Stranger Things

Oscar-winning Hong Kong art director Tim Yip's new film Love Infinity is a love letter to east London's cultural icons and his creative vision

- Zabrina Lo Portraits

The somewhat bizarre crowd at the premiere of Hong Kong art director Tim Yip's Love Infinity at London's T National Gallery on March 24 almost stole the limelight from his new film. In a grand hall at the London's National Gallery grand hall full of richly coloured Monets and Northern Renaissance art, a London-based artist who goes by the name of Pandemonia walked around in her latex blond wig, face, and pink V-neck dress; fashion blogger Diane Pernet, in her black gown and with a shroud attached to her dark, voluptuous voluminous hair, lurked like a shadow; performance artist Daniel Lismore's chain mail armour, draped over his peach pink robe, rattled beneath his golden headpiece.

"They wouldn't look so strange if they were characters from the paintings, which are full of people in fascinating clothes in their respective eras," says Yip with a laugh over a video call with Tatler a month later. These eccentrically dressed "characters" with their very strong, very individual personalities have one thing in common: they are all part of Yip's two films When the Sun Goes Quiet and Memorandum for the Next Golden Age, collectively known as Love Infinity, documenting east London's history and cultural icons.

Two years in the making, Love Infinity was released on the streaming platform Mubi in March and has been screened in a number of cities including London and a new generation of Londoners questioning capitalism and pondering posthumanism.

"Before Love Infinity, I had a basic understanding of east London. In Hong Kong, cultures like rock and punk feel distant; we do see their influences in Asian places like Japan, but we see them as international trends which we have heard of but may not have a close tie to," he says.