo.com. Rushes from a film in the making show a student morphing into a COVID-19 monster. Works by younger students include a more straightforward look at daily routines. Hung is now hoping to further expand Film Stylo into a global filmmaking platform.

Fourteen year-old Chloe Wan Che-ching  documented her routine in the time of COVID-19. The piece was shot over two days using her phone. It’s a deeply personal — and ultimately uplifting — insight into “lockdown” life, Hong Kong-style.

“The task was given out as a summative assessment in my school’s media curriculum, allowing us to keep filming during COVID-19,” she says. Although it was challenging to make life under the new normal to even look pleasant at first, “with the help of my teacher, who has been giving me inspiration and advice, I was able to come up with ideas during the most clueless times and started putting my very best effort in the filmmaking process,” says Wan. 

“I came to realize staying at home isn’t so bad after all. I have been given a chance to reflect on my daily life, unleash my inner musician, reconnect with friends I haven’t met for a long time, and much more,” Wan adds.