City Without Baseball

Description

Scud co-directed his maiden film, City Without Baseball with Lawrence Ah Mon. 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：100mins
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
Leung Yu Chung/ Adrian Heung/ John Tai/ Jason Tsang/ Jose Au/ Hong Lau/ Yan Wei Sha/ Gia Lin/ Monie Tung

• 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam– Official Selection and Focus Director
• 32^nd 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

Scud on his first film: “I returned to Hong Kong from Australia in 2004, and an unplanned appointment made me make an important decision, which may have rewritten the lives of more than a dozen young people.

Before my friend’s phone call, I didn’t even know anyone in Hong Kong played baseball and in fact had a decent representative team; he asked me if I could make a documentary film, so I went to the Sai Tso Wan Stadium in Lam Tin.

The first interview was with Adrian Heung, a handsome Japanese-idol-like who studied fashion design and was the lead singer of a band that played and sang well. Au Wing Leung, the captain of the band, is a left-handed player and a member of the team Brothers Gang. The coach is from Taiwan and is nicknamed “Handsome”. When I met Chung, the catcher who looks like a Korean star, I started to have an idea…

Following the cheers of the girls on the sidelines, I found Leung Yu-chung, and the moment he turned back and raised his eyebrows, I knew that any gender or sexual orientation would be pierced by his starry eyes – the very same spirit, the very same aura of that baseball pitcher!

I took some of my savings, got my mum to chip in, and started writing, fundraising, and filming “City without Baseball”.

I didn’t need to find “star”, as there were already nine handsome 5’11” guys right in front of me! They were free to accompany (drink…) me from dusk till dawn, laughing and telling each other about the history of their romances, crying about the disappointment of losing the competition in Thailand, and then singing their favourite song “Fairy Tale”. At dawn, the drunkenness dissipated, and they went back to the court in the afternoon to practice and coach…

In front of the camera, they fearlessly fought in the locker room, ran naked on the field, embraced naked on the beach; apart from their disinterest in the chilling hypocrisy of the synonym: “image”(like a good actor does), they had a passionate desire to be known for their existence, their struggles, their frustrations and their dreams. This fire of youth burns away all pretences and reveals the pure body and soul.

For such an unique project there is no need to look for a director ：Top Director Lawrance Lau was so in love of it and volunteered to make this dream come true.

This is a film about loss. However we also got a lot in such three years and we have no regrets at all.

In the beginning, there was nothing at all — City without Baseball”

“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”

Information Sources：IFFR 2024

More：Adrian Heung / Hong Lau / Simon Tam