Buenos Aires Zero Degree: The Making of Happy Together

“Buenos Aires Zero Degree: The Making Of Happy Together” recreates the four months that director Wong Kar-Wai and his crew spent in Argentina. In August 1996 Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai landed in Argentina, “the other side of the world”, and began scouting for locations. Before shooting started, Wong was lost in a world of foreign languages, with only Tango music in the air he barely recognized.
In early 1998 documentary filmmakers Kwan Pun-Leung and Amos Lee flew to Argentina, to revisit the locations where the film was shot. The 60-minute production captures trivial and soem not-so-trivial moments from the production, from actors Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung taking Tango lessons and sipping coffee in a bar, to behind the scenes smalltalk between Wong Kar-Wai and cinematographer Chris Doyle along with some unseen footage. The filmmakers crosscut reality with fiction, play with chronology, and manage to create unusually intimate moments that would have been difficult to capture during the actual shooting of “Happy Together”. —hkcinemagic