Bitter Sweet Narrative Film

Bitter Sweet is an early short film directed by first-generation Chinese New Zealand filmmaker Steven Chow. Produced in 1997 as part of Chow’s Moving Image major for the Bachelor of Media Arts at The Waikato Polytechnic (now known as Waikato Institute of Technology), the film is a notable – though due to its student origins, largely unknown – example of Asian representation and influence in Aotearoa filmmaking.

Chow describes Bitter Sweet as exploring the “mixed emotions you go through when a relationship ends” and recalls, “it was about how the main character always got himself into trouble and jeopardised his relationship with his girlfriend. It was something I was going through personally at the time.” Due to criteria he was following for the assignment, as well as budget limitations, Chow conceived the film without dialogue, relying on diegetic sound and a single music score track to tell the story.

Asian visibility was also important to Chow. “I knew at the time I wanted to have Asian characters, so I began asking friends and was referred to Daniel Sing, who was already acting at the time in Auckland. One of my cohorts knew an Asian girl working at a store called Sun Clothing in Hamilton. That’s when Minh Tran joined the team after we met over coffee. She told me she was so nervous during the shoot because we were shooting on the streets at night. She enjoyed it though, and we are very close friends to this day.”

Bitter Sweet was shot on 16mm film stock in central Tāmaki Makaurau, including various sites along Victoria Street, and just outside of the CBD, the Newmarket Plaza Food Court, a still-prominent lane of East Asian-owned businesses, markets and eateries. Heavily inspired by the films of Wong Kar-wai, Chow uses these locations to simulate the nocturnal energy and dynamism of urban Hong Kong. Experimental editing and non-narrative techniques also evoke the fragmented cinematic style that Wong became admired for throughout the 1990s.

Other moments and locations captured include a Pasifika drum performance, part of a New Zealand Chinese Association event; the exterior of Ocean City Seafood, a once-popular Chinese restaurant on Victoria Street West; and the former Burger King (now a Starbucks) on Queen Street, a homage to the American pop culture that often features in Wong’s films.

Bitter Sweet premiered at the Paramount Theatre as part of the Wellington Fringe Film Festival in 1998. Through his studies, Chow was awarded the Moving Image Award, receiving a $2,000 prize from Atlab New Zealand for film processing, which he pooled into another short film titled Between Cities. This led to an offer to edit television commercials by the late director Paul Swadel. Chow continues to practice commercial and television editing professionally today alongside his personal film projects.