Filmed in the thick of Hong Kong's 2019 street movement, Revolution Of Our Times is a feature-length documentary by Kiwi Chow that follows the protests from the front lines while setting them against the city's longer political history.
What is Revolution Of Our Times about?
The starting point is a controversial extradition bill introduced in 2019, a proposal that would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be tried in mainland China. The bill set off mass demonstrations, and the documentary traces how those gatherings grew into a sustained movement marked by rioting, street confrontations and repeated clashes with the authorities. Chow works on two levels at once. The wide view places the events of 2019 within the territory's history and the earlier efforts of its residents to secure democratic rights. The close view relies on footage recorded among demonstrators, together with interviews in which participants describe what they saw and did in their own words. The outcome is a long-form record of one year of unrest, told largely through the accounts of the people who were on the streets.
About the cast
The credits list Hongkongers as a collective presence, reflecting the many residents and demonstrators who appear on screen, alongside Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Gwyneth Ho. As is typical of observational documentary, much of the running time belongs to participants filmed in the moment rather than to formal presenters or narrators. Kiwi Chow is credited as director.
Context & significance
Revolution Of Our Times is a 2021 release credited to Hong Kong and the United Kingdom as countries of production. At 152 minutes it is considerably longer than most feature documentaries, a length that allows it to cover both the chronology of the 2019 protests and the historical background behind them. The subject remains politically contested, and the film is best understood as a documentary built primarily around the testimony and footage of protest participants. For viewers approaching the topic for the first time, the basic sequence is straightforward: an extradition proposal in 2019, large-scale public demonstrations in response, and a prolonged period of confrontation across the city. It is also among the more strongly reviewed documentaries in the K-Time catalogue, and it sits alongside other titles concerned with contemporary political history and the documentary form.
Watching Revolution Of Our Times on Ktime
Revolution Of Our Times streams on K-Time for signed-in members; this page is free to read, and playback starts after logging in to your K-Time account. The documentary is offered with a Persian dub as well as Persian subtitles, both available within K-Time's Farsi-language interface, which is designed around viewers in the Iranian diaspora.