Gilitte Leung, director of Groundwalk (2005) and commissioned composer of flash intro music for SJ website 

I grew up and studied in Hong Kong.  I was born into a typical Hong Kong family with one brother who is 14 years older than me.  My parents are not very supportive, but I think it’s already kind of supportive that they haven’t forced me to stop what I’m doing.  I moved out at the age of 23 and live with a gay male friend.  Living with him is different from living with a girl, especially since he’s gay.  We have a peaceful life… we split the housework fairly and respect each other.  Sometimes we don’t see each other for days because he comes home late and I sleep early.  It’s funny, one good thing about living with him is he can fix my light problems and put heavy stuff on the tops of shelves because he’s tall!

I started dating girls when I was 18.  In secondary school, I sometimes had feelings for girls, but I didn’t think too much about it – I thought I just wanted to be friends with them.  At 17, I fancied a boy for 1 or 2 years, but we didn’t date… I seldom liked boys.

 

When I turned 18, there was a girl who treated me so well that I thought she was more than a friend.  Sometimes she was jealous, and she cried whenever I became closer to another friend.  I just found it weird so I said, “Why do you cry if we’re just friends?  You can tell me you don’t like it and I’ll change.  There’s no need to cry…”  So, I started to think that she liked me… that she was in love with me.  Then I started to ask myself, “Do I like her as well?  Do I want to have something with her?”  She was 17 and a very tall girl.  Another friend of mine always used to hold my hand in the street.  She wasn’t lesbian but she just wanted to try.  She always said, “Why can’t we try to fall in love and kiss a girl?”  I knew she wasn’t serious, so I just ignored her comments.  One day, when I was hanging out on the street with her, she held my hand again.  My other friend (the tall girl) saw us and became jealous.  So, I said to her, “Ok, I’ll hold you now!  Give me your hand.  We can hold hands together too.”  She said, “No!” but I knew she wanted to… I knew she was jealous.  So, I just put my hand in hers and she said, “If you hold my hand, you can’t take it away!”  I thought, “Wow, this is serious!” and when I held her hand, I felt something different in my body… like a fire going from bottom to top.  It was the first time I had that kind of feeling, so I wondered why and thought maybe I could really love a girl...  After that, we started dating.

 

I began to think about it [my sexual identity] at that time, because I was with that girl for 4 years.  But, she didn’t identify as a lesbian, and neither did I.  I just loved her, no matter whether she was a boy or a girl.  But, when I met my second girlfriend at the age of 22, I started thinking maybe I like girls more than boys, maybe I’m lesbian.  I don’t really like to categorize myself as lesbian or anything specific.  In Groundwalk, the two main characters also don’t like to label their sexual identity, and I feel the same.  Also, I don’t talk about gay partnership with my friends, but that’s mostly because I don’t believe in marriage.  Maybe in 2 years’ time, I could say that I desperately want to marry, but for the moment, I don’t really believe in marriage…

No, I didn’t.  The first out gay person I met was the gay guy friend I’m now living with!  In Hong Kong, there are famous people who are gay or lesbian but haven’t admitted it… we just suspect that he or she is!

Yeah, I’m out.  I told my mum, and then confessed to my dad 2 years ago.  I always thought about how I could come out to him, and then that day suddenly came.  He never asked me if I had a boyfriend.  He seldom talks to me.  But that day, he suddenly asked me about my girlfriend: “Are you having an affair with her?”  I didn’t say, “Yeah, I am having an affair, I live with her now.”  I said, “No, I have nothing with her, but I want to tell you I will love girls… I’m telling you.”  Then, he said, “How can you love a girl like being ‘in love’, not as a friend?  Isn’t it just a ‘friend love’ thing?”  I said, “No it’s more than that”.  He said, “What do you mean, ‘more than that’?”  I think he just couldn’t believe it.  He just wanted to tell me that I think too much, it’s just a friend thing, it’s not that serious and I’m not in love with girls.

 

I am not explicitly out about my sexuality to everyone I know.  If someone asks me about it, I will tell them if I feel they are friendly to me.  I just don’t care about what people think about or how they react to my sexuality.  I treat it as normal, just a personal reference. 

