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City of Imagination: Kowloon Walled City 20 Years Later
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City of Imagination: Kowloon Walled City 20 Years Later

2014 · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]

Kowloon Walled City was demolished in 1993, but for decades before that it was the most densely packed patch of ground on the planet, a self-built vertical maze in Hong Kong with almost no daylight, no formal government, and its own economy of unlicensed dentists, small factories, and drug dens. This short film returns to the site twenty years after the wrecking crews finished, tracking down former residents who grew up inside its corridors and asking them what it actually felt like to live there, as opposed to the outside world's image of a lawless slum. Archival photographs and footage of the Walled City's collapsing stairwells and rooftop gardens sit alongside present-day shots of the park that now occupies the land. The people interviewed describe neighbors who looked out for each other, businesses that thrived in the cracks of Hong Kong's economy, and a community that functioned on its own terms. The film treats the Walled City less as a cautionary tale than as a place worth remembering accurately.