Lamma My Island
Synopsis
Welcome
to the greatest little place that’s not
world famous!
In Lamma My Island
, film-director
Alba
Rayton discovers a surprising paradise just
a
half-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong’s bustling
urban
core. She takes delight in revealing the
remarkable
traits of this little-known place with
its
laid-back lifestyle and nearly no motor
vehicles,
where dogs and people live in harmony,
and
time moves more slowly. Welcome to Lamma
Island!
You’ll be glad to visit and may want to
stay a long time.
Alba I. Rayton --- Lamma
My Island
From my earliest memories, I
always wanted to be a film director, but in those days, the ambition remained an
unreachable dream. Instead I studied and pursued drama, even directing and
appearing in various university productions.
As a teenager living in a small Puerto Rican town, I’d become fascinated with art
film. On weekends, my elder sister and I attended screenings at the University
of Puerto Rico. To this day, I vividly remember Federico Fellini’s Nights of
Cabiria (1957), dealing with a prostitute’s failed attempts to find love,
her suffering and rejections.
On my 60th
birthday, I attended a Hong Kong workshop called “Find Your Passion”, where my
childhood dream flared again. Realizing that statistically I had a limited
number of days left to live, I threw everything into my endeavor and joined the
Hong Kong International Film Academy as its oldest student.
Recently I finished a short documentary,
Lamma My Island, after falling in love with an unusual place and its lifestyle
that quickly solved the search for a special, quiet place to retire with my
husband. Happily, this special place turns out to be just a 30-minute ferry
ride from Hong Kong, a vibrant and exciting city.
We moved to Lamma, a little-known island that appeals to people from
everywhere. Then I started a mission to write and direct a film to share the
secrets of Lamma’s “magic”.
Earlier in Masks, my previous
short film, I endeavored to demonstrate two sides of the impact and pains of
abandonment. My leading characters must balance powerful feelings and fears of isolation
with their hopes and urges to love and trust again. This film explores a vicious
circle of desires for love and acceptance mixed with haunting fears of more abandonment.
Always, I continue to favor the “art film” genre
because I want to stimulate while making my work unpredictable and thought-provoking.
I try to keep my audiences in an ambiguous dilemma, never sure what’s next and
forced to fill in gaps as they wish depending on their values or life philosophies.