A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: CNCZ - The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1441

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema provides the first comprehensive scholarly exploration of this unique global cinema. By embracing the interdisciplinary approach of contemporary film and cultural studies, this collection navigates theoretical debates while charting a new course for future research in Hong Kong film. * Examines Hong Kong cinema within an interdisciplinary context, drawing connections between media, gender, and Asian studies, Asian regional studies, Chinese language and cultural studies, global studies, and critical theory * Highlights the often contentious debates that shape current thinking about film as a medium and its possible future * Investigates how changing research on gender, the body, and sexual orientation alter the ways in which we analyze sexual difference in Hong Kong cinema * Charts how developments in theories of colonialism, postcolonialism, globalization, neoliberalism, Orientalism, and nationalism transform our understanding of the economics and politics of the Hong Kong film industry * Explores how the concepts of diaspora, nostalgia, exile, and trauma offer opportunities to rethink accepted ways of understanding Hong Kong's popular cinematic genres and stars

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Foreword

Introduction

Part I: Critical Paradigms: Defining Hong Kong Cinema Studies

Part II: Critical Geographies

Part III: The Gendered Body and Queer Configurations

Part IV: Hong Kong Stars

Part V: Narratives and Aesthetics

Part VI: Screen Histories and Documentary Practices

References

Part I: Critical Paradigms

1 Watchful Partners, Hidden Currents

Hong Kong Films and Business in the Chinese Mainland

Appropriation and Reinvention in China

Partnership

Partnership Imaginary and Cultural Memory

Watchful Partners, Hidden Currents

References

2 The Urban Maze

Crisis, Topophilia, and the Emergence of Millennial Films

Crisis Cinema and Its Critical Turns

The Eventful Years After 1997

Topophilia in the Crisis City

Concluding Remarks

References

3 Hong Kong Cinema as Ethnic Borderland

Zone of Transition

North–South Division

Ethnic / Dialect Films

Cold War Politics

Transnationalization and Localization

References

4 Hong Kong Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalization and Mainlandization

Stuck with

Kung fu

and Martial Arts? Hollywood as Proxy of Globalization and the Genre Reification of Hong Kong Cinema

Neoliberalization with Colonial Characteristics: Impact on Hong Kong Film

Mainlandization, the Disquieting Binary Impasse: China or the Rest?

Hong Kong SAR New Wave and the Cinema of Anxiety

References

Commentary

References

Part II: Critical Geographies

5 Hong Kong Cinema’s Exotic Others

Introduction

Regionalizing Hong Kong Cinema

Fractured bodies:

Shinjuku Incident

(Derek Yee, 2009)

Exiled bodies:

After This Our Exile

(Patrick Tam, 2006)

Transformative, Transcendent bodies:

Himalaya Singh

(Wai Ka-fai, 2005)

Conclusion: Re-Imagining the Hong Kong Body

References

For Further Reading

6 Animating the Translocal

From Print to Television Series and Cinema:

My Life as McDull

The Local, Dislocated and Constructed:

McDull Prince de la Bun

CEPA and Delocalization: Hong Kong–China Co-productions

Masquerade and Border Crossing:

McDull Kung Fu Ding Ding Dong

Translocal Hong Kong Subjectivity:

McDull: The Pork of Music

(2012)

McDull’s Visual World: Rhizomes, Psychogeographies, and Topographies

Conclusion

References

7 Globalizing Hong Kong Cinema Through Japan

References

8 Creative Cinematic Geographies Through the Hong Kong International Film Festival

Viewing the West in the East

A Swinging Gate to the East

North and South

Conclusions

References

For Further Reading

9 Postmodernity, Han Normativity, and Hong Kong Cinema

The Legislative vs. the Interpretive

Censorship – the High Priest of Chinese Modernism

Wang Shuo vs. Jin Yong

Hong Kong Cinema – The Postmodern Condition

Vulgaria

: Counteracting Han-Normativity

Conclusion

References

For Further Reading

Commentary

References

Part III: The Gendered Body and Queer Configurations

10 Feminism, Postfeminism, and Hong Kong Women Filmmakers

The Way We Are

Night and Fog

All About Love

Conclusion

References

11 Love In The City

Introduction: Romancing a Sunset Industry

Cinema and Urban Heritage

Love at Work: The Commute and the Smoking Break

Migrant Love: Tales of Two Neighborhoods

All Cut Up: Shooting the Heartbroken City

Conclusion: Love of a Fallen Cinema

References

12 Regulating Queer Domesticity in the Neoliberal Diaspora

Introduction

Chinese Diasporas in the West: Regulating Queer Domestic Spaces

Mainland Diasporas in Hong Kong: The Politics of Mobility Governing Queer Domesticity

