Hong Kong cinema is merging into the larger Chinese cinema, gaining strength and at thesame time losing its own identity.
Hong Kong cinema used to be one of the three largest in the whole world, ranking behind onlyHollywood and Bollywood in productivity. In absolute terms, mind you. Per capita, it could wellhave been larger than every film industry on the face of Earth.
Like all industries, Hong Kong's goes through business cycles. When I got hooked on HongKong movies in the late 1980s - in San Francisco's Chinatown no less, the industry wasgrowing into the apex. A Better Tomorrow (1986) by John Woo whipped up a frenzy amongmovie fans, even in that small Chinese enclave in the city by the bay. An Autumn's Tale (1987),a sweet story about Chinese diaspora in New York's Chinatown, found a long queue snakinginto the neighboring Italian community for its midnight premiere. "Women are trouble", ChowYun-fat's chauvinistic putdown that disguises his affection for the female lead, turned into acatchphrase as he pronounced "trouble" in broken English, effectively changing it to "Womenare teapots".
The die-hard fan base of Hong Kong cinema in the Chinese mainland did not get their informaleducation from Chinatown screenings as I did. They got it from round-the-clock video shows indilapidated halls in county towns across the country. The exposure was both intensive andextensive, cramming decades of movie watching into just a few years.
By the 1990s, many of Hong Kong's movies were shot on themainland, using the country's larger and cheaper pool of laborand vast choice of locations. Nominally these were co-productions, but the mainland partners chipped in nothing butthe licenses, which only State-owned studios possessed at thetime. Movies like A Chinese Odyssey (1995) were purely HongKong-made in the creative sense.
But the Stephen Chow spoof of the Monkey King story did notbecome a viral hit until mainland college students startedwatching it on pirated discs and squeezed subversive interpretations out of it. People viewed itwith such religious fervor that many lines turned into code words among the young generation.
Throughout the 1990s, however, the Hong Kong film industry was in a nosedive, hitting its nadirin 2003 when the epidemic SARS struck the Special Administrative Region. Partly as a result ofthis disaster and pleas from the industry and the Hong Kong government, the centralgovernment included Hong Kong's film industry in its package of economic incentives, officiallyknown as Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, or CEPA for short.
Under the new policy, Hong Kong films are no longer categorized as imports and therefore notbound by the quota (20 films a year at that time and now expanded to 34). As domesticproductions, they are subject to the same level of censorship for content.
Nevertheless, censorship poses only half the problem, the other being Hong Kong filmmakerspandering to the mainland audience. The unique sensitivity implicit in many Hong Kong filmswas thought to be part of the local culture, understood by only those who share the Cantonesedialect and could not travel beyond the Pearl River Delta. It was given up for an embrace of thelarger market.
Hong Kong filmmakers became highly employable in the early CEPA years, but a trulyintegrated cinema did not emerge for a long time. A mainland film, such as World WithoutThieves, may cast a Hong Kong superstar (Andy Lau in this case), but it essentially remains amainland work. On the other hand, Hong Kong movies give more and more token roles tomainland actors. Squabbles on movie sets between the two sides occasionally surfaced in thepress, a result of conflicting work styles and work ethics.
Hong Kong film artists began to feel the constraints embedded in the enlarged market.Gangster and horror movies, two genres that are known for their easy return on investmentsand serve as training for new talents, are off-limit because they usually fall into the realm of theforbidden. Trickier than genres are certain details that may run foul with censors.
Being shrewd businessmen, Hong Kong filmmakers are quick to gauge the regulatoryenvironment and rarely complain in the name of artistic expression. Peter Chan's Warlords(2007) was supposed to be a remake of Blood Brothers (1973), but that would associate it withthe real-life assassination of a Qing Dynasty official and, for reasons nobody could explain,would be irksome to some in power. So, the story was further fictionalized.
By 2008, when Painted Skin was released, it was hard to distinguish the origin of a Chinese-language movie. Gordon Chan's ghost story was based on a literary classic, thus tiptoeingaround the no-superstition rules. The unified vision behind the period drama transcends anylocal limitations, and the fact that the director is from Hong Kong seemed to be irrelevant. Well,the sequel, which is coming out soon, is helmed by Wuershan, a newcomer from the mainland.
Still, there are lingering questions why Hong Kong films tick. Amidst the rush to gain a big sliceof market share, the cinematic charm of Hong Kong is lost - until someone again tellsquintessential Hong Kong stories and inadvertently stumbles into broader appreciation. AnnHui's The Way We Are (2008) and Alex Law's Echoes of the Rainbow (2010) did not attempt tobreak into the mainland market, yet the ordinary lives of people in Hong Kong, as depicted inthese small art-house movies, resonated with a vast swath of mainlanders.
Besides, a few Hong Kong filmmakers have stayed behind to preserve their artistic vision - orout of necessity. Johnnie To, known for his gangster films rich in political overtones, has so farresisted toning down his trademark violence and innuendos to crack the market to the north.Others have found a new niche in genres too hot for the mainland to touch. The erotic genremay see a small revival after 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011) attracted hordes ofmainland tourists who made catching the self-claimed, highly lifelike rendering of sex scenes,an essential part of their Hong Kong tour.
Other taboo genres that flourish only in Hong Kong include openly and graphically homosexualstories such as Amphetamine (2010) and Permanent Residence (2009).
For those who understand spoken Chinese, one sign whether a film is a Hong Kong picture ora broader Chinese one is the dialogue. If something interesting is lost when viewed inMandarin, this could mean the film is Hong Kong-made, even though it may be shot entirely inBeijing or Shanghai. Pang Ho-Cheung's Love in a Puff (2010) and its sequel Love in the Buff(2012) deal with a couple of youngsters from Hong Kong who fall in love during cigarettebreaks and later migrate to Beijing. Instead of searching for commonalities that underpin mosturban romances, Pang uses local differences as a palette to color his on-again off-again loveaffair. The side plot of a plain Jane from Hong Kong ending up with a mainland prince charmingis simply and subversively hilarious. The story could also be taken as a parable for the evolvingHK-mainland relationship, as many HK pictures subtly imply.
As more Hong Kong filmmakers make their home in Beijing, Hong Kong as a film capital of theEast has ceased to exist. Its expertise and resources have injected Chinese cinema as a wholewith much professionalism and vitality. Beijing is now indisputably the center of Chinese-language filmmaking, but Hong Kong may retain its status as a stronghold of innovation andtolerance, cinematic or otherwise.
Contact the writer at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn.
Actress Shu Qi releases her new photoshoot in black lace skirt
It looks actress Shu Qi has walked out of the shadow of being assaulted by Chinese netizens who dug out her old nuuuude photos and spread online after she got herself involved in the battle between two Kong Fu action stars Donnie Yen and Vincent Zhao.
According to Tencent Entertainment, Shu Qi recently had a new photoshoot released. Dressed in black lace skirt, she is still sunny and attractive.
The then softcore actress was seen weeping at a public park in Hong Kong last time, following after she deleted all posts on her Sina Weibo account for vicious attack from netizens.
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