Film Studies - Lecture: Far Away from Home - Queer Desire, Exile and Hong Kong Identity

Wednesday 10 March 2027

What happens to our sense of identity when we leave home? Our final lecture examines Happy Together through the interconnected themes of queer desire, migration and cultural displacement. We will explore how Wong uses the unfamiliar spaces of Buenos Aires to represent emotional distance, unstable relationships and the search for belonging.

Particular attention will be given to the film’s treatment of queer intimacy, its shifting visual textures and its relationship with Hong Kong’s political and cultural uncertainties surrounding the 1997 handover. We will also consider how the film challenges conventional narratives of romance and national identity. Drawing together the course’s themes of longing, memory and urban identity, the lecture explores home as both a physical place and an emotional imagination.

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