Peter Yung's The System, a rediscovered gem of Hong Kong New Wave cinema
From a darkened first-floor shop window, the zoom lens picks up the lean, sallow-faced figure loitering on the opposite pavement. Seemingly invisible to passers-by and shopkeepers, he is a magnet for solitary, middle-aged men who approach in silence, holding HK$10 notes.
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No words are exchanged, but between meetings, he disappears into an open staircase and returns within moments to discreetly hand off small paper packets to more customers who then drift away. This is repeated, again and again, on a daily basis, with the hidden camera capturing every one of the transactions.
It's the mid-1970s and Hong Kong is flooded with heroin, home to the highest percentage of addicts in the world. The dealer is Dai So, a street-level Wo Hop To
triad selling packets of No 3 heroin from the gang's protected patch on First Street, Sai Ying Pun. He's also an addict, and he knows he is being filmed. His brother, Sai So, keeps a lookout nearby for a rival gang, also selling heroin, a block up, on Second Street.
Police officers David Hodson (left) and Ho Shiu-cheong show the press their seizure of heroin in April 1977. Photo: SCMP Archives
The team behind the camera are award-winning British filmmaker Adrian Cowell, two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Mengis, and a young local, Peter Yung Wai-chuen, associate producer and camera operator. They would live in that empty shop for five months, filming the street-level drug trade below.
They were there making Opium: The White Powder Opera, one in a series of documentaries Cowell wrote and directed on the drug trade over two decades. It was a groundbreaking film as, through his Hong Kong government connections, he received unprecedented access to the secretive Narcotics Bureau as it sought to identify and
arrest high-level drug smugglers and break up their syndicates
'I was the organiser for the documentary,' says Yung, now 75, sitting among the greenery of his home on Lantau Island. 'The important thing is, at that time, Caucasians couldn't go on the surveillance, so that's why I came in and became the one to deal with all these Chinese in the gangs.'
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