Hong Kong's New Indie Cinema (East Asian Popular Culture) 3031257669, 9783031257667

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EAST ASIAN POPULAR CULTURE

Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema Ruby Cheung

East Asian Popular Culture

Series Editors Yasue Kuwahara, Department of Communication, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY, USA John A. Lent, International Journal of Comic Art, Drexel Hill, PA, USA

This series focuses on the study of popular culture in East Asia (referring to China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan) in order to meet a growing interest in the subject among students as well as scholars of various disciplines. The series examines cultural production in East Asian countries, both individually and collectively, as its popularity extends beyond the region. It continues the scholarly discourse on the recent prominence of East Asian popular culture as well as the give and take between Eastern and Western cultures.

Ruby Cheung

Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema

Ruby Cheung Department of Film Studies University of Southampton Southampton, UK

ISSN 2634-5935 ISSN 2634-5943 (electronic) East Asian Popular Culture ISBN 978-3-031-25766-7 ISBN 978-3-031-25767-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credits: © Ruby Cheung 2023 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For My Families in Hong Kong and the UK

Acknowledgements

This book has not come along easily through the COVID-19 pandemic. Lives have changed their trajectories completely; our ways of understanding what really matters to us have also been permanently transformed. The idea for this research project first arose from casual conversations with colleagues and friends who had engaged actively in independent filmmaking in Hong Kong, including my late friend Cheung Tit-leung, Teresa Kwong, Matthew Torne and S. Louisa Wei. I benefited enormously from watching world documentaries at several annual editions of the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival and from discussions with independent filmmakers there in between screenings. I thank the festival organizers and programme advisors for those thought-provoking programmes; in particular: Thomas Gerstenmeyer, Chris Harris and Diana Quick. Special thanks go to my dear friends, Tim Bergfelder, Patricia Chan, Lucy Mazdon and Ronald Wan, for being there for me. My colleagues in the Film Department at the University of Southampton, UK have helped me keep my chin up in times of difficulties. I thank them all for their professional support and collegiality. This book would not have been possible without Camille Davies, Senior Editor, Cultural Studies at Palgrave Macmillan, who first showed interest in the topic, and her ongoing editorial advice. I am indebted to the series editors of East Asian Popular Culture for their positive response to my project, as well as to the constructive comments and

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suggestions that came from anonymous reviewers during the peer review process. Shreenidhi Natarajan, Project Coordinator of Books Production at Springer Nature, has been very helpful in advising me on the technical details of putting this book together. I thank Vladimir Vladov for his helpful language use suggestions over the years. My families in Hong Kong and the UK have always been my strongest support. I would not have been where I am now without them: Terence, Vivian, Aunt Helen, Father, Ava, Constance, Nina and Lynn. Most importantly, my eternal gratitude goes to Mama and Thomas.

Notes on Romanization, Names, Films’ Information and Research Ethics

This book follows two Romanization systems. While the pinyin system is used according to the usual practice in Chinese-language film studies in the English-speaking world, Cantonese names and terms are Romanized in the way traditional for Hong Kong since the British colonial period. Names are presented in their widely known forms, e.g., the names of individuals originating from mainland China are presented in pinyin, with surnames coming first, followed by given names. Persons hailing from Hong Kong who do not anglicize their names, are referred to in Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization, with surnames first, followed by hyphenated given names. The anglicized forms of names are used if the persons are better known by those than by their Chinese names. Other East Asian names in Romanization are presented in the ways traditional for their original scripts, e.g., with surname first, followed by given name in Japanese name, Miike Takashi. Authors with East Asian names are, however, cited by the exact ways their names are found in their publications, e.g., Ran Ma (instead of Ma Ran in the name’s Chinese original in pinyin). In the body text of this book, individuals sharing the same surnames as that of the others mentioned are always referred to by their full names, e.g., Fruit Chan. Those who do not share surnames with the others mentioned in the body text of this book are referred to by their surnames only, after the first appearances of their full names in the body text of each chapter. Sometimes, for clarity purpose, full names of these cases are still

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given after their first appearances in the same chapter. In the notes, when authors sharing the same surnames as that of the other authors quoted in this book are cited more than once, in each chapter their abbreviated given names are added to their surnames in the shortened citations, after the first citations of their full names in each chapter, e.g., Chan C.-w. to stand for Chan Ching-wai. Film titles are italicized. At their first mentions in each chapter, they are referred to in their English versions in the body text and in the notes. Only the first mention in each chapter is accompanied by information, in parentheses, about director’s name, the place(s) of origin of the film, and the film’s first release year. Such information is based on that listed on IMDb.com, and is not given if mentioned in the body text/notes nearby. With regard to research ethics clearance, the research conducted for this book did not include any human participants or previous human participants amassed on social media (University of Southampton, UK, ERGO II Submission ID: 64217.A1). For information collected from online sources, only that published publicly, as well as the information published on official websites and official Facebook pages related to films and organizations, is referred to. The citations of such information are accompanied by the dates of my access and information post dates, when the latter are available. In particular, the research carried out for Chapter 6, regarding the distribution and exhibition of films, did not require a research ethics review, as no human participants were involved in the research activities (confirmed via email, dated 22 March 2021, by Fiona Woollard, the then Chair of the Faculty Research Ethics Committee, Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Southampton, UK).

Contents

1

Introduction: Hong Kong’s Indie Films of the 2010s and Film Independence

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2

The Fabric of 2010s Hong Kong Film Industry

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3

Creative Labour

85

4

Subject Matter

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The Use of Language

147

6

Distribution and Exhibition

179

7

Conclusion: A New Start or an Endgame?

209

Bibliography

213

Filmography

239

Index

243

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About the Author

Ruby Cheung is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Southampton, UK, where she leads international film industry studies at undergraduate, postgraduate (taught) and PhD levels. Ruby is an internationally recognized specialist in the study of contemporary Hong Kong cinema, Chinese-language film industries, as well as film festivals. She is the author of New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia (2016), and the main editor/co-editor of six other books.

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Abbreviations

China-Related CEPA CFGC PRC

Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement China Film Group Corporation People’s Republic of China

Europe and the Rest of the West-Related Berlin IFF EFM JIDFF Vancouver IFF

Berlin International Film Festival European Film Market Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival Vancouver International Film Festival

Hong Kong-Related ATV CEDB CEPA CITB CreateHK FFFI FILMART Fresh Wave ISFF HEIG HKAC

Asia Television Limited Commerce and Economic Development Bureau Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau Create Hong Kong First Feature Film Initiative Hong Kong International Film and TV Market Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival Higher Education Institution Group Hong Kong Arts Centre xv

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ABBREVIATIONS

HKADC HKFA HKFDC HKFDF HKIFF HKIndieFF HKISFVA HKMPIA HKSAR HKTA HKTDC HKTVN ifva MC PG RTHK TVB

Hong Kong Arts Development Council Hong Kong Film Awards Hong Kong Film Development Council Hong Kong Film Development Fund Hong Kong International Film Festival Hong Kong Independent Film Festival Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Hong Kong Theatres Association Limited Hong Kong Trade Development Council Hong Kong Television Network Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia Masters of Ceremony Professional Group Radio Television Hong Kong Television Broadcasts Limited

Taiwan-Related GHFFA

Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 5.1

Hong Kong films theatrically released (first run) in Hong Kong (1985–90) Hong Kong films theatrically released (first run) in Hong Kong (2012–19) Hong Kong box-office earnings year-end data (first run) (2012–19) Extracts from Last Exit to Kai Tak (DVD format)

23 64 65 171

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Hong Kong’s Indie Films of the 2010s and Film Independence

From a Former Local Cinemagoer of Hong Kong Growing up in Hong Kong during the last golden period of the Hong Kong film industry, the 1980s and early 1990s, I was fortunate to see many of the now classical Hong Kong films in their first runs at local cinemas. Most of them were made by Hong Kong Chinese directors, featured Hongkongers in their casts, and used Cantonese as the main language in their original versions. These films contributed to and benefited from the prosperity of the Hong Kong film industry back then—a prosperity that did not continue into later times. They also represented a certain kind of zeitgeist of that period—a strange combination of concern, anxiety, hope, hopelessness, expectations and sense of rejection, felt by Hong Kong’s residents in the transitional period leading up to the city’s transfer of sovereignty from the British to the Chinese (the ‘Handover’). Cultural theorist Ackbar Abbas famously conceptualizes and encapsulates this specific social, political, cultural and historical period in his ideas about Hong Kong’s ‘culture of disappearance’.1 Many filmmakers and cast members of those films were well-known locally and beyond. Together with what they portrayed in films, these professionals and the film industry environment in which they worked were (some still are) undoubtedly components of the Hong Kong film industry of that time. As I mention in my monograph New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia (2016; hereafter, New Hong © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4_1

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Kong Cinema),2 the Hong Kong film industry during its last golden era was not characterized by the presence of big film studios. Instead, most part of the film industry in the city was made up of an assortment of different types of independent film companies. In capital size and staff numbers, they ranged from very small to large. Yet none of them operated the way huge film studios like the Shaw Brothers and its major competitors did in a vertically integrated business model during the period from the 1960s to the early 1980s in Hong Kong.3 More importantly, the films that these independent film companies churned out in large numbers did not carry the labels ‘studio’ or ‘non-studio’ productions. To the world, they were simply ‘Hong Kong films’. To the local cinemagoers like me, they were affordably accessible across the city at different local cinemas, which differed from one another in their physical locations more than in the films they screened. There were no such things as multiplexes and arthouse chains. All these elements of the local film industry back then rendered irrelevant the clear-cut distinction of commercial vs. noncommercial, mainstream vs. niche and/or studio vs. independent films. Hence, during this pinnacle period of the city’s film industry, different genres of films, be they political dramas (e.g., Boat People [Ann Hui, 1982]), cop-and-gangster films (e.g., A Better Tomorrow [John Woo, 1986]), or arthouse films (e.g., Days of Being Wild [Wong Kar-wai, 1990]), would all primarily be regarded by their producers, local distributors, local exhibitors and local audience as commercial and mainstream in nature. It was not until the appearance of Fruit Chan, whom the mass media started to call ‘Hong Kong’s independent film director’ when he released and marketed locally his feature film Made in Hong Kong in October 1997, that the awareness of and discussions on independent filmmaking in the city became widespread in the local public domain.4 A sort of copand-gangster film, but not featuring cops, Made in Hong Kong tells the fictional story of several socially marginalized teenagers in a plot with a strong political subtext. The release period of the film, which was shortly after the Handover of Hong Kong at midnight on 30 June 1997, threw into sharp relief its political implications. But as a product of the Hong Kong film industry of that time, this film’s ‘independence’ did not go unquestioned by critics, for it was made accessible to its local audience via mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks.5 Moreover, Fruit Chan himself had worked in the commercialized mainstream sector of the local film industry for many years before making Made in Hong Kong,

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while the film’s producer, Hongkonger Andy Lau, was one of East Asia’s superstars. Andy Lau has been involved in all kinds of commercialized Hong Kong films as a member of the casts and crews (for instance, as film producer) since the 1980s. So, how ‘independent’ could Made in Hong Kong be? Why were independent films, like Fruit Chan’s, also part of the dominant sector of the Hong Kong film industry? Fast-forwarding to the beginning of the 2020s, I would also ask: what has been the latest development of Hong Kong’s independent filmmaking vis-à-vis the local film industry? This book scrutinizes the development of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s with a strong focus on its (presumably) independent sector. The film industry, including production, distribution, exhibition and consumption of films, is viewed here as an important part of society. This book is the first of its kind to systematically study the importance of independent cinema to the Hong Kong film industry in that decade. My analysis originates first and foremost from my interests in the industrial status of contemporary Hong Kong cinema, which many critics regard as having been in dire straits for quite some time now. In order to understand and appreciate the complex situation in which independent films of 2010s Hong Kong and relevant cinematic practices operated, throughout this book I seek to answer three main research questions: (1) What is the exact meaning of the word ‘independent’ when applied to Hong Kong’s independent films made in the 2010s; and more specifically, what were the films in question independent of? (2) How did they reflect, and reflect on, Hongkongers’ identity negotiations in that decade? (3) What made these films unique to their time and place of origin, even as they displayed references to previous periods of independent cinema made in Hong Kong, and to other contemporaneous independent films made elsewhere, in subject matter, languages used and modes of production/distribution/exhibition? My overarching argument in this book is that independent cinema of Hong Kong became, rather unexpectedly, a vital survival aid—in effect, the lifeblood—of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s, with an impact possibly beyond the time and structure of the industry. Signs of this impact could be seen in the number of annual film productions in the city, especially towards the end of the 2010s. While representing an indispensable part of the city’s film industry in the early twenty-first century, independent cinema of 2010s Hong Kong was inevitably also a distinct

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challenge to the hegemony of the ‘mainstream’ side of film industries closest to home, in Hong Kong as well as in the rest of East Asia.

Defining Independent Cinemas: Definitions and Terminology The research questions stated in the section above cannot be answered thoroughly without a clarification of definitions, terminology, related concepts, as well as a mapping of existing studies on independent cinemas. In this section, I scrutinize some possible definitions of independent cinemas and then I clarify my use of terminology. After establishing my stance on these matters, I move on in the next section to discuss the critical approaches that I adopt in this book. Next, I look at some existing scholarly investigations on independent cinemas made around the world, situating my own study among them. It is imperative to contextualize Hong Kong indies of the 2010s among all other independent cinemas. On the one hand, such an approach shows that 2010s Hong Kong indie cinema was one of the descendants of the city’s long-standing film culture. On the other hand, my discussion shows that independent cinema in this period of Hong Kong history was a local manifestation of the most recent global resistance, at that time, against the concentration of power in hegemonic film-related establishments. On Defining Independent Cinemas The word ‘indie’ has an entry in most authoritative English-language dictionaries. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, for example, defines indie (adjective) as ‘(of a company, person or product) not belonging to, working for or produced by a large organization’.6 When used as a noun, it refers to a ‘a small independent company, or something produced by such a company’.7 In the discipline of film studies, scholars who investigate independent filmmaking often ask a very basic question in order to prompt their studies: what is independent cinema? Interestingly and ironically, there seems to be a consensus among researchers that it is indeed difficult to define independent cinema. The difficulty becomes more noticeable if we also consider which independent cinema we are talking about, who defines it, how it is defined, in what historical period is/was the term defined, where it is defined and so on. For instance,

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American independent cinema of the 1910s would be defined differently from that of the 1990s. As Doris Baltruschat and Mary P. Erickson, editors of Independent Filmmaking around the Globe, point out, ‘Independent film does not have one singular definition that applies in all cases’.8 Film scholars Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell give two definitions in A Dictionary of Film Studies.9 The first focuses on the context of a typical film industry environment that can be found anywhere. It outlines independent cinema as any ‘type of filmmaking that takes place outside the mainstream commercial film industry’.10 Their second definition emphasizes the nature of independent cinema: ‘Films or filmmaking practices that claim a degree of autonomy in relation variously to industrial practices, filmmaking conventions, or political context’ (my emphasis in italics).11 Kuhn and Westwell underscore some typical characteristics of independent cinema, commenting that: Such non-mainstream practices can be extremely varied: from films whose production, distribution, and exhibition are supported by substantial government subsidy on grounds of cultural value and/or to foster and sustain a national cinema, through films that have limited public outlet and/or exist in formats not supported by the mainstream film industry […] to self-funded amateur films of various kinds. On the other hand, some types of self-styled independent cinema may enjoy a niche within, or areas of crossover with, the commercial film industry.12 (my emphasis in italics)

These characteristics bring to the fore independent cinema’s minority position, financial status and artistic qualities vis-à-vis its related establishments. Such establishments could be the mainstream segment of the same film industry or the economic sector of society. In addition, independent cinema can exist both within and outside of its related establishments. Other scholars identify further qualities of independent filmmaking and films, although different researchers would base their understanding on their respective political, economic, social, cultural, technological and/or film industrial concerns (see more below). There are indeed countless ways of defining independent cinema—so many as that the term has almost become indefinable. Instead of putting forward yet another controversial definition for the sake of delineating the parameters of the subject, I choose not to give a conclusive working

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definition for independent cinema in this book, while acknowledging that there are not just one but numerous kinds of independent cinemas across the world and in the course of history. This approach allows me to examine a wider array of films than a restrictive definition would allow. The Hong Kong films under study in this book may indeed at some point have been regarded by film scholars, researchers, critics, journalists, industry practitioners and viewers alike as ‘independent’ or simply ‘non-mainstream’, under specific sets of political-economic, sociocultural and/or film industrial conditions. Terminology It is indeed hard to separate the local film industry from the wider political-economic, sociocultural and historical environment of the place Hong Kong. Unlike Fruit Chan’s film and his subsequent independent productions in the early 2000s, independent films made in and about Hong Kong in the 2010s gained a different momentum at a crucial time in the city’s history. To distinguish Hong Kong’s independent cinema of the 2010s from its local predecessors, I call the 2010s incarnation the ‘new independent cinema’ of Hong Kong (or ‘new indie cinema’ for short). My use of the term here refers not only to the films produced in and about Hong Kong but also the cinematic practices related to the production, distribution and exhibition of these films. Moreover, I use the adjectives ‘independent’ and ‘indie’ interchangeably to indicate the close relationship between the so-called independent and mainstream sectors of the highly commercialized film industry based in this metropolitan city, especially in the 2010s. This use is somewhat aligned with the way filmmakers and film critics of American independent cinema call such films and practices ‘American indie cinema’, which has developed with the involvement of Hollywood studios in US indie sector since the 1990s.13 When the word ‘indies’ (the plural form of ‘indie’) is used as a noun, as in ‘Hong Kong new indies’, it stands for these 2010s independent films made in and about this city. The word ‘indie(s)’ I use in this book thus strongly indicates the industrial focus of the film(s) in question.14 Although frequently dismissed as a minor segment of Hong Kong’s film industry, in practice the workings of the so-called independent sector in the 2010s overlapped with the perceived mainstream sector. The situation was similar to that of the local predecessors of these indie films

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in previous decades. The new indie cinema of Hong Kong showed exemplary resilience amid a series of political-economic and sociocultural upheavals occurring in the city in the 2010s. The same decade also witnessed the ostensible stabilization of the Hong Kong film industry, as well as the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its national film industry on the international stage,15 alongside massive structural changes taking place in the global film industries in areas such as financing, distribution, exhibition and dissemination of films. All these factors form an important backdrop for understanding the importance of Hong Kong’s new indie cinema to discussions on film industries around the world in the contemporary period.

