Asia-Pol Secret Service - Wang Yu (1966) - View over North Point

Another wide angle view across the harbour, this time from the North Point area looking beyond towards Hung Hom and the old Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock area that later became the Whampoa residential estate. The focus in the film is the ship that is slowly making its way into harbour because it is supposedly carrying several tons of illegal gold being smuggled by the gang.

It seems that the film used different ships at different points of the film - understandable given the to'ings and fro'ings of the harbour. I believe the ship below is the RIL "Straat Fremantle", which was a passenger carrying freighter that operated Japan and South Africa with a stop in Hong Kong on the return leg (most likely it was travelling from Japan which is why it entered the harbour from the east in this scene).

This Time I'll Make You Rich - Brad Harris (1974) - North Point, Hong Kong

The opening and closing titles have a helicoptered shot of what looks to be a part of Hong Kong island's northern coastline panning from left to right (east to west). However, after reviewing it I was scratching my head trying to pace all the buildings. The only clue I had was the initial picture that featured what appeared to be the twin chimneys of the old North Point Power Station. Here is the sequence as it appears on film. You can see the smoking chimneys in the very top picture.

It wasn't until the last couple of frames though that the clue to the sequence pops up. The large block in the bottom of the last picture is one of the blocks in the now demolished North Point Estate. The estate was in fact to the east of the power station, so, what we have at the end of this film is a bit that has been spliced in back to front. The film negative has obviously been flipped when it was all edited together (we've seen the same phenomenon several times on the blog leading me to think it is ignorance of HK geography as the main cause). So, I flipped all the grabs and now if the film had been run properly, the sequence would pan from west to east (right to left).

So, now that balance has once again been restored to the universe, we can say goodbye to this film and move onto the next...

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story - Jason Scott Lee (1993) - Man Shing Ferry

Continuing our recent spate of ferry-related posts, here is one from Dragon that shows us the Man Shing (民昇).

From what I gather from various Chinese websites, the first generation Man Shing was decommissioned in 1969 and I suspect the one we see above was the next generation that was commissioned in the following year. However, I could be wrong - perhaps there was another generation of ferry after the 1970 one? Man Shing did do the trip from Central to Ping Chau at one point, but the one above was one of the HYF ferries plying the route between North Point and Kowloon City.

Man Shing was one of three boats owned by HYF - all with a 'Man' name. They were sold in 1998 and two are rumoured to be still plying their trade in Thailand.

Anyway, I am pretty sure someone out there (nudge nudge, wink wink gweilo8888) can be more specific about the history so in the meantime I can mention that the background in these shots is once again North Point. You can see both ferry piers in the background as well as the old North Point Estate (the lower buildings closer to the shoreline).

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story - Jason Scott Lee (1993) - North Point Bus Terminus and Ferry Pier, Hong Kong

As Bruce is preparing to go home, he is chased down by a movie producer (I guess it is supposed to be Raymond Chow). But first we see Bruce approaching the ferry pier. The background is the now demolished North Point Estate. This is where the film makers made a better decision in their location choice because this estate was completed in 1957 (along with the adjoining piers) and was definitely of Lee-vintage.

The metal struts you can see are the supports for the pier roof. The pier itself is also featured as Bruce boards a ferry (in this case the Man Shing) before he is waylaid by the film producer. There are in fact two piers at north point, an East and a West one. I believe (although I'm not sure) that the one we can see below is the west one because it still has the light brown tiles covering the various pillars. However, I've never been to the pier so I can't be sure. If anyone has caught the Bauhinia harbour cruise then this is where those (ex-vehicular) ferries leave from and berth.