City Without Baseball

Description

SCUD co-directed his maiden film, City Without Baseball with Lawrence Lau. The actual members of the Hong Kong Baseball Team bare their souls and bodies to play themselves in this fictional youth drama. In a city where baseball culture is non-existent, these baseball players are a minority by choice. The experience teaches them to be free-thinkers in dealing with love, friendship and their own sexuality. It also enables them to find the will to live in the face of death and the strength to conquer losing in a spectatorless sport. The film caused a lot of controversies for exhibiting male full frontal nudities and touching on intimate brotherhood within a masculine sport. Even the billboards around town were said to be shocking and had to be removed after a complaint filed by one citizen. The film was academically acclaimed, however, awarded by China and Hong Kong critics.

Running Time：100 mins
Subtitles: Chinese and English
Language: Cantonese, Mandarin and English

Written, produced and directed by SCUD
Co-Director LAWRENCE LAU
Cinematography by ZHANG YING
Art Direction by WONG YAN KWAI
Costume Design by CHEUNG KAI SUN
Music by EUGENE PAO
Edited by JACKIE LEUNG

Main Cast
Yu Chung LEUNG  Adrian HEUNG  John TAI   Jason TSANG  Jose AU  Hong LAU  Wei Sha YAN  Gia LIN  Monie TUNG

• 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam – Official Selection and Focus Director
• 32nd Hong Kong International Film Festival – Official Selection
• Film Critics China – Top 10 Chinese Movie of the Year 2008
• HK Film Critics Society – Recommended Movie of the Year 2008

“Sexuality, suppressed emotion and urban alienation occupy the minds of the Hong Kong baseball team, searching for their place in a city where baseball culture is non-existent. Who are these invisible players if no one is cheering them on?

Stripping bare the cast of real athletes, City Without Baseball is a postmodern youth drama and a sports film, that plays cheekily with each genre’s iconographies. The handsome and charismatic protagonists play alongside camaraderie, crushes, love, competition and homoeroticism that seep beyond the locker room in a strikingly bare manner that marks a new approach to queer films in Hong Kong.

Co-directed by Lawrence Lau Kwok-Cheong, Scud’s directorial debut invites viewers to reflect on the complexities of human relationships, as well as the courage required to break free from societal expectations. Laying out the blueprints for his later work, City Without Baseball blurs the boundaries between fiction and documentary, and fictionalises the lives of the baseball players navigating the challenges of youth in the universal quest for acceptance in a society that so often sidelines individuality. – kijA” (Excerpts from the IFFR 2024 Website)