Conceptualizing and Contextualizing Discussions of Indie Cinematic Practices Critical Concepts My discussion in this book largely follows the discourses related to the political economy of film, while I also consider specific political-economic and sociocultural situations of contemporary Hong Kong cinema. As media scholar Janet Wasko highlights, the critical approach of the political economy of film is concerned with: […] understand[ing] motion pictures as commodities produced and distributed within a capitalist industrial structure […];16 […] questions pertaining to market structure and performance, but a political economist analyzing these issues more often would challenge the myths of competition, independence, and globalization, and view the film industry as part of the larger communication and media industry, and society as a whole […];17 […] film […] be placed within an entire social, economic, and political context and critiqued in terms of the contribution to maintaining and reproducing structures of power.18

Wasko gives other examples of studies of film according to the political economy approach, e.g., ‘[…] the recognition and critique of the uneven distribution of power and wealth represented by the industry, the

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attention paid to labor issues and alternatives to commercial film, and the attempts to challenge the industry rather than accepting the status quo’.19 My analysis goes along these key lines of enquiry, primarily embracing how Hong Kong new indies, and their filmmakers, challenged and overcame their supposedly disadvantaged positions in the local film industry. They were, I would argue, in fact much more powerful than they may have seemed, because of their resilience and agility amid the entrenched workings of the industry of which they were a visible part. I would see their specific qualities as the tools with which they were equipped and empowered, even in the most adverse political-economic and sociocultural circumstances, to the extent that they could easily become role models for their contemporaries in the rest of the Hong Kong film industry and the larger East Asian film sector. Moreover, as I discuss throughout this book, I believe their being in control of their own sustainability, however precarious at first, was in turn closely related to the geopolitics of Hong Kong as a global/local city, and the power relations often found within and beyond the local film industry. The geopolitical origin of films is one of the major factors impacting on what the films in question turn out to be. Yet, the geopolitical element of independent cinemas and how it may play out intricately with other defining elements of independent cinemas, let alone the problematization of such geopolitics, may not always be investigated closely. Using Hollywood as an example when examining the relation between geopolitics and cinema, film and media scholar Toby Miller contends that Hollywood, being a chief representative of US imperialism, has remained geopolitically dominant in an era when others believe that the age of ‘Asia’ (predominantly China and India) is just around the corner.20 The author stresses that American indies and European arthouse films are somehow backed by, and in turn manifest, the dominance of Hollywood, as the latter has spread its influence into these seemingly opposite terrains in the widely believed binaries of Hollywood vs. American indies, and Hollywood vs. European arthouse films. In Miller’s own words, ‘LA rarely loses control’.21 Miller’s idea of Hollywood’s persistent geopolitical hegemony strikes a strong blow at the notion of borderless-ness embedded in the concept of ‘transnational cinema’. In Hong Kong’s case, the city, situated on the south-eastern edge of China and the southern edge of East Asia, has always had to fulfil specific geopolitical missions. During most of the territory’s colonial years, this was where the Western powers crossed with influences coming

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from Hong Kong’s Chinese hinterland. After the place became a special administrative region of the PRC, its gradual assimilation into mainland Chinese geopolitics has made it a good candidate for trying out something different from the mainland territories in the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ political-economic framework. Although it is believed that this framework has not been working properly, in view of Beijing’s ongoing intervention in the city’s affairs in recent years, there remains a certain leeway in how the ‘Two Systems’ principle is being played out.22 Hong Kong cinema has been one of the main industries that reflect, and reflect on, Hong Kong’s geopolitics and their related political-economic transformations, with the new indies being at the forefront of this effort. It was due partly to these films’ high adaptability (getting by with much smaller investments than those usually needed by their blockbuster counterparts). My findings from the study of Hong Kong new indies, especially regarding their focus on local subject matter, their specific use of language and flexible utilization of alternative distribution/exhibition channels, provide a counterbalance to Miller’s ideas on geopolitics in relation to Hollywood, or on film hegemony in general. The Hong Kong cases show that the dynamics of geopolitics may not always be driven singlehandedly by those holding ostensible power, whether they be in Hong Kong, the PRC, the Greater China region or East Asia. I am particularly intrigued by the perseverance of Hong Kong indie filmmakers in making their films and conveying messages they firmly believed in. They transcended the constraints that might have disenfranchised them in the local film industry. Concomitant with geopolitics that independent cinemas reflect, and reflect on, are power relations. Many existing analyses of indie cinematic practices, as I delineate below, take certain dominant mainstream counterparts (or the whole ‘system’) as a given that different indie cinemas in their respective geopolitical settings strive to coexist with and/or challenge. Some film researchers do acknowledge the overlaps between the dominant mainstream sector and the marginal (or marginalized) independent sector of the film industries in question. They reveal various kinds of power relations that enable coexistence, overlaps, competitions, as well as multidirectional and multi-layered entanglements found between the said independent cinemas, their (given) mainstream counterparts, and possible amalgamations of mainstream and indie film practices in certain geopolitical contexts. In many cases, power relations are not static but fluid through time and space, subject to constant transformations and

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re-negotiations between different individuals, stakeholders, entities and public and private institutions. In the following, I trace the interrelations between the geopolitical origins of different independent cinemas, the power relations they may have displayed with their respective establishments, and the areas of concern highlighted by researchers. Geopolitics and power relations in some of these cases are not always discussed explicitly by researchers. I tackle one area of concern at a time. The examples here are chosen randomly to illustrate the expansive spectrum of indie cinematic practices worldwide. They are by no means the only examples of each concern. Contextualizing Film Industrial and Economic Concerns I start with film industry-related and economic concerns of American independent cinema. Geopolitical concerns are mostly taken for granted by researchers of US cinematic practices. For example, film scholar Yannis Tzioumakis analyses American independent cinema vis-à-vis Hollywood from an economic perspective of the film industry.23 He acknowledges the difficulty of defining (American) independent cinema due to the large number of interpretations given by different stakeholders in the film industry.24 Another scholar of American indies, Geoff King, notes that there are various forms and degrees of independence of American indies,25 ranging from artistic to experimental, avant-garde or exploitation films. Concerns about financing are emphasized regularly.26 Film scholar John Berra points out that American independent cinema is ‘on the margins of the mainstream’,27 with directors needing to overcome budgetary restrictions. But Tzioumakis is not satisfied with defining just one dimension of American independent cinema. He is in favour of studying American independent cinema as a discourse that entails the discussion of power, by focusing on the ‘socially authorised institutions (filmmakers, industry practitioners, trade publications, academics, film critics and so on)’.28 The author also notes that, in the US film industry, being independent has become a film marketing tool signifying the possession of certain qualities, as opposed to Hollywood products that may lack them. The financial quality of indies attracts the attention of major Hollywood studios, encouraging them to produce and/or distribute the films.29 As a case in point, New Line Productions produced indies in the 1990s. One such was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Steve

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Barron, Hong Kong/USA, 1990), which earned enviable box-office takings. After going through a series of mergers and acquisitions by Hollywood studios, New Line Productions is currently part of Warner Bros Entertainment (at the time of writing). Another example of a leading American independent film company is Miramax. Over the years, it has undergone different mergers and acquisitions by major filmmaking studios, such as Walt Disney Company and other investment conglomerates. In April 2020, Miramax officially became a joint venture under beIN Media Group (owning 51 percent of Miramax) and ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global; owner of Paramount Pictures, which owns 49 percent of Miramax).30 This suggests that a 1999 quote referred to by Emanuel Levy, an acclaimed critic of American indies, still holds true. The quote says that ‘[u]nless you go back to the definition of total independence, everybody else is a hybrid’.31 And the person who offered Levy this insight was a veteran of the American indie film industry, Russell Schwartz.32 Tzioumakis’s emphasis on power relations between various individual stakeholders, entities and institutions widens the scope of academic discussions on independent filmmaking. However, it is also imperative that such relations in film industries be studied more closely. Knowing their nature, levels, directions and multiple manifestations would help enhance our understanding of the positions and functions of relevant independent filmmaking sectors in coexistence and competition with their mainstream counterparts in different film industries and historical periods. This is especially useful when the mainstream sectors of the film industries in question are not always doing well economically.33 Moreover, elements of the independent sectors of different film industries may overlap with those in the dominant mainstream sectors. For instance, while the participation of Hollywood studios in the financing, production and exhibition of indies is likely to adversely affect the profits of US independent film companies, these power dynamics are not straightforward. Besides negative impacts, the participation of Hollywood studios via operating their own independent divisions has undeniably brought to the American independent film sector such benefits as the clustering of creative labour and job opportunities,34 exchanges of ideas and worldwide operations. Instead of being constantly overshadowed by their Hollywood counterpart, over the years the American independent film sector has successfully moved on from the ‘indie’ phase to the ‘indiewood’ phase, due in part to new impacts and elements brought to

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this sector by Hollywood studios.35 The power relations between the American indie sector and Hollywood studios are thus not static and one-sided; nor are they always confrontational. As Anna Backman Rogers, another film scholar who studies American independent cinema, remarks, ‘independence is, at best, a highly relative term’.36 The dynamic nature of film independence hinges not only on the intraand inter-sectorial relationships between individuals, entities and institutions within given film industries but also on the impacts of various extra-sectorial factors on these industries.37 The situation will appear more complex if we also take into account the effects of the historical periods, and prevailing political-economic and sociocultural contexts, in which the making and circulation of independent cinemas are/were found. With an academic background in sociology, Levy stresses the link between American indies and sociopolitical contexts.38 He notes that the early American independent cinema strived to challenge Hollywood on several fronts, including the technological, institutional, aesthetic, economic and political, being unified by ‘its commitment to alternative points of view, democratic representation, and countercultural transformation’.39 However, in the ‘new American [independent] cinema’, such unification seems to have given way to all sorts of agendas, personal visions and eclectic aestheticism.40 Extending from Levy’s ideas, the term ‘independent cinema’ would be a misnomer used to bundle all types of non-mainstream films together under one single umbrella term. Moreover, more recent cases suggest that American indies show the tendency of being ‘mainstreamed’.41 The binary situation of the ‘mainstream’ vs. the ‘marginalized’ is then too simplistic for understanding American indies vis-à-vis Hollywood films. The consideration of Levy’s concerns about contextual influences would lead us back to Tzioumakis’s interests in the power structure in US independent filmmaking, although the two authors approach the topic from different angles. Furthermore, while it may be tempting for us to casually conclude that the conditions of power relations within and outside the independent film sector of a given film industry come primarily from the involvement of various institutions (e.g., film studios) and individuals, we may find that this is not the case if we also consider possible interventions from governments and religious groups.42 The fact that the US federal government maintains an arm’s-length relationship with both the Hollywood and the American indie film industries does

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make a difference to the uniqueness of the American independent filmmaking. The relative lack of governmental interference allows American indies to have a relatively free and fertile breeding ground on which to flourish on their own, given suitable political, economic, social, cultural, technological and film industrial environments. I turn next to discussing the independent filmmaking in the PRC, whose films are independent of the governing authorities, and not just of the wealthy and gigantic film studios based in the same geographical locality. Contextualizing Political and Sociocultural Concerns Mainland Chinese independent cinema is understood as a direct consequence of the June Fourth incident (aka Tiananmen Square Massacre) in 1989.43 Wu Wenguang’s Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (1990) is regarded as the pioneer of the independent film movement that appeared in China in the early 1990s. The film is a self-funded videostyle documentary portraying several individuals’ lives before and after the June Fourth incident. After Wu Wenguang had made this film, other mainland Chinese independent film directors soon joined in. Many of them became known as the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, in distinction from the previous five generations. They began making films by going independent of studios and of the control of the Chinese state authorities. Film academic Li Yang (not the director Li Yang), based in Beijing University and writing from within the Chinese establishment, remarks that many of these filmmakers portray marginalized people in mainland Chinese society.44 The author believes that the filmmakers have ‘conscious rebellion against certain aspects of Chinese political ideology or social structures’.45 Contrarily, those made independent films in the 2010s, e.g., Bi Gan, Xin Yukun and Zhang Dalei, handled filmmaking differently. They would strike a balance between the market, the system (i.e., the authorities and the film industry establishment) and the directors themselves. Contrary to Li Yang’s view, film scholars and critics based outside the Chinese establishment or the country understand the situation differently. Writing from Australia, film researcher Tingting Song is informed by the film industry orientation of American indie cinema when the author explores mainland Chinese independent films. Song identifies four types of independent film companies: top-rank independent, low-end

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independent, small state-owned studios and private corporations.46 This classification is based mainly on their operational scale and capital size. Song, however, downplays the close connections between these Chinese film conglomerates and the state authorities.47 Song’s opinion echoes that of a group of film professionals and critics based in China and Hong Kong. They were interviewed by film scholar Esther M. K. Cheung in 2004.48 The interviewees mentioned small budget being the first criterion they used with regard to mainland Chinese independent cinema, although one of them also said that, ‘Simply looking at the production cost and ignoring the context in which the film is made doesn’t really help us define independent cinema’.49 They were also concerned about how independent films made in China were being circulated. This opinion certainly finds concrete support in recent years: within a period of less than ten years, two of the most prominent independent film festivals based in mainland China ceased operation indefinitely. One of them was the Beijing Independent Film Festival, forced into suspension in 2012 after the authorities cut its power supply. The other festival was the China Independent Film Festival, which announced its suspension in 2020 due to the impossibility of maintaining their independence.50 Nonetheless, it is worth noting that these independent film professionals, whom Esther M. K. Cheung interviewed in the early 2000s, equated Chinese independent films with those alternative ‘DIY’ film and video projects that tended to ignore their audience markets. They also regarded the Sixth-Generation Chinese film directors, such as Jia Zhangke and Wang Xiaoshuai, as part of the mainstream film industry in China because Jia and Wang graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. This film school is generally regarded to be a key representative of the mainstream filmmaking establishment in the PRC. The interviewees’ understanding of independent films and filmmaking was thus presented in a very specific geopolitical sense that may not be relevant to independent cinemas in other countries and territories. At the same time, researchers investigating the urban mainland Chinese consumers of these Chinese independent films also propound that the restricted environment of film production, distribution and exhibition in the PRC has given rise to an alternative film consumption culture. This culture relies very much on film piracy as an unyielding and subversive response to such an environment on the part of the ‘D-buffs’ and the ‘D-generation’ filmmakers (here, in the mainland Chinese context, ‘D’ may mean disc, DVD, digital, 3D, download and piracy [daoban]).51

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Many of the latter are found among the newer mainland Chinese independent filmmakers. Likewise, film scholars Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito underline the use of digital video (DV) as a form of alternative, grassroots filmmaking practice that focuses on ‘the making and sharing of low-cost independent DV and the shaping of an alternative media and public culture’.52 The UK-based Chinese and East Asian film scholar Chris Berry singles out a defining characteristic of contemporary mainland Chinese independent cinema: what ‘Chinese independent films and filmmakers try to be independent of is the state’ (my emphasis in italics).53 What is implied in his statement is that those so-called independent films and filmmakers who are accepted by the Chinese authorities, as Li Yang also notes, are not really independent. This applies to widely praised films, such as Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues (China, 2015) and Yang Chao’s Crosscurrent (China, 2016). The two films, as well as other mainland Chinese independent films whose opening credits indicate the approval of the Chinese censors, raise questions as to their independence. The ambiguity of film independence in their cases come directly from these filmmakers’ having carefully depoliticized their films, pursuing aesthetic creativity instead.54 The situation of independent filmmaking in mainland China has indeed become more and more difficult after 1 March 2017, when the new Film Industry Promotion Law came into effect in the PRC. One of the prominent features of this opaquely worded law is that it ‘forbids [film] content that stirs up opposition to the law or constitution, harms national unity, sovereignty or territorial integrity, exposes national secrets, harms Chinese security, dignity, honour or interests, or spreads terrorism or extremism’.55 The film trade periodical Variety notes the law’s possible negative impact with regard to international film festivals. It quotes a film festival programmer as lamenting that the ‘worry for both festival and especially for emerging independent Chinese filmmakers is that the films we want to screen, and that they want to make, simply won’t appear’.56 Even the independent filmmakers’ wish to be ‘alternative’ by developing a parallel, not completely oppositional, trajectory to that of the officially approved mainstream cinema would not fulfil the state’s requirements, as evident from the cases of many mainland Chinese documentarians since the start of China’s New Documentary Movement in 1990.57

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Contextualizing Creative Concerns Investigations of independent filmmaking generally agree that independent filmmakers have a high degree of creative freedom in their film styles, subject matter and genres, and other aesthetic areas.58 This argument aligns closely with discourses of authorship and auteur theory, such as that proposed by film critic Andrew Sarris.59 What researchers do not always emphasize is that the creative freedom displayed by independent filmmakers could be considered an attempt on their part to re-empower themselves after having been disempowered in their respective film industries. There are, however, exceptions. For example, film scholar Ran Ma traces the auteurist independent filmmaking of a group of diasporic East Asian directors who engage in border-crossing filmmaking in East and Southeast Asia while in diaspora in countries other than their homelands.60 Stressing their diasporic existential conditions in host countries, Ma opines that the diasporic filmmakers endeavour to give voice to the subjects, places and feelings traditionally marginalized and made peripheral by mainstream discourses. In Ma’s words, these filmmakers’ works help ‘envisioning “Asia” as a cultural text/imaginary of disjuncture, multiplicities, and unevenness’.61 When discussing the multi-layered identity of Zhang Lü, Ma notes the beneficial effects of Zhang Lü’s diasporic, and of his self-taught filmmaking skills, on his flexible film styles and diasporic subjects, which amount to his ‘translocal authorship’.62 Zhang Lü is an academic-turnedfilmmaker of ethnic Korean descent and Chinese nationality. His identity negotiation explains his preference for ‘minimalist cinematic grammar’ in the short film Eleven (China, 2001).63 It also focuses on ‘the perils and frictions integral to the acts of border crossing’ in Mongolia in fiction feature film Desert Dream (France/South Korea, 2007).64 And it provides footnotes for his specific use of static long takes in the documentary Scenery (South Korea, 2013) to portray migrant workers as ‘translocal subjects living on the margins of Korean society’.65 Film scholars Lars Gustaf Andersson and John Sundholm study immigrant filmmaking in Sweden in the 1950s–90s.66 The authors foreground the stance of the host country Sweden to discuss the re-placement, and not deterritorialization, of these immigrant filmmakers and their achievements. The newly arrived immigrants were not established filmmakers. They found themselves not only new to their host country Sweden but

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also to a cultural practice of independent filmmaking in the mire of lacking networks and contexts, where they eventually found creative freedom.67 Contrary to Ma, Andersson and Sundholm in their investigations of independent filmmakers primarily as outsiders to their respective mainstream cinematic practices, anthropologist Young-a Park studies such filmmakers in South Korea as representing a major social factor contributing to the success of the South Korean film industry from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s.68 Many of them, who operated under the Korean Independent Filmmakers Association and made use of festivals like the Pusan International Film Festival (now, the Busan International Film Festival) to circulate their films, were former anti-state activists. They were later re-branded as ‘independent filmmakers’ and were committed to making ‘socially engaged’ documentaries at a time when South Korea was moving into an era of democracy under Kim Dae-jung’s administration (1998–2003), after the previous decades of authoritarianism.69 Some of them would later participate in the campaigns to maintain South Korea’s screen quota system, especially against the fierce competition coming from Hollywood products—an act that is regarded as ‘a symbol of Korean cultural nationalism’.70 Others would move on to become part of the establishment they once detested, by accessing power in various South Korean cultural institutions.71 Young-a Park highlights two female independent filmmakers, Kim Jim-yeol and Min Sung-mi, for their distinct political and artistic sensibilities as well as directorial visions amid a maledominated and hierarchical independent film scene in South Korea at the time under study.72 Their uniqueness, nonetheless, led them to become marginalized and isolated in a supposedly minority sector of the South Korean film industry. The circumstances under which these South Korean indie filmmakers interacted with the South Korean authorities and were assimilated into the establishment, including the rest of the South Korean film industry, therefore offer us a new dimension when thinking about what independent cinema(s) might be.73 Internal marginalization, as in the cases of the female Korean indie filmmakers, further challenges the static polarization between power (e.g., the authorities, the mainstream commercial film industry) and those who are marginalized and/or in resistance (e.g., non-mainstream independent filmmakers). In film scholar Benjamin McKay’s study, Malaysian female independent filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad exemplifies yet another kind of female independent sensibility.74 The author singles out Ahmad’s ‘recognizable film style’ (e.g., long takes), themes (e.g., cross-cultural connectivity in

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Malaysia), genre (e.g., the kampung genre), storytelling method, etc., to paint across her films a distinct ‘dreamed image of Malaysia’.75 It brings the confused and ambiguous Malaysian ‘race’,76 as promoted by the Malaysian authorities, to the fore. By underscoring the styles of independent filmmakers, their choices of subject matter and uses of different genres, various researchers seem to suggest that distinct artistic concerns come as natural qualities to define the independence of these filmmakers. But independent filmmaking does not necessarily equate to creative freedom, particularly in cases when independent filmmakers do need to be concerned about their audience markets when striving to sustain their careers in the long run. These filmmakers would still have to face the harsh realities of any film industry environments. Hence, while appreciating their possible creative freedom, one should be cautious about accepting such freedom as directly related to independent cinematic practices.

