AllMovie

A poor film projectionist witnesses forty years of Hong Kong history in this socially themed family melodrama starring acclaimed Hong Kong character Anthony Wong. Idealistic leftist Zuo Kong (Wong) has been threading the projector since the 1960s, and from the riots of those early years through the prosperity of the 1970s, the growth of the 1980s, and the tensions of the 1990s, there's little he hasn't seen from his cramped perch behind the bulb. A modest family man whose political beliefs at times seem in direct conflict with his home life, Kong struggles to remain a loving husband and a good father as he gradually shrinks away from doctrinaire idealism.