In the Chinese–Japanese Diaspora: Migrant Masculinity and Action Cinema

Conclusion

References

Commentary

Part IV: Hong Kong Stars

13 Return of the Dragon

Introduction: Hong Kong’s Velvet Prison

Bruce Lee Then and Now

Bruce Lee Here and There

Bruce Lee, Local Foreigner

Bruce Lee’s Return to/of Hong Kong

The Eternal Return of the Dojo

The Return to/of China

Coda

References

14 Transitional Stardom

Early Developments within the Classical Heroic Tradition

Dismemberment and Heroism

The Star as Director

Modern Times

The Dragon in Winter

References

15 Camp Stars of Androgyny

Leslie Cheung’s Phantasmagoric Stage Attire and Cross-dressing

The Legendary Iridescence and Melodramatic Life of Anita Mui

Conclusion

References

Further Reading

16 Cooling Faye Wong

Star of Coolness

Early Works

Chungking Express

After

Chungking Express

2046

Conclusion

References

Commentary

Toward a Poetics of Performance

References

Part V: Narratives and Aesthetics

17 Making Merry on Time

The Festive Chronotope: (New Year) Cinema-going as an Urban Ritual

Locating Family Comedies from

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World

to

All’s Well, Ends Well

Anachronizing Nostalgia in

The Eagle-shooting Heroes

and

A Chinese Odyssey 2002

Claustrophilic Festivity: Celebrating Cinematic Experience

References

18 A Pan-Asian Cinema of Allusion

A Pan-Asian Cinema of Allusion?

Going Home

and

Zhongyi

Histories

Dumplings

: Medicinal Meals and Cannibal Allegories

Multilingualism, Pan-Asian, and Pan-Chinese Cinema

Conclusion

References

19 Double Agents, Cameos, and the Poor Man’s Orchestra

A Musical Cartography?

“Circle K” Aesthetics

Punned Personas

Memory as Wish Fulfillment

The Poor Man’s Orchestra

Epilogue

References

20 Documenting Sentiments in Video Diaries around 1997

Overview

Diaries of 1997: A Site of Experimentation, Voices of Everyday Life

1997. Whose Story? The Moment? The Time-space of Thick Description

A (post-)phenomenological Study of Pictures of Minds and Sentiments: The Narratorial and Descriptive “I”

Belly Buttons, Absent Cameras, Moving House, Fooling around: Sentiments Performing Moral Reasoning in Five Video Diaries…

Performed, Enacted Sentiments for 1997 Forming a Contingent Field of Cultural Production

References

Commentary

Space-Time/Genre

Nostalgia/Geography

Reception/Audience

Performance/Affect

Conclusion

References

Part VI: Screen Histories and Documentary Practices

21 The Lightness of History

The Burden of History

Grappling with Lightness: Peripheral Visions

Imagined Modernity Re-considered: Wong Kar-wai’s 1960s

The Politics of Collective Memory and the “Local Heritage Film”

From the City to the Great Society: Counter-thought in

Datong

References

22 The Tales of Fang Peilin and Zhu Shilin

Introduction: A Brief Review of Studies and Research at Hong Kong Film Archive

Fang Peilin: The Legacy of His Musicals

Zhu Shilin: Escapist Filmmaking within the Confines of Harsh Reality

Concluding Remarks

References and Related Publications

23 The Documentary Film in Hong Kong

Introduction

From Edison to the Cultural Revolution: The Earlier Film Period (1896–1960s)

The Postwar Period: From Colonial Film-making (The Hong Kong Film Unit, 1958–1969) to TV Documentaries (1970s onwards)

Aesthetics and Radicalism: The Independent Documentary Film in Hong Kong (1970–2008)

Augmentation and Heterogeneity: Documentaries of the Last 15 years

Conclusion: the Future of Documentary Film in Hong Kong, China, and the Region

References

Further Reading

24 Representations of Law in Hong Kong Cinema

Bodily Evidence and Legal Time

The Temporality of Legal Precedent

References

Commentary

References

Filmography

Music Video

Television

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 01

Table 1.1 Hong Kong Directors’ Co-production Films in China (2003–2013)

Chapter 04

Table 4.1 The box office of three films

Chapter 20

Table 20.1 Group 1 – Works from HKAC’s “Hong Kong in Transition” or IFVA 1998

Table 20.2 Group 2 – Works from “Digital Biography of Hong Kong 1997,” Programs I & II, 22nd HKIFF

Table 20.3

Moving Home

– the nine defined events in 1997

List of Illustrations

Chapter 01

Figure 1.1 Citation of Hong Kong film in

Still Life

(Jia Zhangke, 2006), an independent production.