What Were Hong Kong’s New Indie Films Independent Of?: A Historical Overview In the above cases, independent cinemas are thought of in relation to their mainstream counterparts within the same film industries. Researchers have identified some of the relationships as, for example, ‘in dependence’,77 ‘interdependence’,78 ‘semi-independence’,79 ‘co-dependence’,80 and ‘negotiated dependencies’.81 Yet, it is also worth considering their degree of independence in their respective film industries, the diverse and murky section of independent-cum-mainstream practices in these industries, which particular films and filmmakers are part of the indie sector, and what they are independent of. The Hong Kong film industry since the mid-1980s would serve as a good example when we seek answers to these additional questions. Once the third largest film exporter in the world (after Hollywood and Bollywood),82 at its peak this film industry produced 239 films in a single year in 1993. It was understandably highly commercialized in order to survive, due to a lack of local government support during most of its history.83 Film scholars and critics note that independent filmmaking has long existed in Hong Kong. But different researchers comprehend such indie cinematic practices differently. In fact, their understanding has changed over the years. Besides their own research interests and agendas, this difference of opinions is largely due to the Hong Kong

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film industry’s rapid and ever-changing trajectory under the broader political-economic environment. External influences were connected with the departure of the British colonizer, Hong Kong’s sovereignty transfer from the British to the Chinese, China’s rise as an international power, East Asia’s regionalization, among many other major factors of change in recent history. Apart from individual researchers, established entities may also have their own notions about independent cinemas. A prime representative is the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival (HKIndieFF). It was founded in 2008 as an annual event, initially with the name Hong Kong Asian Independent Film Festival (renamed as the HKIndieFF in its third edition).84 Its main organizer is Ying E Chi, a non-profit arts organization usually funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC).85 Ying E Chi aims to ‘unite local independent filmmakers, as well as to distribute and promote independent films’.86 Vincent Chui (an independent filmmaker, as well as the Artistic Director of Ying E Chi and the Programme Curator of the HKIndieFF in 2021) mentions that, ‘To touch on topics that mainstream movies do not want to or do not dare to talk about, indie movies are created’.87 Chui’s interpretation of (Hong Kong) indie films is one of the many ways of seeing their functions and origins, but not the only one. For the purpose of my study, I propose to appreciate Hong Kong indies and independent cinematic practices from a broader perspective. It would be beneficial to our understanding if independent cinema of Hong Kong is to be examined in terms of the contexts and setup of the Hong Kong film industry since 1986. From this angle, we can comprehend more thoroughly that the independence of these Hong Kong films and their related cinematic practices was more than simply the opposite of film commercialization, and/or a consequence of political-economic and/or artistic considerations. Hong Kong’s new indies of the 2010s exhibited the very nature of contemporary Hong Kong cinema in terms of their ability to be agile and survive in times and under circumstances of uncertainty. Many of these new indies did find themselves independent of the large investments coming from China and elsewhere. Their filmmakers might voluntarily have rejected the opportunity of exploring the lucrative mainland Chinese audience market, thereby not needing to meet the requirements of the mainland Chinese film censorship system. But it was unlikely for them to wander too far away from commercial considerations as their films still had to rely on various pots of local,

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small- to medium-sized commercial/private investments and government money. The latter could be in the form of investments and/or sponsorships (see Chapter 2). Moreover, many of the new indies had to utilize a portion of the local mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks to reach their domestic target audience. This practice was undoubtedly a legacy inherited from the independent filmmakers and film companies that dominated the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s and 1990s (see more below). What Hong Kong new indies displayed, then, was a rather unique kind of independence, which made them stand out from other independent cinemas around the world. Above all, it is my contention that Hong Kong’s new indies of the 2010s strived for an independence of a trajectory that would normally be expected of Hong Kong films. Their filmmakers absorbed the experience of predecessors from past decades of the Hong Kong film industry. They also learned from their contemporaries in various parts of the world, while priding themselves on their films’ geopolitical and sociocultural specificities. Through their films, the independent filmmakers showed strong and persistent beliefs that things needed to change from the grassroots level constantly, instead of them waiting for top-down developments impelled by establishments like film studios or the local government. Undoubtedly, when Hong Kong’s film industry was at a crossroads of precarious change in the 2010s, new independent films and related cinematic practices remained a substantial part of that industry. From a film industry point of view, Hong Kong’s new indie cinema was firmly and robustly local, addressing the domestic concerns and needs of Hong Kong filmmakers and audiences alike. Simultaneously, it was transnational and transcultural, especially in the directorial intents and outlooks of the filmmakers. My overarching argument, as mentioned at the beginning of this Introduction, is that Hong Kong’s new indie cinema of the 2010s was vital to the long-term sustainability of the city’s film industry as a whole. A chronological mapping in the following shows the lineage and ongoing trajectory of independent cinema in Hong Kong. I divide the mapping into three stages of understanding the nature of Hong Kong’s independent cinematic practices vis-à-vis the Hong Kong film industry.

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Stage 1: Between 1986 and Mid-2003 The Hong Kong film industry between 1986 and mid-2003 saw an almost complete overlap between its so-called independent and mainstream sectors, when the latter largely consisting of independent film companies that did not have their own filmmaking studio facilities and lots, and/or cinema chains. Nonetheless, the nature of this industry at that time also challenged a wide perception of what independent cinemas represent. This period was bookended by two years that witnessed dramatic changes in the development of the local film industry. The year 1986 saw the largest Hong Kong-based film studio, the Shaw Brothers, stop engaging in film financing and production. The year 2003, on the other hand, was the start of the era of China–Hong Kong film co-productions, to which I will come back in the next subsection. In 1986, the Hong Kong film industry began to enter a phase characterized by independent film productions of small- to medium-sized film companies. As noted by film critic Chan Ching-wai, who studies the structure of the pre-2000 Hong Kong film industry, most of these companies did not have their own exhibition networks.88 They were thus regarded as independent companies according to the local film industry practice of that time. Besides, there were a handful of large film companies that filled the void left by the Shaw Brothers after 1986 in supplying Hong Kong’s film outputs, such as Golden Harvest (since 1970), Golden Princess Amusement (late 1970s–95) and D&B Films (1984–92).89 Golden Harvest was the most notable of these, as it built a close relationship with independent filmmaking in Hong Kong from 1970 to 2003.90 Its three founders, Raymond Chow, Leonard Ho and Leung Fung, were executives at the Shaw Brothers before leaving that company to set up Golden Harvest in 1970. Between then and the mid-1990s, Golden Harvest operated as a one-stop-shop film studio with its own filmmaking studio facilities. The company also financed and distributed mainstream commercial Hong Kong films, in particular those featuring Bruce Lee in the early 1970s and Jackie Chan starting from the late 1970s. It had its own domestic cinema chain, which started operating in Hong Kong in the 1970s and subsequently became the city’s largest cinema network.91 Unlike highly centralized film studios that would only finance, produce and distribute their own productions, Golden Harvest also commissioned, and/or co-produced with, much smaller independent film companies in Hong Kong to turn out commercialized genre films as

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well as highly regarded quality films, such as award-winning Center Stage (Stanley Kwan, Hong Kong, 1991) and The Mad Phoenix (Clifton Ko, Hong Kong, 1997). Film scholar Stephen Teo regards Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest as ‘changing the traditional studio-based type of production to one of independent production companies and signalling the beginning of the end for the big-time studios’.92 Both Center Stage and The Mad Phoenix belong to the biopic genre. Yet, both also deviate from the formulaic mainstream commercial Hong Kong films. Center Stage employs a multi-layered approach to storytelling, narrating the life of the famous Chinese actor Ruan Lingyu in the 1930s.93 The film includes documentary-style footage of interviews with the lead actor, Maggie Cheung, and other present-day figures, intermingled with re-enacted historical scenes of Ruan’s private life and of her acting in the films that made her famous. This storytelling method was rare among mainstream commercial Hong Kong films at that time. The Mad Phoenix, on the other hand, is a film adaptation of the original stage play, featuring the life of the legendary Cantonese opera playwright Kong Yu-kau. The film was co-produced by Clifton Ko’s own film company and Golden Harvest. Between 1985 and 1990, about twenty-five to thirty Hong Kong films were affiliated to Golden Harvest annually,94 if not produced by this company, when Hong Kong had an average annual output of 102 films (see Table 1.1).95 Golden Harvest’s productions thus amounted to a visible share of the total number of Hong Kong film products back then, but the company did not single-handedly dominate the city’s filmmaking sector. Many other film products were churned out by smaller, independent film companies. Arguably, Golden Harvest and these smaller companies opened an avenue for independent, non-studio, commercial films and filmmakers to become an integral part of the ‘mainstream’ sector of the local film industry in its last golden period. Chan Ching-wai notes that there were more than 380 film directors in Hong Kong between 1990 and 1996, many of whom directed no more than a single film.96 This obviously reflected the problem of the industry’s sustainability in the first half of the 1990s. Golden Harvest closed its own film studio facilities in the 1990s, because the Hong Kong government retrieved the company’s leased lot (in the Wong Tai Sin district of Hong Kong, where Golden Harvest had originally built its filmmaking studio) for redevelopment.97 Subsequently, in 1998, the company lost a land bid to a consortium led by

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Table 1.1 Hong Kong films theatrically released (first run) in Hong Kong (1985–90)

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Year 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 Grand total Average total

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Annual total number of Hong Kong film output 93 87 75 117 119 121 612 102

Source Chan Ching-wai, The Structure and Marketing Analysis of Hong Kong Film Industry (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Film Biweekly Publishing House Limited, 2000), 457

the Shaw Brothers. This impelled Golden Harvest to withdraw its major effort from film production in 2000, and to concentrate on film exhibition instead. Regardless of the difficulty of maintaining sustainability, the scenario created by Golden Harvest and its smaller, often independent, counterparts in Hong Kong attested that most of the ‘mainstream’ sector of the Hong Kong film industry from 1986 to mid-2003 effectively consisted of independent film companies and their films. The Hong Kong films made in those years thus challenged the simplistic opposition between independent and studio films. They were different from the products of the marginalized indie sectors in the USA, China and Southeast Asia that I discussed above, and formed the core of the city’s commercialized film industry, which was without government support and/or control during the British colonial period and the first few years in the post-colonial era.98 In order to survive and sustain their careers, Hong Kong film professionals could rely only on their own means. Producing highly commercialized and entertaining films that appealed to the taste of homegrown and overseas mass audiences was definitely one of the major solutions for them. This in turn also helped bring international fame to individual film practitioners, e.g., Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau, Tony Leung (aka Leung Chiu-wai), Johnnie To, John Woo and to Hong Kong cinema in general.

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Stage 2: Between Mid-2003 and 2009 Starting in 1994, the long-term deterioration of the Hong Kong film industry triggered worries among its film professionals. After they continuously lobbied it, the newly established Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government finally agreed to help the film industry. One of the noticeable governmental actions was that the HKSAR government negotiated and signed the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) with the Chinese central government on 29 June 2003. The CEPA is a specific trade agreement between the two governments.99 It covers a number of industries on both sides of the border. The provisions for the film industry under the CEPA were part of Hong Kong’s own governmental support for the local film industry, as the CEPA allowed Hong Kong film professionals to bypass many political-economic barriers in order to work with mainland Chinese film professionals and enter the profitable mainland Chinese audience market.100 However, the CEPA has also had controversial effects in polarizing the Hong Kong film industry in various respects (see details in Chapters 2 and 5). Before the conclusion of the CEPA, Hong Kong film professionals occasionally worked with mainland Chinese film practitioners and/or film studios. For example, Nansan Shi, a veteran Hong Kong film producer and ex-wife of film director Tsui Hark, was one of the first film practitioners from Hong Kong to collaborate with state-owned film studios in China in the early 1990s.101 The works she was involved in were produced by Film Workshop, co-established by Shi and Tsui. Unsurprisingly, Film Workshop was one of the independent film companies that emerged at the peak of the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s. YiuWai Chu, scholar in the field of Hong Kong studies, notes that these pre-CEPA film collaborations between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese film professionals were ‘Mainland-Hong Kong cooperative films’.102 Hence, it was not until the second half of 2003 that individual Hong Kong film professionals, working independently or not, began once again to engage actively and more systematically in film (co-)productions with film studios that had their own filmmaking facilities, and distribution and exhibition networks. But this time the film studios and conglomerates were mainly based in mainland China. Operationally, and not only political-economically, these film studios were approved by and/or closely connected with the mainland Chinese central government.

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Meanwhile, committed independent filmmaking practice in the strictest sense existed in Hong Kong. This segment of filmmaking claimed to be non-commercial or less commercial, having been active since the mid-1990s and being championed by individual Hong Kong-based independent filmmakers, such as Fruit Chan, Tammy Cheung,103 Vincent Chui, Shu Kei (aka Kenneth Ip) and so on. This group of filmmakers tended to understand film independence as the complete opposite to film commercialization, and they wanted to avoid the latter. Although they strived to be independent and worked mostly outside the perceived mainstream sector of the commercialized film industry in Hong Kong, in practice their complete independence of that sector was not possible. Many of them occasionally had to work in various functions with constituents of the local film industry establishments. They were, and still are, effectively part of the local film industry. For instance, Fruit Chan worked with Peter Chan (the two are not related) to make the Dumpling segment of Three… Extremes (Fruit Chan/Miike Takashi/Park Chan-wook, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea, 2004) in order to tap into the pan-Asian mass audience market for horror films. Both Fruit Chan and Vincent Chui made cameo in the mainstream comedy My Name Is Fame, directed by Lawrence Ah-Mon (Hong Kong, 2006). Ah-Mon himself has also regularly switched between making less commercialized independent films and commercial films since the late 1980s. His commercial, now iconic, Hong Kong crime blockbuster series include Lee Rock (Hong Kong, 1991), Lee Rock II (Hong Kong, 1991) and Lee Rock III (Hong Kong, 1992), while his independent, social realist films include Spacked Out (Hong Kong, 2000). In terms of film styles, many of the independent films produced by this segment of the Hong Kong film industry tended to be experimental, often exploring themes and subject matter not immediately accessible to the homegrown mainstream mass audience. Instead, they mostly catered to a much smaller domestic audience. Their overseas audiences, usually found along the international film festival circuit, also appeared to be receptive to these films. Thus, for the Hong Kong mass audience, these niche independent films and their filmmakers were much less noticeable in the mid- to late 1990s than the Hong Kong independent filmmakers and film companies that turned out highly commercialized products. As mentioned at the beginning of this Introduction, it was not until Fruit Chan proclaimed his departure from the perceived mainstream

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sector of the Hong Kong film industry to focus on making independent films that the Hong Kong public became aware of the existence of hard-core independent filmmaking in the city. These filmmakers’ defiance of commercialization, mainlandization and complete Sinicization (see Chapter 2) earned them greater prominence in Hong Kong at a time when many of those working in the perceived mainstream sector of the Hong Kong film industry were going north to work with mainland Chinese film practitioners under the provisions of the CEPA.104 Interestingly, while the Hong Kong government before the political Handover shied away from directly dealing with the commercial local film industry, it supported the emergence of independent films as an art form in the city. Towards the end of the British colonial period, before 1997, the local government funded the Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards (HKISFVA) through the Urban Council (see paragraph below on the Hong Kong Arts Centre [HKAC]).105 It also acknowledged film independence in the ‘Independent Film and Video Program’ section of the government-run Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), and screened the winning films of the HKISFVA, organized by the HKAC. With the corporatization of the HKIFF complete in 2005, the HKIFF’s involvement in film independence also inevitably changed.106 New sponsors, such as the Hong Kong Jockey Club, were brought in to jointly provide screening platforms for independent filmmakers and student filmmakers.107 Other non-governmental organizations contributed enormously to committed and non-commercial independent filmmaking. Besides Ying E Chi, mentioned above, the non-profit HKAC has provided another important breeding ground for Hong Kong’s committed indie filmmakers since the mid-1990s. It promotes independent filmmaking through publicity in schools and by providing training courses.108 With the help of the government funding, the HKAC organizes the Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia (ifva; formerly the HKISFVA), which has been running since 1995.109 This annual event strives to ‘defend independent creative spirit’ and prides itself on being ‘Asia’s pioneering force in short film, animation and media arts’.110 The ifva has an ‘Awards’ section and a ‘Festival’ section. While the ‘Awards’ section mainly allows creative talents from Hong Kong and other parts of Asia to enter their creative works in the annual competition, the ‘Festival’ section shows the works of the award finalists to the paying public. Over the years, the ifva has become the springboard for Hong Kong’s indie filmmakers and their works to

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become known and gather praise from peers and audiences. For example, Wong Chun, who won the first prize in the ifva’s open category in 2013 for his debut short film 6th March (2013), moved on to direct Mad World (Hong Kong, 2016). Telling the story of a man suffering from bipolar disorder, Mad World was a multi-award winner at important film festivals and events in different places, including the 53rd Golden Horse Awards (2016) in Taiwan and the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards (2017) in Hong Kong. These two award ceremonies are the equivalents of the Academy Awards ceremony in their respective territories. Mad World also did excellently at the domestic box office, earning HK$16.9 million (£1.8 million or US$2.2 million) on a budget of HK$2 million (£0.2 million or US$0.3 million). The film was sponsored by the HKSAR government via the First Feature Film Initiative under the Hong Kong Film Development Fund (HKFDF).111 Mad World was ranked the highest grossing purely Hong Kong film at the domestic commercial box office in 2017.112 It also enjoyed the longest screening period (sixty-three days) of all purely Hong Kong films released that year in the city’s mainstream cinema network. Internationally acclaimed Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To founded the Fresh Wave Film Festival Limited in order to organize the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival (Fresh Wave ISFF). This initiative began shortly after Johnnie To was appointed chairman of the Film and Media Arts group at the HKADC in 2005.113 Inaugurating in 2006, the Fresh Wave ISFF is an annual event, which ‘aims to promote and encourage local short film production, and to discover and nurture young talents by providing funding support and a platform for showcasing their work, while enhancing their technical skills and quality through training’.114 The Fresh Wave ISFF was initially held as part of the HKIFF. It separated from the HKIFF after four years, but continued to be organized by the HKADC. After the tenth edition of the Fresh Wave ISFF, it became independent, headed by Johnnie To.115 With a strong presence of creative labourers from the local film industry on its board of directors, who serve as mentors for qualified festival participants, the Fresh Wave ISFF has since received financial support from both public and private sources. While the source of public funding includes the HKADC, private support has come from the Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust, among others. The festival is a cultural partner of the HKAC’s ifva. Like the ifva, the Fresh Wave ISFF also features a competition section that encourages the participation of young and aspiring filmmakers (aged eighteen to thirty-five).116 Many creative labourers active in Hong Kong and

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nearby regions have entered their early works in competitions at the ifva or the Fresh Wave ISFF, or at both. Winners of the awards later found job opportunities in different positions in the Hong Kong film industry. Several of them, e.g., Jevons Au, Frank Hui and Vicky Wong, were employed by Johnnie To’s independent production company Milkyway Image (see Chapter 3). Stage 3: 2010s The latest development of Hong Kong’s independent cinematic tradition signified and witnessed another important change of trajectory of the city’s film industry, which seemed to have stabilized after the upheavals it underwent in the previous two decades. The total annual number of outputs from this industry was around fifty to sixty films, according to official records, which might not be absolutely accurate (see Chapter 2). However, the film industry of this period also experienced unprecedented impacts from the larger political-economic and sociocultural developments in and outside the geopolitical boundaries of Hong Kong, forcing it to drastically readjust its ways of doing things. This period came in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (2007–8), from which Hong Kong recovered successfully.117 Within Hong Kong society, however, this decade saw Hongkongers’ continuous struggles to negotiate their sociocultural and political identities, especially their ongoing request for the right to elect the head of the local government (known as the Chief Executive of the HKSAR) by universal suffrage. Hong Kong’s universal suffrage is stipulated in Article 45 of the Hong Kong Basic Law (the constitutional document of the HKSAR), but has still not been implemented.118 Sociocultural and political negativity and disappointments in Hong Kong society were further aggravated by the incompetence of the local government in handling sensitive and controversial matters of current affairs in the 2010s. The more prominent issues are listed chronologically, with brief explanation in parentheses about the resulting controversies and/or legacies, as follows.119 ● 2010: The construction of the Hong Kong Express Rail Link (controversy: huge expenses, land preservation and Sinicization, etc.) ● 2010s: The construction of the third runway of the Hong Kong International Airport and the North East New Territories New

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Development Areas Planning (controversy: huge expenses; environmental concerns; suspected collusion between the local government and the business sector, specifically for the new development planning) 2012: The proposed introduction of ‘Moral and National Education’ in the school curriculum (controversy: grassroots worries and concerns about political brainwashing of school children) 2013: The Hong Kong dock strike (legacy: one of the longestrunning industrial actions in Hong Kong, which is among the world’s busiest ports) 2014: The Umbrella Movement (controversy/legacy: civilians fighting for genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong) 2016: Mongkok civil unrest (legacy: one of the worst civil unrests in the recent history of Hong Kong, with violent clashes between the local police and civilians) 2019: The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement (controversy/legacy: two million civilians in Hong Kong took to the streets to protest against the HKSAR government’s proposal of this law and, subsequently, a series of sizable street protests that lasted for more than a year into most of 2020; the protests have still not officially ended by the time of writing) (see more in Chapter 4).

During the 2010s, the polarization of the Hong Kong film industry, as reflected in filmmakers engaging between China–Hong Kong film coproductions and locally produced purely Hong Kong films, continued from the previous few years after the CEPA was concluded. Established local filmmakers, such as Peter Chan, set up a mainland base and practically worked from there, leaving local voids for new and young independent filmmakers to fill. The new filmmakers were eager to engage in various film genres, including features, shorts and documentaries, even on very small budgets. Many attended to local subject matter that would interest a domestic audience, Hongkongers living overseas, international film festivalgoers and other admirers of Hong Kong cinema. Among those purely Hong Kong films, the spectrum of works broadened greatly: some of the films were highly commercial and yet many of these were also indie productions. The latter took on a more advanced form as public awareness of such cinematic practices grew. Although they experienced huge financial, political-economic and sociocultural difficulties, these indie filmmakers were enthusiastic to express themselves, and

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what they saw in society, through film. In the process of finding their own ways to survive, these new indie filmmakers of the 2010s turned themselves into unexpected powerhouses. Their films prompted changes in the establishments, which they had had no intention to challenge directly. For example, the importance of these filmmakers and their films was acknowledged through local film awards, and greater support and collaboration were provided to them under different (public and private) funding schemes. This book testifies to the bravery and resilience of these indie filmmakers. It shows how their directorial intents and visions, their works and ways of operating began to have a positive influence on contemporaneous, and hopefully, future, filmmakers and audiences in Hong Kong and overseas.

