Film Screening: Rather Be Ashes than Dust — Tokyo University, June 3
- Project
- EVT-002
- Location
- KOMCEE West Lecture Hall, Komaba Campus, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
- Date
- 3 June 2025
Rather Be Ashes than Dust (寧化飛灰) is a protest documentary assembled from over one thousand hours of footage and edited over two years, shot from a journalist's first-person perspective inside the 2019 Hong Kong protests. "This film reflects what I personally lived through," director Alan Lau has said. "It is a witness to police violence and to the arrests of a large number of young people."
On 3 June 2025 — the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre — Lady Liberty Hong Kong hosted a Tokyo screening of the film at KOMCEE West Lecture Hall, Komaba Campus, University of Tokyo. Admission was free. The film was screened in Cantonese with Japanese subtitles.
Director Alan Lau attended in person for a post-screening talk and audience Q&A, moderated by Professor Ako Tomoko of the University of Tokyo Graduate School. Simultaneous interpretation was provided in Chinese, Japanese, and English.
About the film
Rather Be Ashes than Dust has been selected for international festival competition and recognised with multiple awards, including selection at the 28th Busan International Film Festival (Wide Angle Competition), Best Film (Democracy on the Edge) at DocEdge International Film Festival, and selection at Festival des Libertés, among others.
About the director
Alan Lau (劉健倫) holds a Bachelor of Creative Media from Hong Kong and a film directing certificate from the London Film School. Over eighteen years in film and television, his work has been recognised at the Chicago International Television Festival (Hugo Silver Award), Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Frameline 44, and San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival. His first feature as director, The Cube Phantom, was selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). His most recent work, The Gordian Knot, received the Canon Video Grant at France's VISA Pour l'image — making him the first Asian director to receive this honour.