Figure 1.2

American Dreams in China

(Peter Chan, 2013): A returnee (Peter Chan and Hong Kong?) getting trimmed in a partnership ritual.

Figure 1.3

Drug War

(Johnnie To, 2012) has an allegorical image of an involuntary partnership of death.

Chapter 04

Figure 4.1 The vengeful teenage twin ghosts in the mirror in

Rigor Mortis

(Juno Mak, 2013). Although they are twins, only one is caught in the mirror, but the mirroring forces them out of Chin’s body, exposing their doubleness, their duplicity.

Figure 4.2 Spectral Chinese forces towering over Hong Kong people, colonizing, haunting their entire living space in

Rigor Mortis

(Juno Mak, 2013).

Chapter 06

Figure 6.1 A topographical moment in

McDull, Prince de la bun

(Yuen Toe, 2004): As McDull and his mother walk through the Tai Kok Tsui neighborhood, a “redeveloped” housing block collapses into a cubist heap.

Figure 6.2 Time and space are magically compressed in this scene from

McDull, Prince de la bun

(Yuen Toe, 2004), as McDull’s father emerges from an alley to find himself in a photorealistic street scene of Hong Kong in the 1960s.

Chapter 07

Figure 7.1 The feature story about

Miss Kikuko

(Yan Jun, 1956) in

International Screen

boasts of the manner in which the Hong Kong cast, especially Linda Lin Dai, became “thoroughly Nipponised” for the production.

Figure 7.2 An expensive hairpin becomes the agent of fate that sets the action in motion in Hideo Gosha’s

Three Outlaw Samurai

(1964).

Figure 7.3 The hairpin motif is repeated in Chang Cheh’s

The Magnificent Trio

almost exactly as it is used in the Japanese original (1966).

Chapter 09

Figure 9.1 Chapman To (right) plays To Wai-cheung, a down-on-his-luck Hong Kong producer, who seeks backing from Brother Ty, played by Ronald Cheng Chung-kei, a

nouveau riche

PRC gangster with outré taste in sex and food in

Vulgaria

Figure 9.2 Siu Yam-yam (second from left), Hong Kong’s porn screen diva in the 1970s and 1980s, playing herself in

Vulgaria

Figure 9.3 Questionable sexuality – the mule bride in

Vulgaria

Chapter 10

Figure 10.1 Still flashbacks showing women working in Hong Kong’s textile factories and sweatshops.

Figure 10.2 Ling begging an insensitive policeman to accompany her to confront her husband and retrieve her daughters, while he dismisses the case as just “a lovers’ quarrel.”

Figure 10.3 Macy joining a conversation at a bar. Hui included well-known faces within the lesbian community in Hong Kong in the scene.

Figure 10.4 Rare sight in Hong Kong commercial cinema in which women are shown engaging in street demonstrations, fighting for their rights.

Chapter 11

Figure 11.1 Jimmy and Cherie in

Love in a Puff

Figure 11.2 Oi Lin and Loy in

Crossing Hennessy

Figure 11.3 Flora and Joe in

Break Up Club

Chapter 18

Figure 18.1 In

Going Home

(Peter Chan, 2002), the newly dead come to the photographer's studio to have their portraits taken before moving on.

Figure 18.2 The glass door of the photographer's studio is transparent when seen from the interior. However, our view of the same door is obstructed when viewed from the exterior.

Figure 18.3 The only shots of Hai’er (Eugenia Yuan) speaking are of her reflections in mirrors or her recorded image on videotape.

Figure 18.4 The mainland

zhongyi

doctors’ anachronistic costume is reminiscent of the desexualized clothing of the Maoist era.

Figure 18.5 The policeman, Wai (Eric Tsang) watches Hai'er’s video letter to her husband, recorded between 1997 and 1999.

Figure 18.6 Aunt Mei (Bai Ling) eats raw dumpling meat in

Dumplings

(Fruit Chan, 2004).

Figure 18.7 Visual allusions to Maoist-era figures among Aunt Mei's eclectic collection of knickknacks: on the left, a female “barefoot doctor,” and Chairman Mao Zedong; on the right, a peasant woman wearing a Red Guard armband.