On the Research and the Book This book is a standalone research-based monograph devoted to my study of Hong Kong’s new indie cinema of the 2010s. As I mentioned above when conceptualizing the discussions on independent cinemas, my theoretical framework in this book is mainly based on the lines of enquiry often found in the political economy of film. While regularly emphasizing the geopolitics of Hong Kong and the power relations among different stakeholders in and outside the Hong Kong film industry, my work is further informed by an array of academic traditions related to film studies, including film industry studies (specifically on film policy, film labour, film festivals), identity politics (of Hongkongers, especially the ethnic Chinese community in Hong Kong), transnational cinema, diaspora studies and diasporic filmmaking (particularly accented cinema), and Sinophone studies. However, readers are also encouraged to treat this work as a sister book to New Hong Kong Cinema, in which I focus on other areas of the Hong Kong film industry of an earlier period, and with a different social-cultural-political emphasis. I mainly conducted qualitative research for this monograph. The primary research consisted of contextual analysis of the Hong Kong film industry and textual analysis of the films under close examination. My research particularly emphasized the political-economic and sociocultural impacts of the films on the continuous sustainability of the local film industry at a crucial time in the city’s most recent history. Research data were collected from multiple publicly available sources written in English,

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simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. Besides the films under discussion, which were my main sources of information, other sources included the official websites of separate departments and units of the HKSAR government, HKSAR government policy papers, official box-office statistics published by the HKSAR government and its film-related agents, official websites of different associations related to the Hong Kong film industry, marketing and screening announcements for individual Hong Kong new indies via their official websites and official Facebook pages, news reports in various local Hong Kong newspapers and the international film trade press (only their latest versions and latest post dates, if available online, are quoted in this book), online archives of major international and themed film festivals in East Asia and the West (for tracking Hong Kong new indies’ festival participation), etc. Online information sources, except online academic journals, are cited alongside my dates of access in corresponding endnotes and bibliographical entries. Official company websites, and films’ official websites and their official Facebook pages are cited in endnotes only and not in Bibliography. My research for this book and writing began shortly before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting restrictions adversely affected my original research trips between the UK (where I am based) and Hong Kong. In addition, with the radical political changes taking place in Hong Kong under the new ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ (officially known as ‘the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’; passed on 30 June 2020), online mass media outlets that used to carry many informative media reports on Hong Kong cinema are now mostly defunct.120 These conditions affected, directly or indirectly, the amount of raw data I could collect for my analysis. Nevertheless, I believe that the findings from my primary and secondary research are sufficient to show the essential characteristics of Hong Kong new indies and the trend in the workings of the Hong Kong film industry amid those of other film industries around the world. The following chapters (except Chapter 7 Conclusion) all have similar internal structures, aimed to facilitate my discussion of how Hong Kong’s new indie cinema thrived, against enormous difficulties, to become extremely important for the Hong Kong film industry in general. Each chapter starts with a piece of prominent news or incident that took place in the local film industry between the early 2000s and the early

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2020s. The news or incident is then followed by a dissection of critical approaches and concepts associated with the themes of the chapter. The third section provides specific information and case studies related to the chapter themes that characterize Hong Kong’s new indie cinema. I wrap up my investigation in each chapter with a relatively short section of concluding remarks. Chapter 2 traces the three main elements that were woven into the fabric of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s: (1) the HKSAR government’s film policy, (2) the collaboration between the local government and local mainstream film industry bodies, (3) the mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks in Hong Kong. There are empirical reasons to believe that, in the 2010s, the local film industry and its internal structure were largely driven by the HKSAR government’s film policy initiatives, which did not indicate a systematic and long-term planning of support for the film sector. Based on a number of academic studies on film policy written by scholars such as Michael Curtin, Albert Moran and Giuseppe Richeri, I question how the so-called mainstream and independent segments of the local film industry were defined and confined. This chapter establishes that the HKSAR government was largely responsible for the consolidation of the so-called ‘mainstream’ segment of the local film industry. Nonetheless, this segment was constructed arbitrarily by the local authorities with the help of local mainstream film industry bodies, e.g., the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, and local mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks. The other, uncharted areas of the film industry, however large, were widely perceived as the ‘independent’ segment. In view of external and internal factors affecting the film industrial environment in Hong Kong in the 2010s, Chapter 3 analyses the politics of ‘succession and spread’ of creative labour in the Hong Kong film industry in that decade by spotlighting the precarious working conditions not only of professionals based in that local industry but also of many other film practitioners across the world. I then discuss further the political economy of film and communication, based on ideas by scholars Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson, Vincent Mosco, among others. In fighting against precarious working conditions, filmmakers of Hong Kong new indies were found working in different types of collective filmmaking, sometimes with their fellow new filmmakers, and often with veteran film practitioners as well. Collective filmmaking, as I argue, was a necessary

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means for them to survive in their field, thereby also contributing to ‘succession and spread’ for the long-term sustainability of the Hong Kong film industry. Chapter 4 goes on to anatomize the reasons behind the particular concerns with local subject matter in Hong Kong new indies. My argument in this chapter links with Hongkongers’ continuous identity negotiations, which I have been exploring ever since I first started researching contemporary Hong Kong cinema. Hongkongers’ identities, as manifested in the 2010s, were still driven by deep-seated diasporic (in space and time) mentalities. This was because the object of yearning of the Hong Kong ethnic Chinese community had shifted from a mythologized ancestral land called ‘China’ to their home ‘Hong Kong’ of its golden era, which was in the past (as informed by ideas by various theorists in the field of diaspora studies). However, the exploration of themes dealing with topics local to Hong Kong also manifested, in unique ways, the translocality of the films in question (with reference to ideas by scholars Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, Helena Y. W. Wu, and so on). The directorial treatments of the lives and stories of socially and culturally marginalized Hongkongers, the interactions between them and their city, and major moments in the history of Hong Kong, fully reveal the impactful directorial intents and visions of the new indie filmmakers. Continuing my examination of how Hong Kong new indie filmmakers expressed the identity politics of the local ethnic Chinese community, in Chapter 5 I discuss the use of language in Hong Kong new indies. Specifically, the use of Cantonese in many of these films advanced to a new level of application in Hong Kong films, arguably triggered by the linguistic requirements for Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films set by the CEPA and its several supplements for films seeking to benefit from this trade agreement between the PRC authorities and the HKSAR government. In several film cases, I study the use of language (as part of the narrative, the use of Cantonese swear words in film dialogues, and the mix of Cantonese with English) from a sociolinguistic angle, while building my scrutiny on academic concepts of ‘accented cinema’ (by Hamid Naficy) and the ‘Sinophone’ (by Shu-mei Shih). I welcome cautiously the use of Cantonese in these new indies (to express their sociocultural and political specificities), because I believe it could easily lead to mutual exclusiveness if not properly handled: it might then defeat the aim of these films to transcend the geopolitical boundaries of Hong Kong and reach international audiences.

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Chapter 6 looks at the distribution and exhibition of Hong Kong new indies. The use of alternative ways for local public release, together with international circulation, set these indies apart from other Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films, such as China–Hong Kong coproduced films (which utilize mainly mainstream distribution and exhibition networks to reach their target audiences). The alternative ways of circulation that Hong Kong new indies employed included film festivals, school and university campus screenings, community screenings, etc. The question arises, however, regarding the alternativeness of these alternative film circulation routes, most notably those going along the international film festival circuit. I explore the dynamics of this alternativeness based on various ideas from film festival studies. This investigation, I trust, helps shed light on the quality of alternativeness of other alternative and non-mainstream film distribution and exhibition methods that are much less studied than film festivals. The chapter shows, via three cases, the profound difficulties faced by post-2014 Hong Kong political documentaries during their circulation. I highlight their filmmakers’ exemplary perseverance and agility in empowering themselves and their films through their use of various unconventional methods of local/international distribution and exhibition. My investigation of Hong Kong’s new indie cinema concludes with Chapter 7, in which I summarize my overarching argument (and the arguments of separate chapters that elaborate and reinforce it). I maintain that, in the long run, the new indie cinema would become extraordinarily significant for the Hong Kong film industry.

Notes 1. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 2. Ruby Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 10–11. 3. The Shaw Brothers, being the last enormous film studio operating like a ‘movie empire’ in Hong Kong, stopped making films in 1986. See: Wong Ain-ling, ‘Preface’, in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), Preface; Grace Ng, ‘The Shaw Chronology’, in The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, ed. Wong Ain-ling (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2003), 304.

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4. Elizabeth Kerr, ‘What Makes Fruit Chan a Hong Kong Film Legend?’, Zolima CityMag, 9 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://zolimacitymag.com/what-makes-fruit-chan-a-hong-kong-filmlegend. 5. Esther M. K. Cheung, Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 9; R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 115–16. 6. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (online version), accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com. 7. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. 8. Doris Baltruschat and Mary P. Erickson, ‘The Meaning of Independence: Concepts, Contexts, and Interpretations’, in Independent Filmmaking around the Globe, ed. Doris Baltruschat and Mary P. Erickson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 6. 9. Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell, A Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 222–23. 10. Kuhn and Westwell, Dictionary, 222. 11. Kuhn and Westwell, Dictionary, 222. 12. Kuhn and Westwell, Dictionary, 222. 13. See: Discussion of ‘independent’, ‘indie’, ‘indiewood’ in Yannis Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 225–26, 247, 288–90. See also: Yannis Tzioumakis, ‘An Increasingly Global Presence: Contemporary American Independent Cinema outside the United States’, in Independent Filmmaking around the Globe, ed. Doris Baltruschat and Mary P. Erickson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 19–38. 14. See: For example, the use of the word in Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999); Geoff King, Indie 2.0: Change and Continuity in Contemporary American Indie Film (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013); Anna Backman Rogers, American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and the Crisis Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito, ‘Introduction’, in DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film, ed. Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 4. 15. In this book, I use the ‘PRC’ as the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. I also use the terms ‘PRC’, ‘China’ and ‘mainland China’ interchangeably to indicate the geopolitical setting of this nation state. 16. Janet Wasko, ‘The Political Economy of Film’, in A Companion to Film Theory, ed. Toby Miller and Robert Stam (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), 227.

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17. Janet Wasko, ‘Revisiting the Political Economy of Film’, in The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics, paperback ed., ed. Yannis Tzioumakis and Claire Molloy (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 67. 18. Wasko, ‘Revisiting’, 67. 19. Wasko, ‘The Political Economy of Film’, 228. 20. Toby Miller, ‘Geopolitics and Cinema’, in The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics, paperback ed., ed. Yannis Tzioumakis and Claire Molloy (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 29–30. 21. Miller, ‘Geopolitics’, 30. 22. Alexandra Stevenson and Tiffany May, ‘With Each New Crisis in Hong Kong, Pressure Built on a Beijing Loyalist’, The New York Times, 6 April 2022, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/ 04/03/world/asia/hong-kong-carrie-lam-covid.html. 23. Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 12. 24. Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 1. 25. Geoff King, American Independent Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 2–3. 26. Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 2. 27. John Berra, ‘Introduction’, in Directory of World Cinema: American Independent, ed. John Berra (Bristol: Intellect, 2010), 6. 28. Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 10. 29. Berra, ‘Introduction’, 6; Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 12. 30. Georg Szalai, ‘ViacomCBS Closes Acquisition of 49 Percent Miramax Stake in $375 Million Deal’, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 April 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ news/viacomcbs-closes-acquisition-miramax-stake-375-million-deal-128 6478. See also: Paramount’s official website, https://www.paramount. com (accessed 19 December 2022). 31. Levy, Cinema of Outsiders, 4. 32. Brent Lang, ‘Russell Schwartz out as Relativity EuropaCorp Marketing President (EXCLUSIVE)’, Variety, 25 November 2014, accessed 19 December 2022, https://variety.com/2014/film/news/russell-sch wartz-out-as-relativity-europacorp-marketing-president-exclusive-120 1331334. 33. Scott MacDonald, Canyon Cinema: The Life and Times of an Independent Film Distributor (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 2. 34. Michael Curtin, Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 14–19. 35. Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 225–26, 247, 288–90; Tzioumakis, ‘Global Presence’, 19–38.

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36. Rogers, American Independent Cinema, 19, note 1. 37. For film independence being a dynamic quality, see: King, American Independent Cinema, 2005. 38. Levy, Cinema of Outsiders, x. 39. Levy, Cinema of Outsiders, 5. 40. Levy, Cinema of Outsiders, 6. 41. Levy, Cinema of Outsiders, 501. 42. David Hamilton, ‘Foreword: Producing Independently in a Global Industry’, in Independent Filmmaking around the Globe, ed. Doris Baltruschat and Mary P. Erickson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), vii–viii. 43. Esther M. K. Cheung, ‘Dialogues with Critics on Chinese Independent Cinemas’, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 49 (Spring 2007), https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/chi naInt-Cheung/text.html. 44. Li Yang, ‘The New Filmmakers Redefining Chinese Independent Cinema’, Sixth Tone, 4 June 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002398/the-new-filmmakersredefining-chinese-independent-cinema#. 45. Li Y., ‘The New Filmmakers’. 46. Tingting Song, ‘A New Definition for Today’s Chinese Independent Cinema’, Ejournalist 9, no. 1 (2009): 167. 47. Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis, ‘Re-nationalizing China’s Film Industry: Case Study on the China Film Group and Film Marketization’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2, no. 1 (2008): 37–51. 48. E. M. K. Cheung, ‘Dialogues with Critics’. 49. E. M. K. Cheung, ‘Dialogues with Critics’. The critic quoted is Ou Ning, founder of the film appreciation organization U-theque in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the PRC. This cineaste club is one of those that organize film screening of pirated classics and works by emerging Chinese independent filmmakers to promote an alternative film culture that is not approved by the authorities in the PRC. See also: Jinying Li, ‘From Dbuffs to the D-generation: Piracy, Cinema, and an Alternative Public Sphere in Urban China’, International Journal of Communication 6 (2012): 542–63. 50. Chris Fuchs, ‘China Censors Indie Cinema’, Taipei Times, 30 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, http://www.taipeitimes.com/ News/feat/archives/2013/10/30/2003575715; Guo Rui and Phoebe Zhang, ‘China’s Biggest Independent Film Festival Forced to Suspend Operations Indefinitely’, South China Morning Post, 17 February 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soc iety/article/3045614/chinas-biggest-independent-film-festival-forcedsuspend.

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51. J. Li, ‘From D-buffs’, 543–46. 52. Zhang Z. and Zito, ‘Introduction’, 4. 53. Chris Berry, ‘The Death of Chinese Independent Cinema?’, The Asia Dialogue, Asia Research Institute, the University of Nottingham, 3 July 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://theasiadialogue.com/ 2017/07/03/the-death-of-chinese-independent-cinema. 54. Jian Lin, ‘Chinese Independent Filmmaking and Precarious Creative Labour’, China Creative, 30 November 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://chinacreative.humanities.uva.nl/chinese-independent-fil mmaking-and-precarious-creative-labour. 55. Alan Evans and Agencies, ‘China Passes Law to Ensure Films “Serve the People and Socialism”’, The Guardian, 8 November 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/ 08/china-passes-film-industry-law-box-office-fraud. 56. Mathew Scott, ‘New Film Law Casts Shadow over Giant Chinese Market’, Variety, 17 May 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// variety.com/2017/biz/news/new-film-law-casts-shadow-over-giant-chi nese-market-feng-xiaogang-1202430869. 57. Chris Berry and Lisa Rofel, ‘Alternative Archive: China’s Independent Documentary Culture’, in The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record, ed. Chris Berry, Lu Xinyu and Lisa Rofel (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 136–37. 58. Levy, Cinema of Outsiders, 57; E. M. K. Cheung, ‘Dialogues with Critics’; Judith Pernin, ‘Filming Space/Mapping Reality in Chinese Independent Documentary Films’, China Perspectives, no. 1 (2010): 22, http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/5052; J. Li, ‘From D-buffs’, 554; Dan Edwards, Independent Chinese Documentary: Alternative Visions, Alternative Publics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 96–126; Stephen Heyman, ‘Zhang Zanbo: A Chinese Documentary Filmmaker Returns to His Roots’, New York Times, 9 September 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.nyt imes.com/2016/09/09/arts/international/zhang-zanbo-a-chinese-doc umentary-filmmaker-returns-to-his-roots.html; Tzioumakis, American Independent Cinema, 167–68, 173; Huimin Deng, ‘Talking Heads in Chinese Independent Cinema: Discourses and Speaking Rights’, Social Semiotics (2 December 2019): 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1080/103 50330.2019.1694401. 59. Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929– 1968 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968); John Caughie, ed., Theories of Authorship: A Reader (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 61–67; Stephen Crofts, ‘Authorship and Hollywood’, in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill and Pamela Church

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60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

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Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 310–24; Kuhn and Westwell, Dictionary, 25–27. Ran Ma, Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020). R. Ma, Independent Filmmaking, 22. R. Ma, Independent Filmmaking, 69–71, 73. R. Ma, Independent Filmmaking, 80. R. Ma, Independent Filmmaking, 82. R. Ma, Independent Filmmaking, 86. Lars Gustaf Andersson and John Sundholm, The Cultural Practice of Immigrant Filmmaking: Minor Immigrant Cinemas in Sweden, 1950– 1990 (Bristol: Intellect, 2019). Andersson and Sundholm, The Cultural Practice, 14, 41. Young-a Park, Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Post-authoritarian South Korea (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015). Park, Unexpected Alliances, 6–7. Park, Unexpected Alliances, 24. Park, Unexpected Alliances, 20. Park, Unexpected Alliances, 24, 108–36. Park, Unexpected Alliances, 14. Benjamin McKay, ‘Auteur-ing Malaysia: Yasmin Ahmad and Dreamed Communities’, in Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia, ed. May Adadol Ingawanij and Benjamin McKay (New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2012), 107–19. McKay, ‘Auteur-ing Malaysia’, 109. McKay, ‘Auteur-ing Malaysia’, 113, 119. Zhang Z. and Zito, ‘Introduction’, 21–22. Zhang Z. and Zito, ‘Introduction’, 21. Zhang Z. and Zito, ‘Introduction’, 21. Richard Vine, ‘What Is Indie Cinema?’, The Guardian, 4 November 2008, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/ film/filmblog/2008/nov/04/what-is-indie-cinema. May Adadol Ingawanij, ‘Introduction: Dialectics of Independence’, in Glimpses of Freedom: Independent Cinema in Southeast Asia, ed. May Adadol Ingawanij and Benjamin McKay (New York: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2012), 4. Keith Richburg, ‘How Hong Kong’s Film Industry Got Shanghaied’, The Washington Post, 9 July 1995, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/1995/07/09/howhong-kongs-film-industry-got-shanghaied/dbba5f5c-6d93-4dfe-a49708a7fcf7e422; ‘Hong Kong’s Film Industry Is Worth Backing’, South China Morning Post, 20 March 2017, accessed 19 December 2022,

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83.

84.

85.

86. 87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

92. 93. 94.

95. 96. 97.

https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2080338/ hong-kongs-film-industry-worth-backing. Chan Ching-wai, The Structure and Marketing Analysis of Hong Kong Film Industry (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Film Biweekly Publishing House Limited, 2000), 457. Vincent Chui (narration) (recorded by Enoch Tam Yee-lok), ‘Going Indie—The 10th Anniversary of Hong Kong Independent Film Festival’, in On Earth We Stand: Hong Kong Independent Film Festival, 2008–2017 , ed. Enoch Tam Yee-lok and Cheung Tit-leung (Hong Kong: Typerseter Publishing Company, 2017), 177–78. Kristof Van Den Troost, ‘Interview with Vincent Chui: Hong Kong Independent Filmmaker and Artistic Director of Ying E Chi’, Offscreen 25, issue 2–3 (March 2021), https://offscreen.com/view/Interview_ with_Vincent_Chui. Source: ‘About YEC’, Ying E Chi’s official website (English), http://yin gechi.org (accessed 19 December 2022). Vincent Chui, ‘Foreword’, in The 13th Edition of the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival Programme Booklet (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Independent Film Festival, 2021), https://www.hkindieff.hk/HKindi eff_13th_booklet.pdf (accessed 19 December 2022). Chan C.-w., The Structure, 599. Chan C.-w., The Structure, 599. Source: ‘About Us’, Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment (Holdings) Limited’s official website (English), https://www.osgh.com.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2000), 68. Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), 80. Mette Hjort, Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 3–4. Source: ‘Milestones’ under ‘About Us’, Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment (Holdings) Limited’s official website (English), https:// www.osgh.com.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Chan C.-w., The Structure, 457. Chan C.-w., The Structure, 605. Sherman Chau, ‘Shaw Bros Expands Movie City Studio Plans’, Screen Daily, 31 May 2001, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scr eendaily.com/shaw-bros-expands-movie-city-studio-plans/405850.art icle; ‘Chengtian Completes Takeover of Golden Harvest’, Screen Daily, 23 July 2009, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily. com/chengtian-completes-takeover-of-golden-harvest/5003847.article; Tsang Siu-wan, ‘The Hollywood under Diamond Hill’ (in traditional

1

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100. 101.

102. 103.

104.

105.

