Searching for beauty, high & low.

Food, culture, frontiers, and everything in-between. Here’s a selection of what we’ve been up to.

HiLo presents Snack Sakura, a short film following Canadian photographer Greg Girard as he journeys across Japan, searching for a place he once knew. We join him from town to town, bar to bar, as he moves across the country, reflecting on memory, life between cultures, and what it means to make a picture. Greg’s work spans decades of living in Asia, from his seminal work City of Darkness Revisited chronicling life in Hong Kong’s notorious Kowloon Walled City, to Phantom Shanghai, a haunting record of a megacity in transition. In Snack Sakura, he returns to Japan, reminiscing on a country he first encountered in his twenties and other paths not taken. A continuation of his previous work, Tokyo-Yokosuka 1976-1983 and JAL 76-88, this new body of work surprises in its intimacy and deeply personal perspective—a new approach of Greg Girard revealed in our film.

A thoughtful person performs a job that many people don’t think very much of. Zhang Sai, an essential worker during the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan, reflects on work, resilience, and devotion. 

Invisible Seams shares the stories of eight different Asian seamstresses and pattern-makers in New York, bringing to the fore the experiences of these frontline workers of the fashion industry, whose voices are too often overlooked. These women have weathered the pandemic, the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes, trials of immigration, and the never-ending demands of fashion cycles. Invisible Seams is a celebration of their talent and expertise, an acknowledgment that their devotion to their craft is also a means of survival.

“We need to integrate architecture with nature.” What this pandemic and global climate emergency have shown us is that we need to recalibrate everything we do. In this short film, we trace the legacy of Safdie’s vision through the “utopian vision” of Habitat 67 to the newest forms of Habitat in Qinhuangdao, China, asking what makes for sustainable architecture today and in the future? Through firsthand interviews with residents of both Habitat ’67 in Montreal and Habitat Qinhuangdao in China, this film accents the lasting impact the Habitat model has on the built environment, and on the lives of its inhabitants.

Spicy Village is a New York Chinatown institution, a hole-in-the-wall spot renowned for its hand-pulled noodles, meat-filled buns, and famous “big tray chicken.” The restaurant’s owner, Wendy Li, runs the cult favorite with her husband and two children; they’ve earned accolades from the likes of celebrity chefs, the Village Voice, and the Michelin Guide. Before the pandemic, the line went out the door virtually every night. For Chinatown restaurants like Wendy’s, the impact of Covid-19 will soon become too much to bear. Business took a spike in February 2020—and not just because of a lack of foot traffic. Racism and xenophobia have threatened these places’ survival, too, with anti-Asian sentiment on the rise. Spicy Village’s future is under threat. They desperately need a show of support from New York’s noodle-lovers. This short film offers a glimpse behind the scenes at Spicy Village, on one of the few days they take time off: Chinese New Year. A time for celebration and togetherness with family, hindered by the pandemic for the second year running.

Can architecture help us understand our place, not only in the world but in the galaxy? In this short film, Ennead Architects' Thomas Wong takes us through the journey of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum, from concept to realization. Tracing the architectural lineage from the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City to the immersive, groundbreaking museum & planetarium in Shanghai, we ask, can architecture serve science, our humanity, as well as our imagination? By taking a pause and looking up, this film portrays that sense of awe inherent to architectural inspiration.

In status-obsessed South Korea, a young shaman struggles to answer his calling.  In a culture swept by Christianity and intense socio-economic pressure, the Shaman’s role has been sustained and transformed, adapting to a pragmatic, ‘success at all costs’ materiality that underlines South Korea today. Shamanism frames the cultural history, tumultuous past, and perilous yet hopeful future of the Korean people. This is an intimate portrait of how Shamanism endures in modern Seoul through the eyes of a young shaman.

Moshe Safdie visits the most ambitious project of his lifetime - Raffles City Chongqing - before the site opens. Controversy, culture, and aspirations surround this project which took over 8 years to realize.

A living legend, Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza talks to Julia Zhu about his hometown, country, and his inspiration and challenges working in architecture today.

Noodle School 16 mins
At the Gansu Dingle Noodle School in Lanzhou, China, many have traveled to learn the art of making hand-pulled noodles. Ten students from different walks of life try to master the craft with hopes of changing their fortunes.

︎ Brooklyn Film Festival
︎ Palm Springs International Film Festival
2018

China’s Bug-Eating Industry  35 mins   ^{Pt 1  Pt 2}
In China, insects were once seen as a last-resort famine food. Today, they’re a pricey snack for the adventurous or nostalgic. From medicinal ingredient to gourmet delicacy and sustainable protein, this is a look at the past, present, and future of Chinese insect cuisine.
2017

The World’s Best Caviar 12 mins
The taste-tests have spoken: some of the world’s highest-rated caviar comes from a lake in eastern China. Kaluga Queen sturgeon farm is the country’s leading caviar producer; their luxurious sturgeon roe may have Michelin approval, but the farm is still struggling to redefine the “Made in China” tag. 2017