Figure 18.8 Though Aunt Mei looks like a woman in her thirties, too young to have experienced the Cultural Revolution firsthand, a photograph taken in 1960, when she was 20 years old, reveals that Mei is actually 64 years old in the narrative present.

Figure 18.9 A shot of Aunt Mei beside her sideboard, prominently featuring the figurines of Chairman Mao, a female “barefoot doctor,” and a female Red Guard.

Figure 18.10 Establishing shots of Aunt Mei's tenement read as a visual pun, since “fourth floor” is a homophone for “death floor” in spoken Chinese.

Chapter 19

Figure 19.1

Chungking Express

Figure 19.2

Chungking Express

Figure 19.3 The California bar…today

Figure 19.4 Brigitte Lin in the Chungking Mansions

Chapter 20

Figure 20.1 A timeline of the public discourse on Hong Kong’s handover.

Figure 20.2 The thought-path of

The Unforgettables

(a.k.a. 97 Tons of Memories).

Guide

Cover

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Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas

The Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas showcase the rich film heritages of various countries across the globe. Each volume sets the agenda for what is now known as world cinema whilst challenging Hollywood’s lock on the popular and scholarly imagination. Whether exploring Spanish, German or Chinese film, or the broader traditions of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and Latin America the 20–25 newly commissioned essays comprising each volume include coverage of the dominant themes of canonical, controversial, and contemporary films; stars, directors, and writers; key influences; reception; and historiography and scholarship. Written in a sophisticated and authoritative style by leading experts they will appeal to an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

Published:

A Companion to German Cinema, edited by Terri Ginsberg & Andrea Mensch

A Companion to Chinese Cinema, edited by Yingjin Zhang

A Companion to East European Cinemas, edited by Anikó Imre

A Companion to Spanish Cinema, edited by Jo Labanyi & Tatjana Pavlović

A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, edited by Raphaëlle Moine, Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox & Michel Marie

A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau

A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema

Edited by

Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau

This edition first published 2015© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to Hong Kong cinema / edited by Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C.M. Yau.      pages   cm   Includes bibliographical references and index.   Includes filmography.   ISBN 978-0-470-65928-1 (cloth)1. Motion pictures   China–Hong Kong–History and criticism.   2. Documentary films–China–Hong Kong–History and criticism.   I. Cheung, Esther M.K., editor.   II. Marchetti, Gina, editor.   III. Yau, Ching-Mei Esther, editor.   PN1993.5.H6C88 2015   791.43095125–dc23        2015004135

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Scene from 2046, directed by Wong Kar-Wai, 2004. Photo: Columbia / Block 2 / Jet Tone Films / The Kobal Collection / Shya, Wing

Dr. Esther Mee-kwan Cheung, a pioneering figure in the field of Hong Kong studies and an important force in research on Hong Kong film, literature, and cultural studies passed away on February 9, 2015.

This volume is dedicated to her memory.

Esther Cheung was actively involved in the editing of A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema from the very outset and remained an indispensable member of the editorial team. She wrote an important essay for Part I, “Critical Paradigms,” and took up the editorial work for the same part as well as for Part V, “Narratives and Aesthetics.”

Many months of editorial coordination and checking received assistant support through Esther Cheung’s generous sharing of research funds.

The volume has been enriched by Esther’s intellectual presence, wisdom, attentiveness, and generosity.

Acknowledgments

The editors thank the contributors and the commentators for their excellent work and their patience. We thank all those who helped to make this book possible: Jayne Fargnoli, and Julia Kirk of Wiley-Blackwell for their continuous support throughout this process. Luna Ngai has generously offered her expert help in collating the material, formatting the chapters, compiling the filmography, and keeping us all on schedule. We also wish to thank Man Man (Kasey) Wong, Sonya Wong, and Natalie Wong for their help at various stages of the production of this book.

Research support for portions of this volume come from General Research Fund (GRF) grants. Research for Parts I and V as well as Esther M.K. Cheung’s chapter in Part I was funded by the General Research Fund entitled “Creativity, Crisis and Everyday Life: Studies of Hong Kong Urban Cultural Texts” (HKU 743110H).

Research for sections of Esther C.M. Yau’s chapter was funded by the General Research Fund for the project entitled “Transformative Witnessing and Everyday Ethics: A Study of Cultural Memory in Chinese Films and Public Discourse.”

Research for Gina Marchetti’s chapter was funded by the General Research Fund for the project entitled, “Hong Kong Women Filmmakers: Sex, Politics and Cinema Aesthetics, 1997–2010.”