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Chinese), Sing Tao Daily, 16 December 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hk.news.yahoo.com/鑽石山下荷里活-名筆論語-曾肇弘221122482.html [Original URL now defunct: https://std.stheadline. com/supplement/article/1929559/副刊-ArtCan-鑽石山下荷里活-名筆 論語-曾肇弘]. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 195–96. Source: ‘CEPA’, the Trade and Industry Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 11. Liz Shackleton, ‘Nansun Shi Looks back at Four Decades of Taking Chinese Films Overseas’, Screen Daily, 21 October 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/news/nansun-shi-looksback-at-four-decades-of-taking-chinese-films-overseas/5143998.article. Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (New York: State University of New York Press, 2013), 100–1. See also the website ‘Hong Kong Women Filmmakers’ that provides information of the careers of these filmmakers from the political Handover in 1997 to 2020. This website was established by a group of researchers, led by Gina Marchetti, at the University of Hong Kong to ‘document the contribution women filmmakers […] to Hong Kong film culture during this time and situate their work against the backdrop of recent Hong Kong history and politics’ (Source: https://hkwomenfi lmmakers.wordpress.com; accessed 19 December 2022). Many women filmmakers under their study are ‘independent’ filmmakers. Mirana May Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, ‘Hong Kong Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalization and Mainlandization: Hong Kong SAR New Wave as a Cinema of Anxiety’, in A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti and Esther C. M. Yau (West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 89–115; Ruby Cheung, ‘Ten Years : An Unexpected Watershed of TwentyFirst-Century Hong Kong Film Industry’, Frames Cinema Journal 15 (June 2019), https://framescinemajournal.com/article/ten-years-anunexpected-watershed-of-twenty-first-century-hong-kong-film-industry. May Fung, ‘Creativity. Independence. Hong Kong’, in Hong Kong Panorama, 96–97 (Hong Kong: The Urban Council of Hong Kong, 1997), 45. Ruby Cheung, ‘Corporatising a Film Festival: Hong Kong’, in Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies with College Gate Press, 2009), 103.

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107. Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, The 37th Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, 2013), 288. 108. Yeung Yin-lin, ‘Explorations on the Road of Independence’, in Hong Kong Panorama, 2001–2002 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Development Council, 2002), 132. 109. Source: ‘About Us’, Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia’s official website (English), https://ifva.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 110. Source: ‘About Us’, Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia’s official website (English), https://ifva.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 111. Source: The Hong Kong Film Development Council’s official website (English), https://www.fdc.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 112. Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, Hong Kong Films Industry Data, 2017 (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, no date), 27. 113. Kevin Ma, ‘Fresh Wave’, the Far East Film Festival, Udine, no date, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.fareastfilm.com/eng/ archive/catalogue/2012/fresh-wave-short-film/?IDLYT=31711. 114. Source: Fresh Wave Film Festival Limited’s official website (English), https://www.freshwave.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 115. Hong Kong Arts Development Council, ‘Fresh Wave 10th Anniversary Cum Award Presentation Ceremony / Fresh Wave Goes Independent / Igniting Youth Force into the Film Industry’, press release, 21 December 2015, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hkadc. org.hk/en/whats-on/press-release/fresh-wave-10th-anniversary-cumaward-presentation-ceremony-fresh-wave-goes-independent-ignitingyouth-force-into-the-film-industry; K. Ma, ‘Fresh Wave’. 116. Kevin Ma, ‘Johnnie To: The Man, the Movies, the Mission’, Discovery, Cathay Pacific Airways Limited, 13 February 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://discovery.cathaypacific.com/in-search-ofhong-kongs-next-new-wave. 117. Sources: ‘2008 Economic Background and 2009 Prospects’, ‘2009 Economic Background and 2010 Prospects’, ‘2010 Economic Background and 2011 Prospects’, under ‘Economic Report’, Hong Kong Economy of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.hkeconomy.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 118. Source: Basic Law, the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 119. Georgia McCafferty and Esther Pang, ‘Hong Kong Dock Strike Cripples World’s Third Busiest Port’, CNN , 4 April 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/03/world/asia/hong-kongdock-strike/index.html; ‘Timeline Related to HKIndie FF/Hong Kong Independent Film’, in On Earth We Stand: Hong Kong Independent

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Film Festival, 2008–2017 , ed. Enoch Tam Yee-lok and Cheung Tit-leung (Hong Kong: Typerseter Publishing Company, 2017), 312–27; Maggie Hiufu Wong, ‘The Future of Hong Kong International Airport’, CNN , 13 September 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://edition. cnn.com/travel/article/hong-kong-international-airport-future/index. html; Holmes Chan, ‘Hong Kong Northeast New Territories Land Activists Win Final Appeal, Freed Immediately’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp. com/2018/09/07/hong-kong-northeast-new-territories-land-activistswin-final-appeal-freed-immediately; Karen Cheung, ‘Protester Violence and Police Reaction to Mong Kok Unrest Condemned by Political and Activist Groups’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp.com/2016/02/09/protester-vio lence-in-mong-kok-and-police-reaction-condemned-by-political-and-act ivist-groups. 120. The passing of the ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ is regarded as one of the direct consequences of the measures taken by the mainland Chinese and HKSAR authorities against a series of pro-democracy street protests that took place in Hong Kong in 2019–20. These street protests were triggered by the ‘Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019’ (in short, the ‘Hong Kong Extradition Bill 2019’), proposed and later withdrawn by Carrie Lam, the then chief executive of the HKSAR. They were initially peaceful protests that later became more radical. Since it was passed, the ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ has been controversial with its vagueness and worldwide coverage in four areas of crimes, including ‘secession’, ‘subversion’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security’. The interpretation of this law and the crimes rests mainly with the authorities. A number of local, Chinese-language, pro-democracy mass media outlets (e.g., Apple Daily, Citizen News, Stand News ) stopped operation permanently after local government crackdowns under this new law. See: Rhoda Kwan and Emma Graham-Harrison, ‘Hong Kong Media Outlet Stand News to Close after Police Raid’, The Guardian, 29 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.the guardian.com/world/2021/dec/29/hong-kong-police-arrest-six-jou rnalists-from-independent-media-outlet-stand-news; Edmond Ng and James Pomfret, ‘Hong Kong Pro-democracy Stand News Closes after Police Raids Condemned by U.N., Germany’, Reuters, 29 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.reuters.com/bus iness/media-telecom/hong-kong-police-arrest-6-current-or-former-staffonline-media-outlet-2021-12-28.

CHAPTER 2

The Fabric of 2010s Hong Kong Film Industry

Chapter Introduction Ever since the long-term recession of the Hong Kong film industry began in 1994,1 this industry has been regarded by different film practitioners and critics as performing so poorly in terms of box-office earnings and audience market share that it would not survive very long. Negative assertions such as ‘Hong Kong cinema is dying’ or ‘Hong Kong cinema is dead’ could easily be found in public discourses.2 Those discouraging thoughts would be associated with the fact that many film professionals, who were once part of the prosperous Hong Kong film industry, had given up the Hong Kong film audience market. They had gone elsewhere to continue their filmmaking careers, most notably to mainland China, under the film industry provisions stipulated in the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) and its ten supplements.3 Yet, whenever such unenthusiastic comments were made, contrary voices were also heard. One of the latest episodes of public debates over the uncertain future of Hong Kong cinema occurred, mainly online, between Stephen Shiu (aka Shiu Yeuk-yuen) and Neo Yau (aka Yau Hawk-sau). While Shiu, in his early seventies, commented negatively on this industry, Neo Yau, in his early thirties, displayed insurmountable passion for the film industry he was working in. Shiu is a veteran of the Hong Kong film industry. Since the 1970s, he has occupied different positions in various areas of Hong © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4_2

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Kong’s mass media, including film, television, comics, radio broadcast and so on. One of his major film endeavours in the 2010s was to produce 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (Christopher Suen, Hong Kong, 2011). The film is an erotic costume drama in 3D format, based loosely on the erotic Chinese novel The Carnal Prayer Mat. While the original novel was written by Li Yu in the seventeenth century, during the Qing Dynasty of Imperial China, the film adaptation was controversial in its own right with its large amount of sex and gory scenes as well as a cast of well-known Japanese adult-video actors. Made on a mid-budget (by Asian films’ standards) of HK$27.2 million (£2.9 million or US$3.5 million),4 the film generated volumes of negative comments when it was released, due to (what many viewers considered) its low artistic quality. Nonetheless, it allegedly aroused great interest and curiosity in its local and mainland Chinese audiences, the latter travelling down south to Hong Kong to watch the film, which was not publicly screened in China.5 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy topped the Hong Kong domestic film boxoffice charts at its first two opening weekends and subsequently earned worldwide box-office takings of around HK$80 million (£8.7 million or US$10.3 million).6 In 2013, Shiu co-founded Internet radio station Memehk (with broadcast outlets via YouTube), which has since become his main platform for commenting on current affairs in Hong Kong. Neo Yau, on the other hand, is a professional actor, a graduate from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Started his acting career in 2012, he received a breakthrough role as one of the male leads in the Hong Kong indie She Remembers, He Forgets (Adam Wong, Hong Kong, 2015). Since then, Neo Yau has had major acting roles in several highly controversial Hong Kong indies, such as the Self-Immolator segment in Ten Years (segment director: Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2015),7 With Prisoners (Wong Kwok-kuen, Hong Kong, 2017), and No. 1 Chung Ying Street (Derek Chiu, Hong Kong, 2018). All of them are fiction feature films with strong political subtexts. Neo Yau’s performance can also be found in local television series, online short films and stage plays. Like Shiu, in 2020 Neo Yau started to utilize online platforms, such as YouTube, to make his voice heard. His co-founded YouTube channel, Trial & Error, allows him and his business partners to air short video productions and commentaries on Hong Kong’s sociopolitical issues. The debates between Shiu and Neo Yau took place online in February 2021, initially via a virtual discussion room devoted to the Hong Kong

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film industry on Clubhouse (an invitation-only social media app), and subsequently on their own YouTube channels.8 Shiu was very negative about the future of the Hong Kong film industry, estimating that the possibility for it to return to a peak like the one it had reached in the 1980s was zero. He even qualified as ‘child’s play’ those online videos that featured young film professionals prominently. Neo Yau disagreed, believing that there was a bright future for Hong Kong films. Their debates over the future of the industry were widely reported in the local mass media (mainly those in Chinese language). Other famous figures in Hong Kong filmmaking, such as Johnnie To, also contributed their thoughts to these debates through different mass media.9 On the surface, the debates between Shiu and Neo Yau seemed to be intergenerational arguments, given their age difference and their differing amounts of experience in the local film industry. What I find particularly interesting is not the contents of the controversy, but what these two film professionals represented in the Hong Kong film industry. Their online rows provide a very interesting backdrop for us to understand the fabric of 2010s Hong Kong film industry, albeit indirectly, because: 1. both Shiu and Neo Yau were very active in the city’s film industry in the 2010s after many homegrown film professionals had moved north to mainland China and started making films catering mainly to the taste of the mainland Chinese audience; 2. with the large number of China–Hong Kong co-produced films made in the 2010s, Shiu and Neo Yau, who both insisted on taking part in purely local Hong Kong film productions, were effectively considered part of the Hong Kong film industry’s minority (which was characterized by independent, small- to medium-sized film productions lacking financial backing from China or any major film studios); 3. although ‘independent’, both film professionals also made full use of the city’s mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks to either earn handsome box-office takings for their films (in Shiu’s case) or enhance their personal fame (in both cases). And yet, both film professionals had quite opposite opinions on their own field of concern. How then shall we understand the environment of the Hong Kong film industry in which they worked?

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This chapter establishes three elements of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s as determining factors of how the industry operated in that decade. The elements in question are: the government film policy of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the collaboration between the local authorities and representative associations of Hong Kong’s film practitioners, and the city’s mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks. These were not the only elements of the industry at that time, but I argue that they were influential in the 2010s in outlining its fundamental framework, within which other elements (e.g., individual film practitioners, film-related training institutes, general film audience) existed and functioned. Strangely, the local government had at no point fully acknowledged the environment that these three most important elements jointly created, let alone follow up with well-thought-out official policies and plans for coordinating efforts to allow these elements to work smoothly together. Informed mainly by ideas from the political economy of media and film policy studies, I further argue that the fabric of 2010s Hong Kong film industry, weaved mainly by these three most important elements, prompted the emergence of a specific kind of independent filmmaking never seen before in the metropolitan city. I emphasize that it was not what these three major film-related infrastructural elements had helped provide, but what they had not yet done that allowed the Hong Kong indies of the 2010s to emerge from the fringes and fill the voids of the local film industry.

The Politics of Mainstreaming in the Hong Kong Film Industry So, will the Hong Kong film industry continue to live at least a little longer, if it is not dead yet? Instead of probing into a question that only time will answer, I am more interested in the configuration of the film industry in the most recent past, which laid the groundwork for the industry’s potential sustainability in the medium to long run. This configuration is complex, given the long history and frequent turns over the years in the evolutions of the local film industry, against a backdrop of continuous changes in the political-economic environment within and outside Hong Kong. A vantage point for studying the Hong Kong film industrial setup in the 2010s is to comprehend the divide between its socalled mainstream and minority sectors. In the following subsections, I

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first concentrate on the issues related to the seemingly mainstream film sector before reflecting on what is not in that sector (which can generally be regarded as the minority sector) in the concluding part of this chapter. Mainstream vs. Minority The debates between Shiu and Neo Yau on the future of the Hong Kong film industry indirectly suggested its demarcations during the 2010s, a time when both film professionals were very active. The industry is often perceived to consist of a commercially oriented mainstream sector and a minority sector. The latter has some profitmaking and some less profitmaking components. In recent years, independent cinema was thought to be a part of the second category of components in this minority sector, a point briefly touched upon by film scholars Enoch Tam Yee-lok, Vivian P. Y. Lee and Kenny K. K. Ng in their work on Hong Kong indies.10 The believed-to-be minority film sector in the 2010s also displayed a wide range of sociocultural and stylistic concerns, similar in this to other independent cinemas, such as American indies I discuss in the Introduction to this book. Despite the points film critics often focus on when discussing the mainstream and/or minority film industry segments in Hong Kong, the way films have been counted under the mainstream or the minority categories was, and still is, highly debatable. It is relatively easier to identify major qualities of the perceived mainstream segment of 2010s Hong Kong film industry, if we use only the degree of commercialization as a defining criterion and disregard the fact that ‘commercialization’ could be interpreted differently by different people and entities. Such commercialization was, in turn, a result of the dominance of certain elements in this industry of the 2010s, which saw a perennial hegemonic presence of the mainland Chinese or pan-Chinese mainstream film industrial elements. This phenomenon appeared in the early 2000s, a time characterized by an ever-increasing number of China– Hong Kong film co-productions, a continuous influx of mainland Chinese film finances, and mainland Chinese diegetic elements in Hong Kongrelated Chinese-language films, etc. All of these were made possible under the provisions of the CEPA, first signed in 2003. Critics call this phenomenon ‘Mainlandization’. Many of them, such as film scholars Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, and scholar in the field of Hong Kong studies Yiu-Wai Chu, use this term as a negative signifier to suggest a diminishing uniqueness of Hong Kong films

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at the periphery of the cultural and geopolitical ‘mainland’ of China.11 As Chu deems, for many of those China–Hong Kong co-produced films that garnered huge box-office earnings in China, ‘they were simply recycling the surplus value of Hong Kong cinema for the Mainland market’.12 Chu does not agree that such a China–Hong Kong film co-production model can sustain the continuous healthy development of the Hong Kong film industry over a long period of time.13 On the other hand, there are counterarguments, such as those proposed by film scholars Emilie Yuehyu Yeh and Shi-yan Chao, who believe that mainlandization under the CEPA helps ‘revive and extend signature creative strategies’ of the local film industry in Hong Kong.14 Mainlandization, according to another film scholar, Gary Bettinson, is ‘complementing’ and ‘expanding’ what was already there in this film industry.15 These counterarguments are valid if we take into consideration only a handful of well-established Hong Kong filmmakers and the ways they cope with a new filmmaking environment in mainland China. However, if a cinematic tradition is to maintain its long-term sustainability, it will need continuous inflows of new blood joining the league. In the case of the Hong Kong film industry, over the years, the new blood has come primarily from members of the Hong Kong population. They, in turn, have attracted various kinds of creative talent from various countries to migrate to Hong Kong and join them, seeking mutual learning opportunities, inspiration and continuous job opportunities. Communication scholar Michael Curtin calls this process the ‘trajectories of creative migration’,16 which works under his concept of ‘media capital’.17 According to Curtin, media capital could be both a geographical centre and an ‘accumulation of resources, talent, and reputation’.18 For Hong Kong cinema, the creative talent would include mostly those film professionals who are familiar with the past and present of local Hong Kong society. They would have developed a strong sense of belonging with respect to the place Hong Kong, their fellow Hongkongers (regardless of their nationalities), and the sociocultural environment. In terms of the film industry, these film professionals would be familiar with the specific production, distribution and exhibition milieu of Hong Kong, as well as with the tastes of domestic and international audiences of Hong Kong films (and not just the taste of the films’ mainland Chinese audience). The appeal to an international film audience was a major factor that conferred success on Hong Kong cinema on a global scale, especially during its last peak period in the 1980s and early 1990s. With this

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cinema’s previous transnational tendencies in mind, instead of mainlandization, I see a more holistic ‘Sinicization’ having been taking place over the past twenty years in the perceived mainstream sector of the Hong Kong film industry,19 which used to be a prime example in many academic studies of transnational cinemas.20 If the city’s degree of internationalization decreases, both Sinicization and mainlandization are likely to be there to neutralize the effects of ‘trajectories of creative migration’ in Hong Kong as an international media capital. Moreover, what the Hong Kong film industry has built over the years would deteriorate if film professionals working in its perceived mainstream sector could no longer acquire mutual learning effects and sustainable job opportunities, among other benefits of clustering together, due to a deficit of filmmakers migrating into the city, for instance, because they go to mainland China.21 Why Mainstreaming? Who Determines the Mainstream? Regardless of whether Sinicization or mainlandization was the prominent feature of the so-called mainstream sector in 2010s Hong Kong film industry, publicly available information shows the interactions of a number of factors that had brought the industry to this complex situation. Besides the CEPA as a major factor, other factors included the rapid development and prevailing trends in the global film industries, the regionalization of East Asian film sectors, the increasing consumer power of the mainland Chinese population, and the response of the local film professionals in Hong Kong to these national, regional and global trends.22 Their influences on the continuous development of the Hong Kong film industry, in turn, allowed it in the 2010s to play a special role in helping the Chinese national, East Asian regional, and global film industries move forward. In other words, the supposedly mainstream sector of 2010s Hong Kong film industry served as a ground for ongoing power struggles between these different factors at macro and micro levels. They have kept shaping this part of this film industry into what it was, what it currently is and what it will become. But for the specific situation in 2010s Hong Kong, I would argue that the HKSAR government was more instrumental than the other factors in consolidating and officializing the boundaries of the commercialized mainstream sector of this industry. In outlining new challenges for academic studies of media from a bird’s-eye view in the year of 2011, communication scholar Giuseppe Richeri put succinctly that the ‘media’ in general consisted of both the

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‘content’ they conveyed and the ‘vehicle’ (e.g., the networks and infrastructure transmitting the content).23 One line of academic concerns that the author highlighted was the involvement of the state and public institutions in supporting and regulating the ‘media’. According to Richeri, in democratic societies such as those in Europe, the state should regulate the ownership of the media (in order to avoid abuses in the financial and political sectors of societies), monitor market concentration and enable pluralism in media and ideas, support the development of media industry, and ensure the general public’s access to media.24 This line of argument echoed what screen scholar Albert Moran observed back in 1996 in his ground-breaking anthology on film policy. As Moran noted, many nation states had provided the necessary protection and support for their film industries in the face of Hollywood’s global dominance.25 Throughout the 2010s, the HKSAR government effectively applied a similar approach to what these two scholars advocated,26 which is also found among the arguments put forward by film and media scholars based in Hong Kong in investigating specifically Hong Kong’s film policy. For example, in their study on the policies for sustaining the development of the Hong Kong film industry, scholars of mass media Joseph M. Chan, Anthony Y. H. Fung and Chun Hung Ng urge the HKSAR government to adopt a similar support approach to helping the industry.27 The authors emphasize the coordinating role that the HKSAR government needs to play in aligning all film-related individuals and entities to work towards re-creating a prosperous Hong Kong film industry. It is not surprising that national governments intervening in the development of their respective film industries would aim to utilize public resources effectively and efficiently to generate positive results, whether these are of a political, cultural and/or economic nature. The ways in which these governments operate to protect and support their film industries could be explained by the same ‘centripetal tendencies’ in the ‘logic of accumulation’ under the concept of ‘media capital’ that Curtin uses to explain how media corporations in capitalist economies have worked.28 The accumulation of useful resources, be they human, financial or natural, has over time allowed big corporates, such as major film studios, to refine their operations, achieve efficiency and continuously enhance their delivery in specific locales. Film industries based in Hollywood, Bollywood and Hong Kong are seen by Curtin as examples demonstrating these tendencies and the benefits of accumulation over a long stretch of

