Mavis Siu received her MFA degree from the Social Documentation Program at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she was trained as a professional, not just at the technical level but also in ways of thinking and seeing, with a commitment to documenting communities, cultures, issues, and individuals who are marginalized in the current landscape of representation. This documentary training has helped her to understand the world with the complexity necessary at this critical time. With the world entering uncharted territories, we need documentaries that can help us explore, reflect, transform, and imagine a different future. Siu keeps learning and seeks to develop more creative ways of telling stories by approaching documentary from a holistic perspective—that is, as a practice that is grounded in social locations, not just production protocols, and that is well grounded in social ethics and the cultural contexts into which it seeks to intervene. As Mavis’s debut film, Mong Kok First Aid 成年禮 seeks to demonstrate a thoughtful process of film-making that is made in close collaboration with its subjects and is fundamentally based on human rights concerns and a socially engaged practice, while incorporating the kind of creativity that can resonate with audiences.

Participants: Courageous volunteer first aid workers who served in the Mong Kok first aid station during the 2014 Umbrella Movement.

Project Advisors:
– B. Ruby Rich: Arts Dean’s Eminent Professor of Film and Digital Media Department & Social Documentation MFA Program
– Dee Hibbert-Jones: Professor of Art, Film & Digital Art New Media
– Emily Honig: Professor of History Department, and East Asian Studies Co-Director

Cinematography:
– Mavis Siu
– Conni, Mong Kok First Aid

Sound Mixer and Designer:
– Ben Hicks, Disher Sound
– Paul Zahnley, Disher Sound

Colorist:
– Robert Arnold, Lateral Films

Font Designer:
– Kit Man, Kit Da Sketch