Digitisation Project － 'Lost' (1970)

Directors: Ho Fan, Sun Po-ling
Screenwriter: Hong Kiu (aka James Lai), Sun Po-ling, Ho Fan
Cinematographer: Ricky Chow
Cast: Chui Yu (aka Chan Chun-wah), Dorothy Fu, Irene Lui, Cheng Tze-tuen

Caught between two entirely different women, an artist finds himself in conflict between the spiritual and the sensual, and at the same time lost creatively in the cultural clash between East and West. Based on Ho Fan’s 1966 experimental short Assignment, Part One, Lost depicts the artistic and carnal obsession of the modern creative mind. A departure from mainstream Cantonese and Mandarin films with European and Japanese new wave influences, it is shot with the colours of the 1960s and Lishan, Taiwan as backdrop. Sun Po-ling, an artist in her own right, co-directed and invested in the film, acting also as producer and make-up artist. She took the film to premiere in Cannes in 1970 and then screened it in Germany and the United States, while her ambition to release it locally in the foreign films theatre circuits did not materialise. Lost for half a century, this pioneering independent feature in the 1960s resurfaced in a print found in Taiwan by RTRI.

Sun Po-ling (1930－2005)
A native of Guangdong born in Shanghai and followed her sister to Hong Kong, Sun opened a photographic studio Foto Rosé in the 1950s and specialised in portrait photography. She then dabbled in drama and cinema and became a columnist in the 1970s. In the 1980s, she moved to Taiwan.