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time. Although what Curtin investigates are mainly film studios, governments operating in places that feature a capitalist economic system are also likely to see the benefits of the ‘logic of accumulation’, if they aim to provide support for their respective film industries. As Curtin propounds further, ‘Concepts such as “free flow” and “market forces” are in fact meaningless without self-conscious state interventions to fashion a terrain for commercial operations’.29 Understandably, then, the HKSAR government has made use of financial, institutional and infrastructural resources to support the local film industry since 1998,30 as announced through the first-ever policy address of Tung Chee-hwa, who was the first chief executive of the HKSAR (i.e., the government head of the HKSAR).31 The HKSAR government, while largely adopting the European model in formulating and implementing its film policy initiatives to provide various kinds of support for the local film industry, has also inevitably helped officialize and consolidate the boundaries of the industry’s ‘mainstream’ sector and what elements are supposed to be within them. These boundaries, which used to be blurred, now enable clearer segmentation of different film industrial sectors. The selective delineation of the boundaries of one sector in the local film industry could conveniently fulfil the purpose of the local government in allocating limited public resources to the film industrial segments. The economic advantages of such governmental help would, in turn, be maximized when the HKSAR government sees it, especially the financial kind, as a kind of investment, and not subsidies.32 Public resources would then be deemed allocated effectively, if not necessarily fairly. All this is in the vein of what Curtin regards that, ‘Media policy should intervene selectively to enhance productivity by providing infrastructural, educational, and financial resources that might stimulate further growth and they should facilitate transnational marketing and collaboration’.33 In addition, selective boundary delineation could help a clearly defined ‘mainstream’ sector of the Hong Kong film industry to achieve a segmental logic of accumulation (still in Curtin’s sense). It could also help officially acknowledge certain qualities of Hong Kong films, with the longer-term aim of consolidating Hong Kong film culture, which had already been highly recognizable across the globe. What academic studies, such as Curtin’s, have not commented much on is the state’s role in shaping specific segments of the said film and other media industries. It is worth noting that the segmenting of the Hong Kong film industry, whether deliberately done or not, by the HKSAR

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government only pertained to the perceived, commercialized mainstream film sector. What might be located outside this sector, where any possible elements made up the non-mainstream (aka minority) sector, had never been clearly defined by anyone. Moreover, the downside of taking care of only the commercialized mainstream sector was that the uncharted, believed-to-be minority, sector was left on its own. But what if this socalled minority sector tended to be more popular with the local and international audiences, but not necessarily with the mainland Chinese audience? What if the commercialized mainstream sector was used by the local film professionals as a short-term springboard to move on to more lucrative media capitals in the Greater China region, such as Beijing and Shanghai, thereby counteracting the positive effects of the logic of accumulation in the long run? These ‘what-if’ scenarios would be the voids that an overly mainstreamized film industry cannot fill. In the next section, I give details of how the officialization of the commercialized mainstream sector in the Hong Kong film industry was carried out by the HKSAR government in the 2010s via its film-related public policy initiatives. Extending from these policy initiatives were the intermittent collaboration between the local authorities and a representative association of Hong Kong’s film practitioners. Afterwards, I look closely at the film distribution and exhibition networks in Hong Kong, before concluding what would have been overlooked in the fabric of 2010s Hong Kong film industry.

Hong Kong’s Film Policy: Boundary Officialization Since the HKSAR government assumed the responsibility of providing support for the local film industry shortly after the political Handover, albeit not always enthusiastically and systematically, the government has also played the role of defining what the local film industry would include (and exclude) when it comes to accessing public resources. However, the much-needed delineation of the film industry for the purposes of allocating governmental resources has not been very direct from the beginning. This is evident in the annual policy addresses of the chief executives of the HKSAR over the years, ever since the first one given in 1997. Of the four chief executives that the HKSAR had between 1997 and 2019, three completed part or the whole of their terms in the

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2010s. Changes in government leadership did not lead to much alteration in the government’s perception of the local film industry as a major component of the Hong Kong economy. Public resources were allocated accordingly. However, the HKSAR government did not single-handedly officialize the boundaries of the ‘mainstream’ segment of the local film industry. The government also worked with some of the film industry bodies to designate what were supposed to be and not to be part of this ‘mainstream’ segment, which was actually quite arbitrarily determined. It was down to how much money the government wanted to put aside as funding and other support for that segment of the film industry, which the government and these film industry bodies helped officialize. Chief Executives’ Policy Addresses During Tung Chee-hwa’s two terms in office (first term: 1997–2002; the unfinished second term ended with Tung Chee-hwa’s resignation for alleged health reasons: 2002–5), three (in 1997, 1998, 2001) out of five of his policy addresses in his first term gave special attention to the local film industry.34 Unsurprisingly, Tung Chee-hwa’s emphasis was on the long-term commercial viability of the film sector. He did not add nuance to the definition of what the film sector actually included. In his policy addresses during his second term, the film industry was referred to more opaquely, being bunched together with not entirely related cultural and creative industries (in 2003–5). Tung Chee-hwa was succeeded by Donald Tsang (aka Tsang Yamkuen) (in office: serving the remaining term of Tung Chee-hwa’s in 2005–7; second term: 2007–12). As noted by Chu, Donald Tsang was a much more popular political figure in Hong Kong society, having served as a civil servant in the local government for thirty-eight years before becoming the chief executive of the HKSAR.35 The Hong Kongborn Donald Tsang, hailing from the grassroots level, represented the ‘Hong Kong spirit’ that his predecessor, the Shanghai-born Tung Cheehwa, coming from a very rich family, did not have. In his first two policy addresses, Donald Tsang continued Tung Chee-hwa’s film policy by grouping film with other cultural and creative industries. Similar to Tung Chee-hwa in his approach to the commercial side of the film industry, Donald Tsang did not specify what might be included in the film sector. It was only in his 2006–7 policy address that, for the first

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time, he briefly expressed concern for filmmakers in less advantaged positions in the context of Hong Kong’s cultural and creative industries. He said: ‘the Film Development Committee established last year [2005] has commissioned a strategic study which proposes that the Government should help resolve some of the problems faced by the film industry, especially budding or small and medium sized film makers ’ (my emphasis in italics).36 This concern for the less advantaged segment of the local film industry was arguably a positive move by the HKSAR government during the period of ‘Donaldization’,37 in which Donald Tsang’s government endeavoured to maintain strong governance of the city. This period was characterized by ‘efficiency’ and ‘open-mindedness’, to be amplified by positive public image campaigns (one of them being the ‘Brand Hong Kong’ programme). Though apparently trying to achieve what Tung Chee-hwa’s government had failed to do, the Donald Tsang administration was criticized by some, including Chu, for not paying enough attention to what ordinary people living in Hong Kong actually needed— in particular, the empowerment of the grassroots level.38 Chu cites the case of Donald Tsang using Web 2.0 as a way to convey messages to the public, but without allowing ‘innovation from below’.39 In Chu’s opinion, Donald Tsang’s policies for Hong Kong during his terms sided heavily with the upper class of the local society.40 As far as the development of the local film industry was concerned, the government’s attention for budding and small- to medium-scale filmmakers seemed to be very short-lived, as the intended assistance for these filmmakers was not mentioned anymore during the remainder of Donald Tsang’s term. Many of these filmmakers were involved in independent filmmaking at that time, when the commercialized ‘mainstream’ segment of the Hong Kong film industry was excited about making China–Hong Kong co-produced films for a much larger, remunerative mainland Chinese audience market.41 These co-produced films were, however, distributed in China as ‘mainland productions’ (their Hong Kong connection being downplayed).42 In other words, these films would not be of much help to promote Hong Kong’s own film culture, even if they did bring financial gains to those Hong Kong filmmakers and film companies involved in China–Hong Kong film co-productions. Meanwhile, there were continuous dialogues going on between the HKSAR government and the local film industry with regard to government assistance for film practitioners. Publicly available policy papers show

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that in the early 2000s, discussions were indeed held at the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau (CITB) of the HKSAR government on how to revitalize the Hong Kong film industry. The discussions were in response to the suggestions submitted by the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers in 2002.43 Following the HKSAR government’s internal restructuring, in 2007 the CITB was replaced by the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau (CEDB) of the HKSAR government.44 The CEDB was to take care of the creative industries as well, along with other areas of the city’s commercial and economic development.45 Leung Chun-ying became the third chief executive of the HKSAR on 1 July 2012. His first policy address in 2013, concerning Hong Kong cinema’s development, was in the same line as those of his two predecessors—namely, to group film with other, not directly related, cultural and creative industries, while separating it from ‘Arts and Culture’.46 Similar to his two predecessors, Leung Chun-ying obviously did not think of film as an art form but only as a commercial product, not to mention that he made no nuanced distinctions between different film genres and segmentations within the local film industry. Throughout his only term (2012–17), Leung Chun-ying’s major contributions to the development of the film industry included a few more monetary injections into the Hong Kong Film Development Fund (HKFDF), set up originally by Tung Chee-hwa’s government in 1999 with an initial sum of HK$100 million (£10.7 million or US$12.8 million).47 Interestingly, Leung Chun-ying’s first policy address announced that, under the First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) (a new scheme under the HKFDF), an additional sum of financial support was to be offered to new filmmakers, allowing them to make their own films. However, this initiative completely gave away what the HKSAR government thought about the local film industry and planned to shape it further into: a commercial entity.48 The HKFDF is now under the administration of the Hong Kong Film Development Council (HKFDC), set up in April 2007 under the Donald Tsang administration.49 The HKFDF is also part of the HKSAR government’s policy initiatives to allocate public resources for cultural and creative industries. These industries are, in turn, coordinated by a dedicated government agency, the Create Hong Kong (CreateHK), which was set up in 2009 under the CEDB of the HKSAR government ‘as a dedicated agency to lead, champion and drive the development of our [Hong Kong’s] creative industries. It also serves as the secretariat of the

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CSI [CreateSmart Initiative] and the FDF [Hong Kong Film Development Fund]’.50 The CreateHK started to be under the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau on 1 July 2022. Despite the intention of providing additional support for newcomers to the local film industry, the FFFI, officially set up in March 2013, was offered only to new film professionals working on fiction feature films, and not other types of films, e.g., feature-length documentaries and animations. As stated in a footnote in the introduction to the FFFI scheme on the HKFDC’s official website, ‘A feature film is a fictional narrative. It must be a film or digital film suitable for release in commercial cinemas and is not shorter than 80 minutes in running time. Animation films and documentaries are not considered as feature films under FFFI’.51 Effectively, then, the well-intentioned government support for new filmmakers has been put in place to define and confine the Hong Kong film industry to being a commercial industry producing feature-length fiction films only. Carrie Lam was the fourth chief executive of the HKSAR. She was also the last one in the 2010s (term: 2017–22). However, during her leadership in the last three years of the 2010s, she only attended to the matters of the local film industry in her policy addresses of 2017 and 2018 respectively. Similar to Donald Tsang’s career path, Carrie Lam had worked as a civil servant at the local government for thirty-seven years. During the last stage of her civil servant career before becoming the chief executive of the HKSAR, Carrie Lam built a (negative) public image of a mother/nanny figure representing the authorities.52 It was thus not surprising that her first policy address in 2017, as far as the film industry was concerned and in taking stock of her predecessor’s achievements, focused on nurturing new film talent. In the text version of this policy address, it mentions that: In the light of changes in the film market in the past decade, we will review the operation of the Film Development Fund this year with a view to driving the further development of the local film industry and nurturing more professionals for film production or post-production, so that the industry will be better able to respond to market needs.53

In 2018, Carrie Lam refocused the government’s attention to nurturing new film talent by boosting the FFFI scheme, established under Leung Chun-ying’s administration. In addition, Carrie Lam also suggested giving more support to training scriptwriters and film professionals

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specializing in film post-production. This move would be welcome by the local film industry; it nonetheless also continued further the HKSAR government’s approach of giving greater weight to commercially oriented feature-length fiction films than to the other film genres and forms (e.g., non-fiction films, shorts, animations) that often attract new filmmakers.54 The film industry had witnessed a surge of filmmaking by new directors working in different genres during the second half of the 2010s, when China–Hong Kong film co-productions did not prove a long-term solution for the start and development of their careers. In this context, Carrie Lam’s emphasis on talent nurturing in her policy address came across as too little, too late and lacking substance. The years 2017–19, in particular, saw a growing number of feature-length non-fiction films and shorts that were directors’ debuts. Some of these new filmmakers are notable documentarians, such as Chan Tze-woon, Nora Lam, Jill Li and Connie Lo (aka Lo Yan-wai) (see Chapters 4, 5, and 6 for more discussion on these filmmakers’ works).55 The films made in these several years would not be eligible for participation in the FFFI scheme because they did not have a fictional screenplay and/or because their running time was not long enough. Many of the films were inspired by the Umbrella Movement that arose in late 2014. Regardless of their nature and contents, these non-fiction films were undoubtedly part of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s. They went through the process of production, distribution and exhibition like in their life cycles of any other films. More importantly, they represented an important part of Hong Kong’s most recent local film culture. Yet, many of these films were not officially recognized by the local government for various reasons, known or unknown publicly. Some of them were not even acknowledged by representative organizations of the local film industry, which are supposed to represent filmmaking practitioners based in the city.56 I turn next to examine how the HKSAR government worked with a film industry organization to systemically disregard these films’ status as part of the Hong Kong film industry of the 2010s. Collaboration between the HKSAR Government and Film Industry Bodies Since 2013, the HKSAR government has worked with the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association (HKMPIA) to publish freely available annual statistical reports on the Hong Kong film industry via the

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official website of the CreateHK.57 The data were collected based on the HKMPIA’s definition of ‘Hong Kong movie’, which the HKSAR government also adopted. The seemingly conclusive definition of what the authorities understand by a ‘Hong Kong film’—a definition put together in a somewhat top-down manner—is, however, debatable. At the very least, it does not provide a comprehensible picture of Hong Kong cinema; this shortcoming, in turn, affects the kind of data and statistics on the local film industry that are being collected and made available to the general public via official channels. To begin with, while the CreateHK was set up in 2009 by the HKSAR government to handle the matters of film and other creative industries, the HKMPIA is one of the chief organizations representing the Hong Kong film industry. As far as the membership of the HKMPIA is concerned, it says on this organization’s official website that: Any company or individual engaged in film production or activities directly related to film production may become an MPIA member. The association has a total of 204 members, including producers, distributors and exhibitors, and individuals such as directors, scriptwriters, film critics and production executives. Film produced and exhibited among our members’ cover over 85% of the market share.58

This statement of membership does not further categorize whether these film professionals are supposed to be working in the ‘mainstream’ or ‘non-mainstream’ film sectors. Presumably then, anyone working in these specified film-practitioner positions on a full-time or part-time basis, and involved in any kinds of film productions, could become a member of this film industry organization and be represented by it. Nonetheless, when it comes to film works, they may or may not be found in the statistical reports published via the CreateHK website. This is due to the way in which ‘Hong Kong film’ has been defined by the HKMPIA since 2009, when this definition was first used.59 According to the HKMPIA website, in order for a film to be considered a ‘Hong Kong movie’, it must fulfil either of the following two requirements (‘Hong Kong movie’ is the English translation the HKMPIA uses, which is understood to be interchangeable with ‘Hong Kong film’ or ‘Hong Kong cinema’):

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(a) All the presenting companies involved in film production must be registered companies in Hong Kong (b) For partly presenting companies registered outside Hong Kong, both requirements must be fulfilled: 1. at least one of the presenting companies is registered in Hong Kong; AND 2. Hong Kong permanent residents should take up at least 50% or above of the listed effective post. The effective posts are film producer, director, script writer, actor or actress. ‘Effective post’ is any role taken up by human. E.g. Actor and actress in an animal documentary are not considered as effective post. For movie without script writer, either the film producer or the director must be Hong Kong permanent citizen. Under usual circumstance where there are five effective posts, at least three positions must be taken by Hong Kong permanent residents. In addition, the film shall last at least 60 minutes or longer and must be released in Hong Kong registered cinema. Film tickets shall be opened for public sales according to the stated release date (except the mid-night or advanced show).60

These requirements group together purely Hong Kong films (with production companies entirely based in Hong Kong), China–Hong Kong co-produced films (with at least one production company based in Hong Kong and some others based in mainland China), and foreign-Hong Kong co-produced films (with at least one production company based in Hong Kong and some others based in places outside Hong Kong and mainland China) all under the umbrella label ‘Hong Kong movie’. They immediately exclude several other categories of films that would also be part of Hong Kong cinema. These omitted films include Hong Kong short films (less than sixty minutes long), Hong Kong films that did not have a chance to be released theatrically in Hong Kong for whatever reasons but were released via other channels (e.g., DVDs), and films made about Hong Kong by filmmakers and their production companies based outside the city, for example, those made by emigrant Hong Kong filmmakers. There was no suchlike definition of ‘Hong Kong film’ given by any authoritative sources before the 2000s.61 This HKMPIA definition of Hong Kong film, which emphasizes the geographical places of origin of the films’ production companies and the location of the films’ theatrical release, is understood to have been endorsed and adopted by the HKSAR government without deviation when the CreateHK publishes the Hong

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Kong film industry statistical reports on its website. While the HKMPIA is responsible for compiling these statistics, the work is funded by the CreateHK. Labelled on the CreateHK website (English version) as ‘Hong Kong Films Industry Data’ of their respective years of concern, the reports are written in traditional Chinese script only. Its target readers are primarily the members of the HKFDC and the participants in the local film industry. It is noted in the reports that the Hong Kong film industry does not have a pre-production censorship or registration system. The box-office data are collected daily via a Hong Kong box-office data reporting system,62 which was co-launched by the HKMPIA and the Hong Kong Theatres Association Limited (HKTA) on 1 April 2013, under the Hong Kong Box Office Limited.63 For those interested in the workings of the Hong Kong film industry (and not just the target readers of these reports), these statistics compiled by the HKMPIA and published via a HKSAR government agency are very valuable in showing the trajectory of the Hong Kong film industry for the best part of the 2010s. This is especially so, as nothing similar and in such depth was previously available free of charge via local governmental channels. The free statistics also offer additions to the information on the Hong Kong film industry published regularly by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) in the form of research articles.64 The HKTDC is a statutory body ‘established in 1966 to promote, assist and develop Hong Kong’s trade’.65 Yet, it is not part of the local governmental structure. Examined closely, nevertheless, what is listed in detail in these statistical reports on the CreateHK website could invite queries as to why some and not all kinds of Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films are considered Hong Kong films, even when the unrecorded ones have fulfilled all the ‘Hong Kong movie’ requirements of the HKMPIA. There are also unexplained cases in the reports, when supposedly non-commercially oriented independent, purely Hong Kong films are listed alongside more commercially oriented independent, purely Hong Kong films, blurring the difference between highly commercial films and marginalized ones. For instance, as part of the minority segment of the Hong Kong film industry (because both are documentaries) and having been theatrically released via Hong Kong’s commercial cinemas, Yellowing (Chan Tzewoon, Hong Kong, 2016) is missing in the 2016 report, but Havana Divas (S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2018) is present in the 2018 report (see more about Yellowing in Chapter 6).66 Moreover, there are no explanations given on the CreateHK website or in these statistical reports as

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to why only the data on the local film industry since 2012, and not all the years of the 2010s, are publicly and freely available via government channels. Inasmuch as my purpose of identifying the boundaries of the ‘mainstream’ and ‘non-mainstream’ Hong Kong film sectors of the 2010s is concerned, these reports contain useful information on the Hong Kong film industry of the 2010s, while simultaneously introducing complications as to what are widely understood to be mainstream vs. non-mainstream films in the Hong Kong film industry. Let me go into more detail by presenting tables of source figures that I extracted from these statistical reports. Table 2.1 shows the trend of Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films theatrically released in Hong Kong as recorded by the HKMPIA. The column of Hong Kongrelated Chinese-language films on the furthest left shows all the recorded Hong Kong films. These are then subdivided into China–Hong Kong coproduced films, foreign–Hong Kong co-produced films, and purely Hong Kong films. Quantitatively, the figures indeed show a gloomy picture of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s, as the numbers of film productions on the authorities’ radar do not show any sign of a strong return to the industry’s peak period in the early 1990s, when it produced more than 200 films annually. Also, it is noted in all these reports that, in total, Hong Kong films accounted for an annual share of around 13– 20 percent of the local box office from 2012 to 2019 (22.2 percent in 2012, 22.7 percent in 2013, 23.0 percent in 2014, 20.0 percent in 2015, 16.1 percent in 2016, 13.2 percent in 2017, 12.9 percent in 2018, and 13.5 percent in 2019).67 This trend of local (national) film productions, whereby they account for less than half the local (national) box-office share, is in line with those film industries that have received support from their local (national) governments while competing with foreign film imports (US films in particular) in the same period. For example, in the UK, all UK films accounted for 31.9 percent in 2012 of the total national box-office share, 22.2 percent in 2013, 26.8 percent in 2014, 44.7 percent in 2015, 35.9 percent in 2016, 37.4 percent in 2017, 46.1 percent in 2018, and 47.6 percent in 2019.68 Regardless of the bleak picture these HKMPIA/CreateHK statistical reports paint, the number of annual productions in the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s stabilized at the level of fifty to sixty films. Among these, the independently produced, purely Hong Kong films (i.e., Hong Kong indies) were a minority. Yet, it was a highly visible minority that cannot be ignored, especially in terms of percentage. From 2012