My mum and dad were aware that I was going to make a film.  My mother is an open-minded woman.  She knows what my film is about, but not my dad.  I already confessed to him that I love girls, but after that he didn’t ask me about that issue again.  Anyway, I don’t think Groundwalk is only a lesbian film, so I don’t think my family won’t accept the film – I think they will just think about whether it’s good or not.

I inspired me!  I always think, “I want to be Gilitte – me!  She’s cool!”  I have so many ideas and my mind is full of imagination.  If one day I can express all my imagination through music or movies, that’s what I want… it’s enough and makes me happy.  I think everyone wants to express themselves.  Even if you just talk, you are expressing yourself.  We just use different ways to express ourselves.  Some people maybe use cocaine to express themselves; I use music and film.  So if one day I can totally express myself through music and film, I will.

No.  I actually studied fashion, so people who know me only in music and film are surprised when I tell them I was originally in fashion.  I haven’t really worked in fashion, but it was a starting point for me. Fashion design isn’t just about fashion – for me, I think it was a process.  It opened my mind and I can now see the world in another way.  I have more confidence and I know what creativity is.  Fashion design was the basis for my later development.

After I graduated from fashion, I worked at a fashion magazine as a fashion stylist.  My job was to take photos and handle styling.  I like the styling part of fashion, but I don’t really like the garments.  I like the design and photography in fashion magazines.  When I was studying fashion, I loved my photography class, and the main reason I joined a fashion magazine was because I like fashion photography.  I was lucky, because the magazine trusted me even though I had just graduated.  After working there just for one month, they let me handle an article on my own and I did photo shoots by myself sometimes.

The problem was that magazine companies call on photographers anytime they want.  But for me, I work like an editor more than a photographer.  I can separate the two, but I can also do both at the same time since I know photography.  I think that is why I developed my career and moved in this direction.  When I got into music, I forgot everything about fashion, because although I liked being a fashion stylist, I realized that that wasn’t what I wanted the most.  I knew it, because there was a voice in my heart yelling at me, “Do you really like this?  Is this what you want?”  I could see that if I kept working at the magazine, maybe one day I could have become the chief editor, but I could foresee that I didn’t want that… I wouldn’t be happy.  I understood and confirmed to myself that it’s my “number one” first priority to do something in my heart.  So, at the age of 20, I thought, “I’m still young.  I can take an adventure by myself!”  So, I just quit my job and got involved in the music industry.

I was able to compose songs since I was about 10 years old.  I never studied music, but I knew I had a talent for music.  I didn’t tell anybody at that age and I didn’t actually write scores, but I would write down the notes and memorize them, then play them on my keyboard.  Most kids maybe learn instruments by playing somebody else’s songs, but I just played from my head.  I hadn’t really developed music skills, I just knew I had a good sense of music and I knew I could play.  I was too shy to tell somebody else that I could, because I grew up in a very typical Hong Kong family and was studying in a government school.  The school didn’t develop our creativity, and for so many years, I was treated just like a robot.  Studying fashion design really opened my mind, and that is what gave me my confidence in the end.

Music and movies fit together for me.  When I compose a song and listen to the music, I have images in my mind.  Music inspires images for me, and so I thought it would be fantastic if music and images could be combined together... it would be like perfection.  Now I’m used to using music software, I know I can achieve this and I want to develop this more, because I know that when music and images are combined, the result is “Wow!!”

For me, I need to do everything.  It’s the same with music or film.  It’s because I want to maintain the whole feeling of the piece that I create, and if you cooperate with someone, you have to explain everything to them.  I’m not in a band, because in a band each person does a separate thing like drums or guitar.  I have worked with other musicians and it was a new experience for me.  Sometimes it was difficult because even if you have time, the other person might not have time to work together.  It’s not a problem of music – it’s a problem of making the time to go out and do it.  Everyone does music as a freelance project or a hobby and not really like a full time job, since they have their own work.  So it’s difficult to position everyone in the same place at the same time to do something.  Even if you can schedule everyone together, maybe you can’t finish many things only in one day.  But, it’s interesting to cooperate with someone else, because you can have chemistry and new ideas, and even if you don’t achieve what you originally wanted, you might find something you didn’t have before.

