Newsletter No. 545

藝 士 匹 靈 / ARTS pirin 告別那些年的一些玩意兒 Goodbye to All That 上世紀八十年代已經投身職場的，必會記得甚至擁有過一部傳呼機。據估計1996年單是 日本便有一千萬傳呼機用戶。 今年10月1日，日本最後一個傳呼機服務商停止運作，傳呼機這玩意終於進入歷史，之前據說 用戶只剩一千五百人。 其實傳呼機的衰落早於本世紀伊始，其傳訊功能早被手機和社交媒體取代。現在使用這部小 盒子的，多是醫院內工作的醫護人員。英國國民保健系統便有十三萬員工使用，但聽聞也有 計劃2021年前逐漸淘汰。 我對現代資訊科技比較慢熱，從未擁有過一部傳呼機。在手機市場還是諾基亞和摩托羅拉 的天下，當手機還是身分象徵多於日常用品的時候，我還在抗拒與別人connect，直至後來當 上律師為止。 成長路上，碰上音樂開始個人化。我那一代年輕人出國留學，行李裏找不到一本辭典，卻總 少不了一部卡式錄音機。到了研究院歲月，卡式機與唱帶讓路給「隨身聽」和音樂光碟。音樂 愈發個人化，機與碟的體積便愈小，最終完全消失。今天，我們找不到唱片、唱帶或光碟，聽 音樂只要串流便可以了。 家庭影視也漸漸給搬上雲端。現在很少人還在買或租影碟看，串流便宜及方便得多。尋常家 裏塵封的一盒二盒VHS，記錄了不少人的喜慶和溫馨時刻。但寶箱雖在，開啟的鑰匙卻好像 丟失了。 VHS已早於2008年在美國消失。日本人比較念舊，不輕易放棄過時事物，要等到2016年7月 才為VHS奏上安魂曲。 Those of us who were in the workforce in the 1980s should know or might have actually owned a pager, then messaging device du jour . It was said that by 1996 there were 10 million pager users in Japan alone. On 1 October, the pager was laid to rest in Japan, as the last paging service provider, Tokyo Telemessage, closed its service. Prior to that, only 1,500 subscribers remained. The pager fad had ebbed way before the present century. Its messaging function was taken over by cell phones and social media. Its users are mostly healthcare professionals who work in the hospital. There are 130,000 pagers used in the UK National Health Service system, but there are plans to phase them out by 2021. I am a slow convert to modern telecommunication technology. Never owned a pager, and I resisted buying a cell phone when Nokia and Motorola ruled the market, when it was more a status symbol than a daily necessity. But I fell in line when I became a solicitor. Since then it has been an uninterrupted chain of newer models and expanding functionalities. I entered adulthood when music was being personalized. I was one of many in my generation who boarded a plane for an overseas university with not a dictionary in my luggage but a portable cassette-tape player. When I was in graduate school, the player and the cassette tapes had morphed into a Walkman and CDs. In the process of personalization, not only have the physical objects got progressively smaller and slimmer but they eventually disappeared altogether. Today music comes to us through streaming rather than any physical tape or disc. Virtuality has usurped physicality in our home entertainment, too. Now we stream rather than buy videos and films. The many VHS tapes recording our weddings and our children’s birthdays now sit in the closet like treasure boxes whose keys can be found no more. In the US, VHS became history in 2008. Japan, always a little more stubborn in consigning things to the dustbin of history, had waited until July 2016 to pull the plug on this black box with which our lives can be played out, fast forwarded or reversed at will. TC 浮城 眾 生 The Vicissitudes 關於二戰的外語片主要聚焦歐美戰場，但描述香港戰況的電影不多。早前崇基學院播放由 美籍導演 Craig McCourry 執導的《一九四一的聖誕》，縷述加拿大軍人、女記者和酒店女工 在香港淪陷前的經歷，填補了光影史上的空白。 中國語文及文學系 麥欣恩 教授是該片監製，她希望透過幾個平凡角色帶出戰爭對社會和家 庭的影響，同時向外籍軍人致敬，「當年超過一千六百名外籍軍人在抗日其間陣亡，令海外苦 苦等待的家人心碎。」 為何故事聚焦加拿大軍人？McCourry說：「加拿大軍人在開戰前三星期才派駐香港，他們二 十出頭，還未認識香港已為港捐軀。」我仍記得加國軍人快要氣絕的一幕：他用隨身設備與 酒店女工接通電話，得知妻子懷孕百感交集，後來要求女工播聖誕歌伴隨他至最後一刻。 那一幕大概在2016年的平安夜已構思好。當時McCourry與妻子麥教授參與教堂崇拜，他唱 聖詩時，忽然想到1941年的聖誕本是團聚的日子，但無數家庭卻遭戰爭破碎，劇本大綱和角 色頓時浮現腦海。時任總督楊慕琦（1886–1974）於聖誕日在半島酒店宣布投降，劇本亦以 皇家酒店的人與事為主軸。 拍攝歷史片所費不菲，以有限成本在香港重組歷史鏡頭更非易事。McCou r r y遂在 facebook招募本地演員，並且在摩星嶺炮台和石屋取景拍攝，整齣電影只拍攝了二十多天。 戲中二百多件道具盡都是他在eBay搜購的古董，耗了近一百萬積蓄。 以史為鑒，讓人感悟是非對錯。兩位電影人如此盡心還原香港歷史的影像，豈不令人肅然 起敬？ Many foreign-language films about the World War II centre on Europe and the US, but the battles in Hong Kong have been neglected. Chung Chi College presented the screening of Christmas at the Royal Hotel directed by an American director Craig McCourry . The story focuses on a Canadian soldier, a female journalist and a janitor at the Royal Hotel before the Japanese occupation, with an attempt to fill the missing piece in film history. Prof. Grace Mak of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature is the film’s producer. She hopes to reveal what the war brought to society and families through the stories of the ordinary, and to pay tribute to the foreign soldiers. ‘More than 1,600 foreign soldiers died confronting the Japanese troops. It broke the hearts of their family members back home.’ Why does the story put the spotlight on the Canadian soldier? McCourry said, ‘The Canadian soldiers were sent to Hong Kong three months before the war broke out. Barely into their early twenties, they died in a city they didn’t know well.’ I still remember the Canadian soldier’s death scene: He reaches the hotel janitor with his field phone and learns of his wife’s pregnancy. Then he requests the janitor to play Christmas songs on broadcast to accompany his last moment. The scene was in the director’s mind on Christmas Eve 2016. He attended a Christmas service with his wife Professor Mak. While singing a hymn, he was gripped with a mixed feeling: Thousands of families were torn apart at Christmas in 1941, which was supposed to be a festival for family reunions. The paradox then crystalized into the script outline and characters. As the then Hong Kong governor Sir Mark Aitchison Young (1886–1974) surrendered to the Japanese at the Peninsula Hotel, the script also centres on the happenings at the Royal Hotel. Producing a historical film is costly. It was even more challenging to film historical shots in Hong Kong within a limited budget. For this reason, McCourry recruited local actors on facebook and filmed locally at Fort Davis and a stone house. The filming only took more than 20 days. More than 200 props are antiques purchased on eBay, which cost him almost a million dollars. Learning from history, we can tell right from wrong. Isn’t it inspiring to know how the two filmmakers dedicated to restoring the historical images of Hong Kong? J. Lau Source: McCourry Films VHS 11 # 5 4 5 | 1 9 . 1 0 . 2 0 1 9 字 裏 科 技 / T ech T alks