ABSTRACT
This chapter features the dynamic of intermediation, watching a Hong Kong crime film at the Berlinale film festival-Yau Nai-Hoi’s Eye in the Sky (2007)-while correlating the viewing experience with the management of a different city venue, Berlin. The chapter emphasizes the way the viewing situation yielded a homology between my way of experiencing the film and the festival as a whole and that of the film’s protagonists. Just as I was continuously involved in timing my movements to manage my film attendance within the incessant kinesis of the city of Berlin (bodies and vehicles moving rapidly here and there and a rush of urban impressions at every moment), so was one of the film’s main protagonists, the head of a theft ring, Chan Chong-Shan (Tony Leung Ka-fai), who was orchestrating his gang’s thefts. Ultimately, the chapter uses the filmgoing experience to focus on a comparison between the way artistic practices in Hong Kong and Berlin are dedicated to articulating Chineseness and Germanness, respectively.
