Baraka - Ron Fricke (1992) - Tung Tau Estate, Kowloon

Adjacent to Kowloon Walled City was the former Tung Tau Estate. You can see some of the original resettlement estate buildings in this post, however, by the 1980s much of the original housing stock had been replaced by the buildings still standing today. The two exceptions are blocks 22 and 23 which appear in the image below.

This image basically shows the view looking up Lok Sin Road. Block 23 can be seen on the right with Block 22 on the left. Block 23 was demolished in 2003 and Block 22 in 2014. Both were turned into two parts of a smaller separate estate called the Tung Wui Estate.

Block 22 was the last block of the old estate to be demolished (it was built in 1965) and can still be seen (cleaned up) in historical Streetview imagery between 2009 - 2011 (Streetview took a long break between 2011 - 2016).  The lower image shows a close up of the front of Block 22.

Baraka - Ron Fricke (1992) - Kowloon Walled City

Shot in 1992, this film was able to capture some shots of the (in)famous Kowloon Walled City just prior to its demolition. This was the south facing side of the "city" with the flats here overlooking Carpenter Road bicycle track (itself due to be demolished to make way for a market building...because who really needs all those pesky leisure facilities getting in the way of redevelopment?).

Baraka - Ron Fricke (1992) - Kowloon City

Much in the same vein as Powaqqatsi, Baraka is a "non-narrative" documentary that combines a vast amount of footage shot around the world with small vignettes of many different places combined with music. Not surprisngly, Ron Fricke, the director, worked directly with Powaqqatsi director, Godfrey Reggio on an earlier film called Koyaanisqatsi.

The film credits only give us "Kowloon" as the filming location for this part, but it seems that a few places were included. The first appears early in the film and shows an upward angle of a plane flying over Kowloon City towards Kai Tak. The only clue to the whereabouts is the neon sign covered in scaffolding. I haven't been able to pinpoint this one yet, so please feel free to comment if you know.

The lower images are the last bits of footage featuring Hong Kong and show a plane landing from a different angle. This footage was filmed from the east side of South Wall Road. The building with the dirty yellow external decor is part of South Wall Mansion and the northern end of the street. It's a bit cleaner these days.