As a Bird that Briefly Perches

Drawing on the filmmaker’s diasporic experience, this three-part video diary weaves Hong Kong’s geology, greenhouse cultivation, and migrant farming into a meditation on identity. Reframing agricultural processes and species migration, the film reflects on the implications of rooting and re-rooting, and on the evolving dynamics between land and humanity across foreign soils.

Dorothy Cheung: ‘Filming As a Bird that Briefly Perches was a journey in reverse. It began with a curiosity about Asian seeds adapting to foreign soil: do they still resemble their original selves? After documenting a Hong Kong farmer in London, I added two formally distinct, asymmetrical chapters to complete this non-linear work.

The title is drawn from a concept in an ancient Chinese text [The Zuo Tradition]: while a bird may choose where to land, the tree has little agency. At the time the text was written, little was known about the trees that can in fact lure or trap birds. While working on this project, I was reminded of a childhood friend who moved to the U.K. in recent years and later passed away. How much choice does a bird truly have? Perhaps we are all only perching briefly… before taking off again.’