Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 105

The Hartford Courani Part Jan. 25, 1970; i Courant Photos By Robert F- Murphy Sleepy brother shares the shade with sister in a rice paddy area on the mainly agricultural mainland peninsula in Hong Kong. Potpourri of People chants on a business trip into Communist China, didn't break their conversation as the train stopped at Sheung Shui, a rail checkpoint before Red China. But they did dip into their pockets and each took buf a button which he affixed to his coat lapel. The buttons bore likenesses of Mao Tse-tung and wearing them was some iorm of insurance up the line.

It's sure that the merchants didn't think they were compromising their brand o5 capitalism by wearing the buttons. They were just accepting "a fact of And that's how.it is in this British colony on the South China Sea. From the window of a Trans World. Airline jet, Hong Kong has a pasty-face, a complexion caused by clusters of square, concrete-gray buildings that congregate on mountain slopes. Most of them are apartment houses On the ground the complexion is softened by the city's bustle andi commercial bazars.

At night the impression is completely lost in a steady blaze of neon. Neon lights don't flicker or flash in Hong Kong for safety reasons. The only flashing 'lights are navigational signals to air and sea traffic. Despite a population of mors than 3 million, Hong, Kong -is well-kept; You're sure to notice the absence of sea gulls They the Chinese never By ROBERT F. MURPHY Staff Writer HONG KONG In Hartford, a girl like Suzie Wong would have been ostracized.

Here, she has become a folk heroine. Pert hostesses on tourist buses delight in telling visitors passing the waterfront-Luk Kwok Hotel that that is where Richard Mason found his inspiration for his book, "The World of Suzie Wong." Suzie's life in the Wanchai tenderloin has become legend and if others have seen fit to strut in her footprints, the young tour guides see the situation "as a fact of life." That attitude carries over to ether life-styles. The two elderly Chinese mer take a ferry to Kowloon and go into the New Territories. Watch a farmer, following a plow pulled by a water visit the 600-year-old walled-city of the Hakka peasants, andgo up to the overlook at Lo Wu and gawk at Red China. You'll be about 50 feet from the barbed-, wire border.

Also there are good picture possibilities among the has, the Nepal soldiers, that make up the British garrison here. The Gurkhas have a battle history that pales that of the U.S. Marines. The geography of, Hong Kong is complex in a political sense. Hong Kong, an island, some-! times called Victoria, was taken over by the British in 1843.

It is 10 miles long and, 30 miles wide. The other part of it, the New Territories, which includes is a five-minute ferry ride across the harbor. It covers 355 square The British have permanent possession of Hong Kong itself, but have a lease on the New Territories which is up in 1997. Should be of no concern to you. However, if you must get in- volved politically, try the Peace Book Store at 83 Queen's Road in Victoria.

The Red Chinese have two department stores and this book shop in Hong Kong. At the book store buy a copy of -Mao's latest thoughts and try paying for it with U.S. money. The reaction will be what the Chinese consider "a fact of life." Free Travel Show The Pacific the charm, of the South Seas, the under lands" and the mysterious Orient will all be explored during The Courant-ATA travel film program. You are all invited.

It's free at 8 p.m. Feb. 6 at Hartford Public High School. Details on page 3 of this section. waste anything, so there is nothing for the gulls and they nest elsewhere.

How and where to swing" here is a personal matter. If you come with a shopping, bag, this is toyland. You name-it. Transistor radios, pearls' cameras, typewriters, stereo equipment; it's all here, and at prices sometimes 40 per! cent below the U.S. market This place is loaded with tailors.

A suit they promise in 24 hours, but give them three days for your sake. And a word for fatties, They do a nice job of embroi- dering your name, on the inside pocket of a jacket; but stateside tailors don't like their Hong Kong counterparts. It has something to do with prices. So check the sleeves before you leave. Back home, Sam- around-the-corner will get a ot of laughs making alterations on a Hong Kong-tailored suit Eating.

Naturally you can find every style of Chinese cooking and it might surprise you to know there are several. It; is a provincial sort of thing 1 and China is loaded with provinces. For those who find that a little bit of Chinese cooking goes a long way, the buffets at Repulse Bay Hotel and the Peninsula are recommended. They com-' bine the best of Western; and Oriental menus. 1 A sailor in a Wanchai bar had ibest advice for nightlife.

The --Hong-Kong Hilton" is the British that's "where the! action is" he said. We are staying there and he is right. But the best sport here is the a for coming: People watching. In downtown Hong Kong, -the Chinese are their usual phlegmatic selves. All in a hurry.