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Table 2.1 Hong Kong films theatrically released (first run) in Hong Kong (2012–19) Year of Hong Kong-related theatrical Chinese-language release in films Hong Kong Number of films 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

52 43 52 59 61 53 53 49

% 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

China–Hong Foreign–Hong Kong co-produced Kong co-produced films films

Purely Hong Kong films

Number of films

Number of films

35 26 27 32 39 32 25 24

% 67.3 60.5 51.9 54.2 63.9 60.4 47.2 49.0

Number of films 0 0 2 4 3 2 1 2

% 0.0 0.0 3.9 6.8 4.9 3.8 1.9 4.1

17 17 23 23 19 19 27 23

% 32.7 39.5 44.2 39.0 31.2 35.8 50.9 46.9

Sources ‘Hong Kong Films Industry Data’, 2012–19, under ‘Publications’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www.createhk.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022)

to 2017, and in 2019, purely Hong Kong films accounted for more than 30 percent of all the Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films released on the Hong Kong audience market. They were the majority in the Hong Kong film industry in 2018, accounting for 50.9 percent of all the Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films on the local market. These figures thus provide empirical evidence supporting Chu’s argument that China–Hong Kong co-produced films are not the long-term solution to the problems of the Hong Kong film industry.69 More importantly, the figures indicate revival signs of the Hong Kong film industry coming from its minor segment. Table 2.2, which contains the breakdown of figures and percentage share of box-office earnings, endorses a similar picture. It shows an annual share of around 30 percent of boxoffice earnings for purely Hong Kong films out of the total number of Hong Kong films in the covered period (except in 2015 when the share was only 10.8 percent). Spearheaded by the chief executives of the HKSAR, Hong Kong’s film policy initiatives in the 2010s, proceeding from the local government’s view of Hong Kong films as commercial entities, set the tone for what the authorities would provide to support the continuous development

346,686,031 354,121,807 371,878,165 383,844,907 300,444,733 248,847,395 245,452,118 255,114,663

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

248,300,891 274,761,302 234,130,455 267,468,479 267,216,493 177,701,411 186,476,391 192,792,771

Amount (HK$)

Amount (HK$)

%

China–Hong Kong co-produced films

Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films

71.6 77.6 63.0 69.7 88.9 71.4 76.0 75.6

% N/A N/A 11,350,873 8,197,612 886,828 480,087 49,283 1,372,188

Amount (HK$)

N/A N/A 3.0 2.1 0.3 0.2 0.0 0.5

%

Foreign–Hong Kong co-produced films

Hong Kong box-office earnings year-end data (first run) (2012–19)

98,385,140 79,360,505 126,396,837 108,178,816 32,341,412 70,665,897 58,926,444 60,949,704

Amount (HK$)

Purely Hong Kong films

28.4 22.4 34.0 28.2 10.8 28.4 24.0 23.9

%

Sources ‘Hong Kong Films Industry Data’, 2012–19, under ‘Publications’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www.createhk. gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022)

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Year of theatrical release in Hong Kong

Table 2.2

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of the local film sector. The film policy initiatives also reinforced the rather narrow definition of ‘Hong Kong film’ that film industry organizations in Hong Kong had adopted. Both directly and indirectly, the HKSAR government then played a major role in officializing the boundaries of the commercialized ‘mainstream’ sector of the Hong Kong film industry and the elements within them. In the next section, I discuss two other components tightly woven into the fabric of the Hong Kong film industry of the 2010s, but not interacting with Hong Kong’s film policy straightforwardly: film distribution and exhibition networks.

Hong Kong’s Local Mainstream Film Distribution and Exhibition Networks As evidenced above by the policy addresses of the HKSAR chief executives, mainstreaming in the local film industry has taken a top-down approach since the late 1990s. This is contrary to the trend of this film industry’s earlier periods, when, without government intervention, the genuine market force of demand and supply between film industry players and customers (film viewers) determined the industry’s mainstreaming and commercialization. Increasing government collaboration with film industry bodies in the 2010s only furthered the dominance of one particular segment, generally (and vaguely) regarded as the (commercialized) mainstream segment. Filmmakers not involved heavily in this segment, especially those self-proclaimed independent and non-commercial ones, would be regarded as working on the opposite side of the ‘mainstream’ segment’s hegemony. This situation has, however, been complicated by the presence of other functions in this same industry, namely film distribution and exhibition. In any given film industry, films would have to go through stages of film production, distribution and exhibition before they reach their target audiences. Traditionally, in the global film industries, film distributors have had the greatest power as regards determining what films are to be made, distributed and marketed.70 An accumulation of power and financial wealth is likely to be found in the film distribution segment of any film industry. Veteran film producer and scholar Angus Finney and his co-author Eugenio Triana comment positively on the close ties forged between film producers and film distributors in 2010s UK film industry.71 This reflected the film policy initiatives after the publication of a film policy

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review report A Future for British Film: It Begins with the Audience …. It was published in January 2012 on behalf of the Film Policy Review Panel by the then Department for Culture, Media and Sport of the UK government.72 According to Finney and Triana, this new policy initiative could help transfer the audience and market knowledge from the distributors to the producers earlier in a film’s value chain.73 Film producers could also benefit financially from an ongoing income stream. Among other benefits, new film distribution strategies could be formulated out of such close ties between producers and distributors. In other words, the power structure between the historically more powerful film distributors and the less empowered film producers within the film industry could even out.74 Nonetheless, the existing power imbalance within the local film industry in Hong Kong was not given much attention and redressed by public film policy initiatives in the 2010s. In its film policy programmes, the HKSAR government has over the years predominantly focused on film productions located in the so-called mainstream sector of the local film industry. On the other hand, the negative consequences of neglecting the importance, functions and development of film distribution and exhibition segments, which would lead to incomplete comprehension of the full picture of the film industry, have not been acknowledged in any public discourses locally. Film Distributors Since the mid-1980s, Hong Kong’s film distribution has formed one of the main business components of many non-studio film companies in the city. By 1 August 2021, 107 companies possessing production and distribution facilities had registered their details voluntarily on the Film Services Office’s official website (under the CreateHK of the HKSAR government).75 The details on this website are made publicly available, supposedly as one of the HKSAR government’s endeavours to provide robust support for film practitioners, domestically and overseas, who may want information exploring the film sector in Hong Kong. There are major and much smaller local film industry players among those found on this website. Many of these film companies are members of the Movie Producers and Distributors Association of Hong Kong Limited, which was established in 1979. It represents more than ‘95% of the motion picture and audio visual production and distribution companies registered and incorporated in HKSAR and Mainland China’.76

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Many of these film distributors started operating as early as in the postwar period of Hong Kong. The major players include companies such as Celestial Pictures Limited (owning the Shaw Brothers film library of about 750 films),77 Edko Films Limited (established in 1959),78 Gala Film Distribution Limited (established in 1972; also being part of the Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment [Holdings] Limited listed in the same Film Services Office directory),79 Mei Ah Entertainment Group Limited (established in 1984 and listed in the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange),80 Shaw Brothers Pictures International Limited (established in 2016)81 and Sil-Metropole Organization Limited (established in 1982),82 among others. Many of them have several subsidiary companies listed in the same directory at the Film Services Office, thus effectively gaining more exposure to potential business partners than smaller industry players on the same list could have. These major film industry players not only distribute films made in or related to Hong Kong but also overseas films on the Hong Kong audience market. Some of them also engage in film financing, production and cinema management in Hong Kong and nearby geographical regions, such as Orange Sky (with which Golden Harvest merged).83 The major players effectively serve as local film studios with vertically integrated film business components; however, their number remains very small in the contemporary Hong Kong film industry. Much smaller film industry players include Cool Penguin Pictures (independent Hong Kong-based company) and Film Culture Centre (HK) Limited (non-profit-making arts organization). Some of the small ones are visible in the film industry thanks to their affiliation to megastars, e.g., Focus Films Limited (founded by Andy Lau, while also distributing multiple-award-winning films).84 I should also mention that, besides the film distributors specializing in commercially oriented films (regardless of whether the films actually provide enviable box-office takings for their distributors), those listed on the website of the Film Services Office include the Hong Kong Arts Centre (distributing VCD/DVD among other film-related activities),85 Ying E Chi,86 and Golden Scene Company Limited.87 The latter two film distributors in particular have prided themselves on distributing and/or promoting independent films that might not have had the chance to reach their target audiences, had it not been for their distribution efforts over the years. While Ying E Chi is the organizer of the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival (HKIndieFF), Golden Scene is an independent film distribution company engaged in

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distributing a wide range of ‘mainstream entertainment, arthouse gems, Asian new cinema and local Hong Kong productions’.88 Many of the Hong Kong films distributed by Golden Scene are independently made local films that are either the talk of the town and/or local box-office grossers due to their thematic focuses on the city’s local matters. Some fiction feature films distributed by Golden Scene include the following. The Midnight After (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong, 2014) is a futuristic adventurous story of a red mini-van driver and his passengers, saturated with a strong political subtext (see Chapter 4). The Mobfathers (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2016), which talks about the election within a Hong Kong triad society, also contains a strong political subtext that refers to the lack of universal suffrage in Hong Kong. Still Human (Oliver Chan, Hong Kong, 2018), the director’s debut feature film, is about a paralysed man and his live-in Filipino domestic helper (see Chapter 3). Twilight’s Kiss (aka Suk Suk) (Ray Yeung, Hong Kong, 2019), likewise a debut feature film of the director, tells the story of a gay couple who, in their sixties and early seventies respectively, start their short-lived relationship under the biased scrutiny of contemporary Hong Kong society (see Chapter 4). Beyond the Dream (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2019) is concerned with the romance between a schizophrenic patient and his psychiatrist. The film more generally explores the disadvantaged situation of such patients in Hong Kong. It topped the Hong Kong box office during the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020 (see Chapter 4).89 What is noteworthy here is that the Film Services Office, a government-run film industry-facing unit, briefly features the film companies’ past credits on its official website, thereby indeed providing an open platform that showcases the companies’ details, what they have done and are capable of doing. But this platform sets involuntary limitations on itself, for there is no way to verify whether the companies in question are in fact all the film distributors who have operated in the Hong Kong film industry. With the industry’s versatile nature and ongoing evolvement, there were bound to be some film distributors that might not have had the chance to register with the Film Services Office before they ceased to exist. Other film distributors may simply choose not to associate at all with the film-related setup of the HKSAR government. For example, Blue Queen Cultural Communication, founded in 2003, is the production company of a series of critically acclaimed political and sociocultural documentaries directed or co-directed by academic-filmmaker,

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S. Louisa Wei.90 They include Storm under the Sun (Peng Xiaolian/S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2007), Golden Gate Girls (S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2013) and Havana Divas (S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2018). The company has also been involved in these films’ distribution, while providing film translation services for others. It is listed on IMDbPro’s official website as a Hong Kong-based film production company and distributor.91 Nevertheless, Blue Queen Cultural Communication does not have an entry in any directories on the website of the Film Services Office (latest updates: 1 August 2021). Another local filmmaker, Tammy Cheung, a highly respected documentarian in Hong Kong, founded her own dedicated organization/network Visible Record in 2004 to promote and distribute documentaries of her own and those made by her counterparts.92 According to the database of ‘Hong Kong Women Filmmakers’ (a project run by the research team under Gina Marchetti at the University of Hong Kong), Visible Record organizes the annual Chinese Documentary Festival; yet it is likewise not to be found in the Film Services Office’s directories of film distributors.93 The direct consequence of absence from the records of the local authorities is that these film distributors remain off the radar of local government support for film practitioners. These film companies (also acting as the main distributors of the films they produce) are without doubt part of the Hong Kong film industry as I broadly identify it in this book. Their presence in the industry, while being relatively unknown in the public domain both locally and overseas (due partly to their own choice of not utilizing official, open platforms under the local authorities), fuels further the power imbalance between the so-called commercialized mainstream sector of the present-day Hong Kong film industry and the minority sector. The power structure I identify in the distribution segment of the Hong Kong film industry thus echoes the kind pertaining to the whole industry, which I argue to be a consequence of the HKSAR government’s officializing the boundaries of the ‘mainstream’ (production) segment. This has taken place even though the power structure within the film distribution segment in Hong Kong was not created directly by the HKSAR government. Film Exhibitors Despite its small geographical size (1,113.76 km2 , as of October 2021),94 and with a current population of about 7.41 million (2021 census results),95 Hong Kong is a metropolis that, since the end of WWII,

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has been well-equipped with cinemas for the entertainment of its inhabitants. Unlike other film industry-related associations in operation there, the one representing cinemas and similar film exhibitors in the city—the HKTA (established in 1950)—is not often mentioned in official outlets, such as via the HKTDC.96 As mentioned in the ‘About Us’ section on the HKTA’s official website, there were about sixty to seventy cinemas in Hong Kong before the 1970s.97 Almost every district had its own cinemas, mostly standalone and large, serving its local cinemagoers at different time slots over a day. Cinemas back then were not operated in groups. Over the years, this film industry organization has morphed from a provider of social premises for its film exhibitor members into an important representative for them when they negotiate on business and venue licensing activities with the local government. It has also witnessed how its member cinemas have come to include not only individual cinema owners but also operators of cinema networks. Similar to their counterparts in the local film distribution segment, the operations of film exhibitors in the city in the form of cinemas reveal a severe power imbalance between the exhibitors. At different points in time, such power relations can also be observed between the authorities, real estate developers and the cinemas. I should also note that these cinemas, forming part of the fabric of the Hong Kong film industry, have contributed inevitably over the years to the industry’s overall mainstreaming tendency and commercialization. As far as the internal power imbalance of the film exhibition segment in Hong Kong is concerned, the city has started to move into the stage of multiplexes and ‘mini-cinemas’ of smaller and smaller size, with multiple screens, since the establishment of Capital Theatre in 1982 in Sham Shui Po. This is one of the oldest and densest neighbourhoods in the Kowloon Peninsular of Hong Kong. Such changes, according to the HKTA, resulted from the economic prosperity of Hong Kong,98 while the city has been suffering from a limited supply of land for residential and commercial real estate developments. There were 119 cinemas in the 1990s, but the number of cinemas in the city has fluctuated since then.99 By July 2022, there were fifty-nine HKTA member cinemas in Hong Kong, including sixteen on Hong Kong Island, twenty-three in the Kowloon Peninsula and twenty in the New Territories.100 They accounted for 271 screens in total, including sixty on Hong Kong Island, 117 in the Kowloon Peninsula and ninety-four in the New Territories. Many cinemas are in fact part of the film-related entertainment groups. Major cinema networks included Broadway,101 Emperor Cinemas,102 and

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GH (under Golden Harvest).103 It is not surprising to see some of these cinema group operators having their own production and/or distribution arms locally and beyond, even though their vertically integrated business scale is not as big as film conglomerates in Hollywood or mainland China. They form the majority film exhibition outlets across the whole of Hong Kong and are set in more advantageous positions to attract larger numbers of cinemagoers than cinemas operating on a much smaller scale. Understandably, components of these major cinema circuits are located in some of the most expensive, usually rented, properties across the city. But if the economy were to face insurmountable challenges, these cinemas would also suffer the most.104 For example, the UA Cinemas, being one of the oldest cinema circuits in Hong Kong (established in 1985), used to strategically occupy accessible locations in some of the busiest and/or most expensive commercial and shopping districts across the city (e.g., Admiralty, Causeway Bay, Mongkok). In March 2021, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it suddenly announced that it was going into voluntary liquidation, attributing this decision to the ‘unavoidable and devastating pressure faced by our [UA Cinemas’] operations since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic’.105 Standalone and independent cinemas, such as the one launched by Golden Scene in March 2021, are now rare in the city.106 In addition to the keen competition between components of different cinema networks and other smaller, individual cinemas (which demonstrates the strong power imbalance within the film exhibition segment of the local film industry), Hong Kong land developers charging the cinema operators very high rent take the power relations from within the film industry into the property development sector of the Hong Kong economy.107 Moreover, there has not been much financial help and support from the local government for the film exhibition sector. An important point that the HKTA mentions in justifying its representativeness for the local film exhibitors is that it has been getting increasingly difficult for the HKTA members to receive venue licences from the local government in order to operate cinemas.108 This underscores the fact that the local authorities do not always help create a hassle-free environment, in which local film practitioners can operate smoothly and continue helping to develop the industry. The problems seemed to be finally noted in the 2016 policy address by the then chief executive of the HKSAR, Leung Chun-ying. In that policy address, in mentioning the support for creative industries, it states that, ‘The Government is actively considering

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the option of requiring developers to include cinemas in their development projects as appropriate in the terms and conditions of the land lease’.109 However, for the remainder of the 2010s, concerns for cinema operations were not seen again in subsequent HKSAR chief executive’s policy addresses.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter I have identified three of the major elements that contributed to the structuring of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s. This decade saw bursts of efforts coming from the HKSAR government, its explicit collaboration with film industry organizations, and the latest incarnation of the local film distribution and exhibition networks. The measures were well-intentioned as regards consolidating the infrastructural framework of the local film industry, although the efforts were not always concerted and were not meant to cover the whole of 2010s Hong Kong film industry. Public information suggests that these governmental measures and the film industry setup tended to gear towards strengthening only the perceived, commercialized mainstream segment of this industry. One of the major resulting problems was that the power imbalance between the perceived mainstream and minority segments of the film sector was perpetuated. Thus, the measures were not particularly helpful for sustaining a much healthier local film industry development and film culture in the long run. Another problem was related to the components of the overlooked and uncharted minority in this film industry, and what could possibly be done to allow them to coexist with those in the industry’s perceived mainstream segment. Furthermore, despite all the attention coming from the government, and despite the film industry’s established infrastructure, even the mainstream segment might not be able to sustain its strength forever. This would be in those cases when film practitioners only stayed in the ‘mainstream’ segment for a short time, enough to accumulate their financial and reputational capital, before moving on to work in other much more lucrative film industries in East Asia. Examples of new or less established Hong Kong filmmakers who chose such a route include Derek Kwok and Barbara Wong, to name but two. Derek Kwok is the co-director of the award-winning Gallants (Clement Cheng/Derek Kwok, China/Hong Kong, 2010), a China– Hong Kong co-produced film. This is an action comedy that pays tribute

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to 1960s–70s Hong Kong and its martial arts films of that time (see also the first type of collective filmmaking in Chapter 3).110 After making Gallants and several more films, Derek Kwok moved his base completely to mainland China, where he made the mainland Chinese film Wu Kong (Derek Kwok, China, 2017). Barbara Wong was very active in Hong Kong in the early 2000s, making several critically acclaimed indies and low-budget films that focus primarily on feminist and female-related themes, e.g., documentary Women’s Private Parts (Barbara Wong, Hong Kong, 2000), fiction film Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat (Barbara Wong, Hong Kong, 2003). Barbara Wong subsequently expanded her cinematic works into China–Hong Kong co-produced films, e.g., Girls (Barbara Wong, China/Hong Kong, 2014), and other Chinese film (co-)productions, e.g., The Stolen Years (Barbara Wong, China/Taiwan, 2013), Don’t Forget I Love You (Barbara Wong, China, 2022). These latter fiction films continue Barbara Wong’s concerns for female issues, although they also indicate her departure from the much smaller Hong Kong film industry. The lack of government support for unspecified areas outside the perceived mainstream segment in the local film industry and the departure of many Hong Kong filmmakers have left open voids in this sector of society. Filmmakers, who were mostly newcomers to the industry and tended to work on independent productions featuring local subject matter, quickly came to fill in these gaps in the film sector in 2010s Hong Kong. Their enthusiasm is reminiscent of the robustness of their Hong Kong predecessors active in the 1970s–80s. And yet, they were also very different from the latter, with or without commercialization concerns. These newer Hong Kong filmmakers were driven by a strong sense of being entirely local in Hong Kong (and hence, being in the minority of 2010s local film sector). They thrived by using innovative ways to circulate their films locally and internationally. Many of their films also did extremely well at the local Hong Kong box office via the city’s mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks. I will discuss their specific qualities in the next few chapters, beginning, in Chapter 3, with their directorship.