I compose and produce songs myself, because you can’t just sing a melody to someone else and have them compose it exactly as you want.  Also, I want to improve my skills in handling very technical matters myself.  There are two parts to composing: the melody and the music arrangement.  Music arrangement is the most important for me, because it’s the whole song.  When I compose a melody, I already have the arrangement in mind.  I use a computer, but if I’m just composing the melody and suddenly have an idea, I just record my voice or something simple.  Then, if I like the idea, I start working on the arrangement.  Arrangement is just like taste, like cooking… how salty and sweet you want to make it.

I need to figure this out… this is the main problem.  I’m working now for an English guy who is a DJ, so my work is related to music.  I used to have a very irregular life.  I don’t know why, but since last year I suddenly wanted to have a regular life because my body wasn’t always in a good shape and I wasn’t healthy at all.

Gilitte Leung’s directorial debut Groundwalk (2005) is the tender story of two girls who meet again after a long period and fall in love during their one-day exploration of Hong Kong

The main message of the film is “Try to see something in a different way.  Try to give it a chance.”  Just like walking – you always go forwards, but sometimes if you go backwards, you will see something different.  In this film, I’m always asking, “Is this boring?  Is Hong Kong really boring?  Or, is it just that I think that Hong Kong is boring?”  If you change your point of view, like if you fall in love, everything changes… That’s the magic!

 

The title Groundwalk is about travelling inside a place you think you are familiar with.  It’s about walking on the ground inside your own country.  So, to mimic the postal service expression, it’s like sending “ground mail” not “air mail.”  I simply used the word “walk” to refer to travel.  

I didn’t really intend to make a lesbian film.  I wanted to make a film and I knew I could, because I knew how to handle the technical side, but I needed to think of a story I could do with a tight budget.  My inspiration to make Groundwalk was the low budget!  I could make it with a small budget, because this kind of story is based on reality and I was the only staff working on the film – I did all the camerawork.  Also, there are so many love stories about a boy with a girl, so I thought, “Why should I make that again?”  I don’t think it’s a gimmick to have two girls falling in love.  I think two girls appearing on the screen is a romantic and beautiful thing.  

Groundwalk's intimate journey through Hong Kong brings together two hearts

 

Yeah, this film is from my own imagination.  It’s about what I want, what I think is romantic.  Travel is “love chemistry” – something always happens when travelling!  Before their trip, the girls don’t know each other well, but then they have a long date which lasts for 1 day.  During that day, they talk a lot, and they spoil each other more than they would if they were spending time with each other over a whole month.  They interact a lot, which makes their connection deeper and deeper, and while they travel, their chemistry builds.  I think it’s a romantic situation, because in that kind of situation, you don’t think much… you can’t “think” chemistry – it just comes naturally like thoughts, like love at first sight.  You’re not analyzing or thinking, “Why do I like her…?”

 

Also, I had to create one character which was more aggressive than the other, otherwise the chemistry wouldn’t have worked.  The quiet one doesn’t show her feelings, but if somebody can read her, she finally opens up.  Their story is just like fate: maybe you met somebody 2 years ago, and when you meet them again 2 years later, it works between you.  This kind of thing happens a lot, and you treasure it: “Oh, we are made to be together!  I was destined to meet you!”  I know that feeling… I wrote about what I experienced.  Love is magic!!  But, when I say that to my friends, they just say I’m crazy.  They say, “You are just too emotional… Yes, you’re romantic, but too much.”  For them, “too much” means “not good”.  Is it a compliment?  No!  They’re not saying it like a compliment.  A compliment is “Oh, you’re so romantic… [dreamy tone],” but they say, “Yes you are romantic, I admit that…but too much.”  

 

In a relationship, I don’t like to state my role as the one to take care of the other, or the one to be taken care of.  I just want to be natural, with no fixed rules: “Maybe I take care of you today, maybe another day you take care of me.”  And my ideal partner is someone sensible, willing to talk and listen, with her own thoughts, humor and a nice smile!  I love girls who love music, so I prefer a girlfriend who is working in music… not necessarily a musician, but someone who really loves music.  