So With his catch of fish drying in the sun be- Hong Kong. It is hind him, this youngster takes a minute away Kong, sometimes from the teeming crowds of the More than' Territories on the three million people, 99 per cent Chinese, live in made up of the island of Hong called Victoria and the New mainland, A family fishing boat glides across Tictorla square, concrete-gray Harbor. In the background is the pasty-face of one of the three the city a complexion caused by the clusters of world. greatest Everything but the Woodstock buildings. Hong Kong has natural harbors of the Mud the film's creators developing, a film format that conveys the message in the music without being just another film documentary." Those people who have seen a preview of the film, have com- pared its' spellbinding effect to the first films of railroad trains which caused countless turn-of-the-century moviegoers to run from the theaters screaming be-Z1 cause the movement of the locomotives seemed only too real.

in by the rains, floods and other phenomena that affected the "live" Woodstock. The picture will be released by Warner-Bros. in the spring. The two young men primarily responsible for making this possible, Producer Bob Maurice and Director Michael Wadleigh, promise that "the audience will get everything that was in the real Woodstock, except the mud." One of the major concerns of Captured 1969, is no longer; the exclusive property of the close to one half million post-. World War II babies who made it happen.

Now there is a Woodstock for everybody; the young whose parents wouldn't let them go, the old who couldn't go, and all these in between who didn't think of going. Through the medium of film, the spirit of Woodstock will be" brought into neighborhood movie houses where millions will watch the spectacle undaunted iinnniriL.iiyu.-i jig i li sl -i V. rc inafw lii wist: ilk plli llllll Jill i 1 fciiliisil fejojjaajjjl lrrWMIwmfrTl 1ft mill and bushy black hair askew, reflects the intent expression of a man who has studied, among other things, psychology, philosophy, linguistics and comparative religion. Mike moves with the grace and speed of a choreographer as he. molds the shape and form of the film.

Both men surrounded themselves with a team of workers who could be counted on "to fend for themselves when the going got rough." Every foreseeable problem was met with a "foreseen" solution. Still, the unexpected happened. On Thursday, the day before the festival was to begin, half the film needed for. the shooting was. still in A series of airline blunders followed, and the shipment which was to have gone from Chicago to JFK to La Gtiardia, was mis-, routed to Rochester to Liberty, N.Y.

One nervous cameraman still recalls the welcome sight of "an outwardly undaunted Bob Maurice," who, on his way to rescue the missing film, "stepped off -the ground and onto the waiting helicopter he had rented for just such an emergency." At times, even the expected caused unexpected results. With 76 continuous hours of musical history to record, everyone was "prepared" for the fatigue that would come-They armed themselves, with B-. shots, coffee galore and their own ergy and enthusiasm for the subject. Even so, their self- styled work marathon produced funny results. On the second, evening of the Festival, Wadleigh, who had been photographing performers on stage for more than 40 hours, hunched over his Arriflex in a pose not unfamiliar to those who had watched him film.

His assistant first surmised that something was wrong when, after the performers had -left the stage, Mike had not -moved. It seems he had fallen asleep, camera and all. Another viewer, remembering back to his childhood compares the Maurice-Wadleigh brainchild to the impact of 3-D films, "only without the hokum of paper glasses." The immense undertaking of the Woodstock film seems even more incredible when you consider that it was begun before anyone rknew how the Festival would be received. Relying on their own creative imaginations, and a list of performers that reads like. -a who's who of the folk-rock music world, Bob and Mike got the project underway.

Together they invested some $80,000 of their own money, and borrowed an additional $40,000 to cover the initial cost pur-. chasing film and equipment to shoot. Over 120 hours of color footage was used. Aside from the raw film stock, more than half a million dollars worth of equipment had to be purchased or rented, insured, inspected and shipped to Woodstock in time to reach the 40 young men and women who formed the six camera crews. This is one area in which Director Wadleigh left nothing to chance.

The people he chose to work with him represent the finest young filmmakers across the country. Two, who served as assistant are Marty "Scorsese and. Thelma- Shoon-maker. Scorsese distinguished himself at the age of 24, when he won the "Prix del Age d'Or" at the Belgium Film Festival. Miss Shoonmaker recently served as both editor and assistant director on the widely acclaimed screen adaptation of "Finnegan's Wake." Maurice and Wadleigh bear not even the slightest resemblance to the tyrannical producers and directors of -a bygone era of filmmaking.

Mike is a long haired, fine-boned young men, who once studied to be a brain surgeon at Columbia University's Medical School. Bob, a symboljfor Jiis generation, with, granny' glasses -11 5 DIRECTOR Michael Wadleigh makes his feature-film debut tui "WoodstocK" wtucn boo Maurice proaucea tor vvarner Bros.i rlmimg the three-day Woodstock Festival was a test of endur-j HALF A MILLION young people gathered at the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, N.Y. made sociological as well as musical history last sum mer. The spirit of the mass music love-in is captured in "Woodstock," scheduled for release this spring. W1W HUU 1 1 1 "rf 41 6 i.