春卷 ｜ Spring Rolls

Spring Rolls is a short film that traces the gestures of care embedded in the act of cooking with Gong Gong. At first glance, the spring roll appears as an ordinary dish, yet within the folds of its wrapper are memories of labour, migration, and familial continuity. The film attends to the tools, textures, and tacit knowledges involved in their making — the cai dao, the filling, the stove — each becoming more than functional implements. They are objects through which a life of experience is transmitted, mediating between past work in the restaurant kitchen and present meals at home.

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The domestic space becomes a stage where heritage is quietly enacted: a spring roll tested in oil to gauge its readiness, another packed carefully for family elsewhere, overfilled ones set aside with discipline born of long practice. These small acts situate food as both sustenance and archive — nourishing the body while carrying the memory of relationships, rituals, and responsibilities.

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As an observational work, Spring Rolls resists narration, allowing meaning to arise through encounter: between Gong Gong and the objects he handles, between filmmaker and subject, and between the audience and their own resonances of food and family. What emerges is a portrait of food as care, as repair, and as architecture of belonging — a choreography of everyday gestures that continues to bind the family together.