I didn’t have much choice for the actresses – they’re my friends!  I’m lucky to have two camera-friendly friends!  They’re not dating each other though.  Filming was just like hanging out with my friends as usual.  I didn’t even cry out, “Cut!” or “Action!”  I would just say, “OK!  Stop!”  I didn’t behave like a director… the process was very natural.  I didn’t want my friends to feel that I suddenly become another person just because I was shooting my film.

 

Ann Marie is actually quieter than her film character (Ann Marie).  In real life, she’s not that talkative – she’s quite shy and tender.  She likes reading, music and dance and she’s a funny girl.  Fiona is just like her film character (Fiann) – she’s quiet, calm and cheerful, she’s nice and comes across as reliable, safe and easy to talk to.  I met them randomly – friends of friends.  Ann Marie’s personality in the film is quite similar to mine.  

Ann Marie Chan (Ann Marie, far left) and Fiona Tang (Fiann, far right), stars of Gilitte Leung’s Groundwalk

 

I wrote all the dialogue.  When I was writing, I became like a crazy woman, because the two women have different characters: one is aggressive, the other is quiet.  For example, when one says, “What do you want to eat?” the other says, “Whatever you like…”  I really needed the dialogue to bring out who they are.  I became so crazy, but I also enjoyed it because I quite like to act as someone else.  The scriptwriting took 1 month, but I didn’t work on it every day.  Shooting took about 14 days and editing took 1 month, so everything was finished in 3 months.  I also handled production and distribution myself.  I didn’t think too much about it… I just did what I could do and tried my very best.

When I first had the idea, they weren’t very excited about it.  Some of my friends were just like, “Oh good.  Try it.  If you can do it, just do it.”  But, after I made the film, they were really impressed.  They were surprised I could make it.  They said, “You can do anything, you’re superwoman!”  They think it’s cool that I made a movie, not because it’s a lesbian story but because it’s a romantic love story.  They thought it was amazing my film made it onto the screen and in cinemas.

The first festival screenings were in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand.  There’s a girl pride in Thailand – I didn’t join, but somebody told me the film was screened on an outdoor screen.  Groundwalk was also screened in Korea and at the 2007 Asian Queer Film & Video Festival (in Tokyo and Fukuoka).  The festivals were all women or gay/lesbian related.

 

You can buy Groundwalk on DVD through online stores such as YesAsia.com.  I wish I could sell it in Japan too, if anybody were interested in distributing it in Japan.  I want to make Japanese and French subtitled versions of the film to make it more known to other people.

 

* Since the interview, Groundwalk has also been shown in Paris (Paris International Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival) and Berlin (Asian Women’s Film Festival).  When asked how the Paris screening went, Gilitte commented:

The Paris audience seemed to like it… They asked a lot of questions in the Q&A session and were curious about Hong Kong lesbians, Hong Kong policies restricting lesbians, social acceptance of lesbians in Hong Kong, and how conditions are for lesbians in China.  They had the impression that China does not tolerate lesbians and that Chinese lesbians must have a painful life, which really surprised me… it’s actually not as serious as they think.

Yes, I have a few ideas now.  I want to think about what can be made with a small budget but is still interesting.  Because I’m already restricted by a small budget, I need to put even more heart or thought into it.  Last year I suffered from a complicated love relationship… love can totally take me down.  The relationship was about half a year, but I can tell you that I did nothing in 2006.  I was just suffering, and then I went travelling.  I felt travelling would heal my emotion.  I thought about making a documentary about suffering from love.  I shot myself for a long time during that period.  There was no-one shooting me, I had no cameraman.  I wanted to shoot the whole process because I think it’s interesting – it’s so real.  I wanted to betray myself, to put myself on the screen to show people this is me… but because I felt bad emotionally, sometimes I forgot to record every moment.

