The supervisor of a prestigious secondary school in Hong Kong has hit back at the director and distributor of a controversial coming-of-age documentary, accusing them of “defaming” the integrity of the institution’s principal and placing her in an “unjust position”.
The claims, contained in a letter sent to students of Ying Wa Girls’ School on Monday, mark an escalation in the war of words over a screening of To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self that was planned at an Italian film festival that begins later this month.
The school’s supervisor, Reverend Eric So Shing-yit, wrote it was necessary to clarify the facts of the dispute, even though distributor Golden Scene had already announced the documentary would not be shown at the Far East Film Festival in Udine.
So said the school board had “absolute confidence” in the leadership and integrity of principal Tiffany Chuk Wai-kan, who was earlier accused by director Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting of “blatantly lying” about the arrangement for the screening.
He said Chuk had clearly conveyed to Cheung and a Golden Scene representative in a meeting on February 26 that “the school did not agree to, nor support, any form of screening until the school has obtained the consent of all major participants”.
So accused them of issuing statements that were “inconsistent with the facts”.
