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Burn With Us

After 6 months of anti-government protests in Hong Kong, students began to fortify a number of the city’s major universities and occupy vital roads nearby. This lead to one of the most violent clashes of the protests…the siege of Poly-U.

  • Joshua S. Bischof
    Director
  • Oliver Gelleni
    Producer
  • Joshua S. Bischof
    Editor
  • Joshua S. Bischof
    Cinematographer
  • Oliver Gelleni
    Cinematographer
  • January
    Translator
  • Kelvin Zihang Kuang
    Translator
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 29 minutes 27 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 2, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Hong Kong
  • Language:
    Chinese, English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Joshua S. Bischof

Joshua is a world traveler who has written and directed numerous short films as well as worked on a number of feature films such as „The Heart of Man“ and the award-winning „Midori in Hawaii“. In 2019 he directed his first feature documentary, ''Burn With Us''.

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Director Statement

My love for Hong Kong dates back to 2008 when I visited the financial hub for the first time and in the following years, my fascination of the city and its people only grew.

As the protests in spring 2019 broke out I was working at my day job with the Swiss railroad and followed the progression of the conflict on the news. The summer months progressed and I found myself more and more compelled to understand and witness the unfolding events for myself.

In October 2019, I packed my equipment and flew to Hong Kong.
Conflict is chaos and mostly never black or white. Even afterward it is difficult to untangle the chaos created to find the meaning behind it and to understand which decisions lead to which consequences.

This is what inspired me to make a documentary without narration and interviews; a documentary focused on trying to make the audience feel like they are there themselves. Trying to make them understand how it feels like to be shot at by teargas as a protestor and bystander or to have petrol bombs thrown at you as a police officer.

To show the chaos that the city has fallen under for so many months and what can happen when young people become so desperate and hopeless that they resort to fortifying their universities to fight for the future they believe in.

I want to show the events the same way that I witnessed them and I hope that it will challenge you to ask yourself how you would react and how far you would go if you would be in their shoes.