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.

Chinese Box - Jeremy Irons (1997) - South Wall Road, Kowloon City

The next scene involves Irons and Gong Li heading up to a rooftop in Kowloon City to watch the planes come roaring by as they land at the nearby Kai Tak Airport. Thankfully, the rather unique configuration of road around here allows us to see that they were on the roof top of #452 Prince Edward Road West at the junction with South Wall Road.

 Given the amount of change in this are over the past 10 years it's a bit surprising that we can identify anything at all, but the various elevated sections of Prince Edward Road and Argyle Street put us right at the far edge of Kowloon City. Sadly, the curved building immediately next door to their location (right side, bottom pic) has since been redeveloped into a high-rise monstrosity called Prince Ritz (Hong Kong residential building names are increasingly pretentious), however, the blue painted building in the background is still around and is the Katherine Building. The higher building in the far distance above Gong Li's head is the Astoria - located next to the Kowloon City Police Station along Argyle Street.