 

I won’t do a very lesbian film only with two girls, because, for my second one, I want to talk more about human life and what life is about.  I want to talk about people’s connections, and I want my film to have some message, something spiritual.  For Groundwalk, I wanted to express that you can take something you think is boring, but if you give yourself a chance to change your mind, maybe just for one minute, you will see a totally different world, even though you are still sitting there.  For my second film, I want to talk about connection – everyone has a connection, even just a small one.  Maybe connection isn’t just connection, it could be just somebody else passing by and maybe he or she will affect you later, you don’t know, you never know…  I believe in fate.  I don’t desperately believe in fate, because I think fate is a romantic word, but I think fate has some fantasy that means you don’t know until you know…

 

I have no clear plan about when I will finish the film.  My philosophy is “No plans,” because every time I make plans, I end up disappointed.  Sometimes in life we build goals, but if we can’t achieve it we’re disappointed.  So, I don’t make plans any more.

 

* Since the interview, when asked about her latest project, Gilitte commented:

I just made the trailer for my new film, to see if there any investors interested in my film, so I can get more budget to shoot it.  My second film is about a letter from the future – one day a 30-something guy receives a letter dated 2018 which is written by his future self.  You can see the trailer on YouTube.   Other than that, I just want to keep on shooting and producing music.

You just attended the Asian Queer Film & Video Festival (AQFF) in Tokyo as a guest, and Groundwalk will travel with the AQFF to Fukuoka in September.  How was the festival?

I enjoyed it!  It’s good to have this kind of festival.  I met Kazuyo (the AQFF co-director) in 2005 at the Asian Lesbian Film and Video Festival in Taiwan, which was the first film festival to screen Groundwalk.  Kazuyo watched my film and mentioned that maybe she could organize the same kind of film festival in Japan one day.  She asked me if she could screen my film in Japan, so I left her my contact details, we stayed in touch, and now finally I’m here to see my film screened in Japan.  People here pretty much like it.  I haven’t received any bad comments – I think that’s a good thing!  The quality is beyond their imagination and they are surprised that the film was made by such a small crew.  They find it amazing.

Maybe I’ll have a different point of view after going out in Nichome (Tokyo’s gay area, based in Shinjuku 2-chome) tonight, but I think it’s probably not much different from Hong Kong or Taiwan – so far, I found it’s just the same as Hong Kong.  We have the same kind of places where lesbians hang out, and there are tomboy girls and girly girls… but there are actually not many lesbian events in Hong Kong, just a few bars and 2 or 3 lesbian parties per year.  Maybe there are some differences in how we love because of culture and we come from different places – sometimes the place affects your decisions or what you want – but it’s still about love.  Maybe I’ll find some differences if I get to know more deeply how people have relationships in Japan.

** Since the interview, when asked how her trip to Nichome went, Gilitte commented:
I had a good night in Nichome!  I liked the restaurant there (CoCoLo Café). It’s a good place to hang out with friends, better than places in Hong Kong. 

I want to ask everyone to buy the DVD of Groundwalk!  And, it’s not so expensive for me to come to Japan from Hong Kong, so I’ll be back again.  Thank you to everyone for helping me at this festival, for translating the subtitles for my film, inviting me to come, and offering me a nice place to stay.  The best part of this trip was I met a lot of friends, and that was an amazing experience for me.  Since I arrived, I have talked a lot of English.  Usually when I come to Japan I just come alone and no-one speaks to me.  So, at least on this trip, there were people who could talk to me and it’s been so interesting.  I’m so happy!  I always want to come back to Tokyo, because I love Tokyo!  I love the food, the culture, the people, the fashion… and especially the friends I met in Tokyo.  I’d love to film in Tokyo one day, if someone can help me.  I think I have some connection with this place…

** Since this interview, Gilitte s short film I Want to Make a Movie was nominated for the Louis Vuitton Journeys Awards in association with award-winning Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, director of Chungking Express (1994), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004) and My Blueberry Nights (2007).  Gilitte was awarded a Special Mention from Won Kar Wai: “Gilitte Leung, your journey is bold and sincere (personal and tender).  Congratulations… best luck in your future career.” Read more about the Awards here →  http://www.journeysawards.com/index.php