Hong Kong is set to unveil an innovative, cross-disciplinary showcase of both architecture and film at this year’s Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition, which opens this weekend, June 7.

For the first time, “Fundamentally Hong Kong? Delta Four 1984-2044” will look at how certain structural, geographical, emotional, and psychological conditions endemic to one of the world’s densest urban conurbations are explored through the work of four emerging filmmakers (Heiward Mak Hei-yan, Wong Siu-pong, Ng Ho-yin, and Tsim Ho-tat) and eight architects and planners.

Chronologically, the exhibition situates itself at the juncture between the past three decades when Canton (Guangzhou) opened itself up to the world, establishing Special Economic Zones like Shenzhen and Zhuhai on what used to be little more than swampland, and the next thirty years, which promise to propel this part of southern China even higher into China’s economic firmament.

“Delta Four” will showcase four short films that give a humanistic spin to one of the world’s most dramatic demographic shifts as it plays out against a story of mass urban redevelopment, internal migration, and nomadic, mobile labor. Also put into poignant relief in these films is the issue of land scarcity that extends with no small measure of sardonic humor into the afterlife, with families having to struggle to secure a “high-rise” plot in a columbarium for their deceased loved ones.

Featured architectural projects span the entire gamut from a proposed makeover of Kowloon Station into a “Transport Super City” to innovative and sustainable public housing projects, crematoria and columbaria, as well as “modern farmland” developments in suburban Guangzhou.

This is not the first time that Canton has been comprehensively explored in Venice as a strongly autonomous economic and cultural force to be reckoned with. At the Venice Biennale 2003, internationally renowned curator Hou Hanru presented “Z.O.U. — Zone of Urgency,” a collective project centered around a group of Cantonese artists, where he attempted to depict Guangdong province and the Pearl River Delta as looming presences in the global imaginary: an exemplary, real-life laboratory for urban experimentation, redevelopment in hyper-drive, and what Rem Koolhaas — curator of this year’s Venice Biennale — has himself described as “an unprecedented system of efficiency.”

“Fundamentally Hong Kong? Delta Four 1984-2044” is located opposite the main entrance of the Arsenale, Campo della Tana, Castello 2126.