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Notes 1. Ruby Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st -century East Asia (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 11. 2. Choi Sin-yi, ‘Is There a Future for Hong Kong Cinema?’ (in traditional Chinese), Ming Pao, 22 March 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://news.mingpao.com/pns/作家專欄/article/20210322/ s00018/1616350732143/世紀-一一兩岸-香港電影業還有未來嗎. 3. Source: ‘CEPA’, the Trade and Industry Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 4. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 35, note 1. 5. Karen Chu, ‘“3D Sex & Zen” Beats out “Avatar” for One-Day Hong Kong Record’, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 April 2011, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/3dsex-zen-beats-avatar-179394. 6. Source: ‘3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011)’, Box Office Mojo, https://www.boxofficemojo.com (accessed 19 December 2022); The Hollywood Reporter, ‘“3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy” Takes $6.7 Million Globally’, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 May 2011, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/3dsex-zen-extreme-ecstasy-184460. 7. Ten Years is made up of five unrelated short films about a possible future of Hong Kong in 2025. The film’s directors include, in alphabetical order of surnames, Jevons Au, Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Kwok Zune, Ng Ka-leung and Wong Fei-pang. 8. ‘Different Experience between Shiu and New Filmmakers in the Hong Kong Film Industry’ (in traditional Chinese), Ming Pao, 25 February 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://ol.mingpao.com/ldy/sho wbiz/latest/20210225/1614261203044/稱蕭若元處收成期-田蕊妮拒 循舊規則-新一代要破釡沉舟; ‘Neo Yau vs Stephen Shiu on “Has the Hong Kong Film Industry Died?”’ (in traditional Chinese), Stand News, 24 February 2021, accessed 21 April 2021, https://www.thestandnews. com [now defunct]; ‘Neo Yau Disagrees with Stephen Shiu’s Comments on Online Filmmaking by Young People’ (in traditional Chinese), Apple Daily, 26 February 2021, accessed 21 April 2021, https://hk.appled aily.com [now defunct]. 9. Source: ‘Interview with Johnnie To’ (in Cantonese), HKC Screening Room, RTHK31, Radio Television Hong Kong, 12 March 2021. 10. Enoch Tam Yee-lok, Vivian P. Y. Lee and Kenny K. K. Ng, Indiescape Hong Kong: Critical Essays and Interviews (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Typesetter Publishing Company, 2018), 10, 13.

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11. Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, ‘Mainlandization or Sinophone Translocality? Challenges for Hong Kong SAR New Wave Cinema’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6, no. 2 (2012): 115–34; Mirana May Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, ‘Hong Kong Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalization and Mainlandization: Hong Kong SAR New Wave as a Cinema of Anxiety’, in A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti and Esther C. M. Yau (West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 89–115; Yiu-Wai Chu, Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (New York: State University of New York Press, 2018), 121–23. 12. Y.-W. Chu, Found in Transition, 118. 13. Y.-W. Chu, Found in Transition, 117. 14. Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Shi-yan Chao, ‘Policy and Creative Strategies: Hong Kong CEPA Films in the China Market’, International Journal of Cultural Policy 26, no. 2 (2020): 184. 15. Gary Bettinson, ‘Yesterday Once More: Hong Kong–China Coproductions and the Myth of Mainlandization’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 14, no. 1 (2020): 19. 16. Michael Curtin, Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 14–19. 17. Michael Curtin, ‘Media Capital: Towards the Study of Spatial Flows’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2003): 213–22; Michael Curtin, ‘Global Media Capital and Local Media Policy’, in The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications, ed. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock and Helena Sousa (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011), 546–48. 18. Curtin, ‘Global Media Capital’, 544. 19. Ruby Cheung, ‘Ten Years : An Unexpected Watershed of TwentyFirst-Century Hong Kong Film Industry’, Frames Cinema Journal 15 (June 2019), https://framescinemajournal.com/article/ten-years-anunexpected-watershed-of-twenty-first-century-hong-kong-film-industry. 20. For example, Curtin, Playing to the World’s. 21. Curtin, Playing to the World’s, 16–17. 22. Ruby Cheung, ‘East Asia’s Film Business’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema, ed. Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, Gina Marchetti and See Kam Tan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 89–107. 23. Giuseppe Richeri, ‘The Media amid Enterprises, the Public, and the State: New Challenges for Research’, in The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications, ed. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock and Helena Sousa (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011), 130–31. 24. Richeri, ‘The Media’, 135.

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25. Albert Moran, ‘Terms for a Reader: Film, Hollywood, National Cinema, Cultural Identity and Film Policy’, in Film Policy: International, National and Regional Perspectives, ed. Albert Moran (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 7. 26. See an overview of Hong Kong’s different sets of film policies over the years in New Hong Kong Cinema, with my analysis of the initiatives between 1998 and circa 2015. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 194–203. 27. Joseph M. Chan, Anthony Y. H. Fung and Chun Hung Ng, Policies for the Sustainable Development of the Hong Kong Film Industry (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010), 1–7, 81–91, 94–96. 28. Curtin, ‘Global Media Capital’, 544–46. 29. Curtin, ‘Global Media Capital’, 551. 30. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 194–203. 31. Source: ‘1997 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.pol icyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 32. Crystal Chui Tsz-ying and Rebecca Wong Wing-yan, ‘A Lifeline for Hong Kong Films’, Varsity, no. 116 (May 2010): 20–22, accessed 19 December 2022, https://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/varsity/1005/fund. pdf. 33. Curtin, ‘Global Media Capital’, 552. 34. Sources: 1997–2019 Policy Addresses under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https:// www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 35. Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (New York: State University of New York Press), 45–46. 36. Source: Paragraph 30, ‘2006–07 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 37. Y.-W. Chu, Lost in Transition, 45–51. 38. Y.-W. Chu, Lost in Transition, 54–59. 39. Y.-W. Chu, Lost in Transition, 53. 40. Y.-W. Chu, Lost in Transition, 59. 41. Laikwan Pang, ‘Trans-national Cinema, Creative Labor, and New Directors in Hong Kong’, Asia Japan Journal 4 (2009): 79–87. 42. Source: Paragraph 42, ‘2009–10 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 43. Sources: Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, ‘Policy Report on Revitalising the Hong Kong Film Industry’ [Policy Paper No.: CB(1)356/02-03)] (in traditional Chinese), October 2002, accessed 19

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December 2022, https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr02-03/chinese/panels/ itb/papers/itb1203cb1-356-c.pdf; Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau of the HKSAR government, ‘Response to the Suggestions in the “Policy Report on Revitalising the Hong Kong Film Industry”’ [Policy Paper No.: CB(1)986/02-03(06)] (in traditional Chinese), February 2003, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr0203/chinese/panels/itb/papers/itb0304cb1-986-6c.pdf. Source: Paragraph 19, ‘2007–08 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘Creative Industries’ of the former Communications and Creative Industries Branch, under ‘Publications’, the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.cedb.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘2013 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.pol icyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). J. M. Chan, A. Y. H. Fung and C. H. Ng, Policies, 25–29; Zhihong Gao, ‘Serving a Stir-Fry of Market, Culture and Politics—On Globalisation and Film Policy in Greater China’, Policy Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 431; R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 196. Source: Paragraph 185, ‘2013 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Liz Shackleton, ‘Hong Kong Government Unveils Film Development Council’, Screen Daily, 16 April 2007, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/hong-kong-government-unveils-film-dev elopment-council/4031910.article. Sources: ‘Creative Industries’, the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www. cstb.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022); ‘Creative Industries’ of the former Communications and Creative Industries Branch, under ‘Publications’, the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.cedb. gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022); ‘About Us’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www.createhk.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) under ‘Applications’ of ‘Funding’, the Hong Kong Film Development Council’s official website (English), https://www.fdc.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Cheung Ding-ming, ‘Carrie Lam Shedding the First Tear and Her Being the “Nanny”’ (in traditional Chinese), HK01, 26 March 2017, accessed

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19 December 2022, https://www.hk01.com/熱爆話題/80400/特首選 舉-林鄭月娥鏡頭前第一滴淚點嚟-花名點解叫-奶媽. Source: Paragraph 94, ‘The Chief Executive’s 2017 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: Paragraph 144, ‘The Chief Executive’s 2018 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Chan Tze-woon is the director of the award-winning Yellowing (Hong Kong, 2016). Nora Lam is the director of Lost in the Fumes (Hong Kong, 2017). Jill Li is the director of the award-winning Lost Course (Hong Kong, 2019). Connie Lo is the director of Vanished Archives (Hong Kong, 2017). Under the new film censorship law, passed in Hong Kong on 27 October 2021, films containing footage deemed to endanger the ‘national security’ of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would not be allowed public screening (online platforms being excluded from the coverage of this law). This law covers films containing footage of, or references to, street protests in Hong Kong, especially those that took place in the second half of the 2010s. See: ‘Hong Kong Passes New Film Censorship Law’, Screen Daily, 27 October 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/news/hong-kong-pas ses-new-film-censorship-law/5164644.article; Kelly Ho, ‘Hong Kong Passes Bill to Censor Films “Contrary” to China’s National Security— HK$1M Fine, 3 Years Jail for Offenders’, Hong Kong Free Press, 27 October 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp.com/ 2021/10/27/hong-kong-passes-bill-to-censor-films-contrary-to-chinasnational-security-hk1m-fine-3-years-jail-for-offenders. Sources: ‘Hong Kong Films Industry Data’, 2012–19, under ‘Publications’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www. createhk.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘About MPIA’, the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association’s official website (English and traditional Chinese), http://www. mpia.org.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘Definition of HK Movie’, the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association’s official website (English and traditional Chinese), http://www.mpia.org.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘Definition of HK Movie’, the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association’s official website (English and traditional Chinese), http://www.mpia.org.hk (accessed 19 December 2022).

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61. The earliest written version of what Hong Kong films would include can be found in the legal texts of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), which, however, shy away from giving a clear definition of Hong Kong films. See the legal texts (in English and traditional Chinese) on related webpages of the CEPA under the official website of the Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government (https://www.tid.gov.hk) (accessed 19 December 2022). 62. For example, Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, Hong Kong Films Industry Data, 2012 (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, 2013), 10; Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, Hong Kong Films Industry Data, 2013 (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, 2014), 12. See also: ‘Publications’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www.createhk. gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 63. Source: The Hong Kong Box Office Limited’s official website (traditional Chinese), http://103.12.151.72 (accessed 19 December 2022). 64. See, for instance: Louis Chan and Charlotte Man, ‘Film Entertainment Industry in Hong Kong’, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 6 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://research.hktdc. com/en/article/MzExMjc4NDIz. 65. Source: ‘About HKTDC’, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council’s official website (English), https://home.hktdc.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 66. Hui Li-ha, ‘Difficulty of Financing and Release of Local Political Film’ (in traditional Chinese), U-Beat Magazine, the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, issue 128, 28 February 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://ubeat.com.cuhk. edu.hk/128_movie. 67. Sources: ‘Hong Kong Films Industry Data’, 2012–19, under ‘Publications’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www. createhk.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 68. Sources: BFI Statistical Yearbooks, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, the British Film Institute’s official website, https://www. bfi.org.uk (accessed 19 December 2022). 69. Y.-W. Chu, Found in Transition, 117. 70. Angus Finney, with Eugenio Triana, The International Film Business: A Market Guide beyond Hollywood, 2nd ed. (Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 69, 71. 71. Finney, with Triana, The International Film Business, 68–69.

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72. Department for Culture, Media and Sport, A Future for British Film: It Begins with the Audience … (UK: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2012). 73. Finney, with Triana, The International Film Business, 68, 81–82. 74. Finney, with Triana, The International Film Business, 69. 75. Source: ‘Production Directory’, the Film Services Office’s official website (English), https://www.fso-createhk.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 76. Source: The Movie Producers and Distributors Association of Hong Kong Limited’s official website (English), http://www.mpda.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 77. Source: Celestial Pictures Limited’s official website (English), http:// www.celestialpictures.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 78. Source: Edko Films Limited’s official website (English), https://www. cinema.com.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 79. Source: Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment (Holdings) Limited’s official website (English), https://www.osgh.com.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 80. Source: Mei Ah Entertainment Group Limited’s official website (English), http://www.meiah.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 81. Source: Shaw Brothers Pictures International Limited’s official website (English), http://www.shawbrothers.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 82. Source: Sil-Metropole Organization Limited’s official website (simplified Chinese), http://www.sil-metropole.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 83. Source: Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment (Holdings) Limited’s official website (English), https://www.osgh.com.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 84. Source: Focus Films Limited’s official website (English), http://www. focusfilms.cc (accessed 19 December 2022). 85. Source: The Hong Kong Arts Centre’s official website (English), http:// www.hkac.org.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 86. Source: Ying E Chi’s official website (English), http://yingechi.org (accessed 19 December 2022). 87. Source: Golden Scene Company Limited’s official website (English), https://goldenscene.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 88. Source: Golden Scene Company Limited’s official website (English), https://goldenscene.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 89. ‘Beyond the Dream Earning HK$15 Million at the Local Box Office’ (in traditional Chinese), Ming Pao OL, 2 October 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://ol.mingpao.com/ldy/showbiz/latest/202 01002/1601639337780/ 《幻愛》 票房直逼1500萬-導演周冠威對港產片 仍抱希望; TOPick Shiba Inu, ‘Beyond the Dream Ranked No. 1 at the Local Box Office with Earnings of HK$10 Million’ (in traditional

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90. 91. 92.

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100.

101. 102. 103.

Chinese), Hong Kong Economic Times, 4 September 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://topick.hket.com/article/2744248/【幻愛 】劉俊謙蔡思韵新戲票房逾千萬成暑期冠軍導演周冠威釋出絕密刪剪片 段. Source: Blue Queen Cultural Communication’s official website (English), http://bqcc.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: IMDbPro’s official website, https://pro.imdb.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: The entry of ‘Cheung, Tammy’, Hong Kong Women Filmmakers, https://hkwomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Tammy Cheung migrated from Hong Kong to the UK in February 2022. See: Leung Ho-yee, ‘Tammy Cheung’s Second Migration’ (in traditional Chinese), inmediahk.net, 5 March 2022, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.inmediahk.net/node/文藝/【專訪】拍 了廿年紀錄片,導演張虹的二次「走難」:香港變了,我再拍不下去. Source: ‘Hong Kong Geographic Data (as at October 2021)’, the Lands Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.landsd.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘Census Results’, the 2021 Population Census, the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.census2021.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). L. Chan and Man, ‘Film Entertainment Industry in Hong Kong’. Source: ‘About Us’, the Hong Kong Theatres Association Limited’s official website (English), https://www.hktaorg.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: ‘About Us’, the Hong Kong Theatres Association Limited’s official website (English), https://www.hktaorg.com (accessed 19 December 2022). ‘Hong Kong’s Film Industry Is Worth Backing’, South China Morning Post, 20 March 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp. com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2080338/hong-kongs-film-ind ustry-worth-backing. Source: ‘About Us’, the Hong Kong Theatres Association Limited’s official website (English), https://www.hktaorg.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: Edko Films Limited’s official website (English), https://www. cinema.com.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: Emperor Cinemas Group’s official website (English), https:// www.emperorgroup.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: Golden Harvest Cinemas’ official website (English), https:// www.goldenharvest.com (accessed 19 December 2022).

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104. Vivienne Chow, ‘Hong Kong Cinemas Expect the Worst as COVID and Restrictions Continue’, Variety, 15 March 2022, accessed 19 December 2022, https://variety.com/2022/biz/news/hong-kong-cin emas-expect-the-worst-covid-1235202882. 105. Liz Shackleton, ‘Hong Kong’s UA Cinemas Ceases Operations Citing Pressures of Covid-19’, Screen Daily, 8 March 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/news/hong-kongs-uacinemas-ceases-operations-citing-pressures-of-covid-19/5157829.article. 106. Liz Shackleton, ‘Golden Scene’s Winnie Tsang on Opening an Independent Cinema in Hong Kong’, Screen Daily, 12 March 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/features/goldenscenes-winnie-tsang-on-opening-an-independent-cinema-in-hong-kong/ 5157896.article. 107. Patrick Frater, ‘Hong Kong Cinema Chain UA Files for Voluntary Liquidation’, Variety, 7 March 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://variety.com/2021/biz/asia/ua-cinemas-hong-kong-chain-col lapses-1234924523; Shackleton, ‘Hong Kong’s UA Cinemas’. 108. Source: ‘About Us’, the Hong Kong Theatres Association Limited’s official website (English), https://www.hktaorg.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 109. Source: Paragraph 25, ‘2016 Policy Address’ under ‘Archives’, the HKSAR chief executive’s annual policy address official website (English), https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 110. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 132–35.

CHAPTER 3

Creative Labour

Chapter Introduction The 38th Hong Kong Film Awards (HKFA) presentation ceremony was held on Sunday, 14 April 2019, as usual at the iconic, government-run Hong Kong Cultural Centre.1 This annual ceremony serves largely to showcase the achievements of practitioners in various spheres of the local film industry over the preceding year. It is jointly organized by representatives from different local film industry bodies, for instance, the Hong Kong Film Directors’ Guild, the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, the Hong Kong Movie Production Executives Association, and so on. The HKFA ceremony is not the only annual film event in the city, but it is the most prestigious, having the status of a Hong Kong equivalent to the Academy Awards ceremony in the USA. The 38th edition stood out from its preceding thirty-seven editions by its emphasis on thriving in collectivity and intergenerational bonding. The theme of the 2019 event was ‘Keep Rolling’ (no official Chinese translation of the title was provided). According to Derek Yee (aka Yee Tung-sing), Chairman of the Hong Kong Film Awards Association, this theme indicated that ‘those who are working in the industry should carry the passion on their works to overcome any difficulties so as to continue “Keep Rolling”, bringing freshness and creativeness to audiences’.2 The event featured a group of thirty-two new actors as masters of ceremony (MCs). An MC’s role is very important in such events. Previously, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4_3

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only veteran actors or highly respected film practitioners in the local film sector (e.g., directors, producers, etc.) had performed this function. The decision to assign it to new actors in the 2019 event sent an audio-visual message that the HKFA ceremony was hoping to do something very different from the industry’s usual practice. The ceremony would certainly project a forward-looking vision of the Hong Kong film industry on the eve of its entry into the 2020s. However, this choice of MCs might also have represented a risk, considering that the show was to be broadcast live domestically and internationally to the home and overseas audiences of Hong Kong cinema. The chosen new actors had only started to build a reputation for themselves by taking part in Hong Kong films made in the 2010s, many of which were rooted locally and independently produced, if not independently distributed and exhibited. Simply put, these ‘newbies’ were not well-known. If anything went wrong, the actors’ MC function would possibly downgrade the event’s prestige. Nevertheless, that year’s edition of the ceremony raised eyebrows when, at the powerful and also refreshing opening performance, the new actors paid homage to deceased veteran film practitioners who had passed away during the twelve preceding months. Previous editions of this ceremony usually included a similar segment somewhere towards the end of the shows. The rescheduling of this session as part of the opening sequence at the 2019 event thus created on-screen a vivid continuity of Hong Kong’s film culture heritage. The actors were seen as receiving the traditions and values from their predecessors, while also poised to pass down their own contributions to and enthusiasm for the past film works to future generations of Hong Kong film practitioners.3 Interpreted culturally, the show symbolized a Chinese term (承傳 / 承传) that combines the notions of ‘succession’ and ‘spread’ (in Cantonese Chinese: sing, chyun; in Mandarin Chinese [aka Putonghua]: cheng, chuan). It encompasses the past, current and future generations of creative labour in the Hong Kong film industry. ‘Succession and spread’, in its traditional Chinese script, has been a buzz phrase in Hong Kong cinema for quite some time. The term could also be translated as ‘inheriting’ and ‘passing down’, which may connote a single, one-way route of vertical development from the past to the present, and then to the future. I choose instead to translate the Chinese original into ‘succession and spread’, in order to capture the multidirectional trajectory (including horizontal, vertical, upward and downward movements, etc.) of what we have witnessed happening in this industry. The 2019 HKFA presentation

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ceremony was not the only edition featuring ‘succession and spread’. For example, the theme of the 2012 edition, ‘Film’s New Power’, was loaded heavily with the same idea of preserving the cultural heritage of film.4 But the 2019 event took the theme to another level by also stressing the importance for Hong Kong film practitioners to carry and pass on the city’s film heritage in a tightly knit collective unit, with the implication that this culture was in great danger of fading away. Or, had it already? Indeed, in contrast to the Hong Kong film industry of the 1980s– 2000s with its big names, the 2010s saw a resurgence of critically applauded Hong Kong films made through collective filmmaking—collective directorships in particular. The directors in question were newcomers to the industry and had not been working long enough with major financial backing to have their names become widely recognized, individual ‘brands’. Many of their films were perceived as ‘independent’ productions strongly oriented to local matters, even if some of them were, in technical terms, not independently made. They might in fact be of a hybrid or semi-independent type.5 Collective filmmaking in their cases became, debatably, one of the most expedient ways for the new filmmakers to survive when working only intermittently and in a competitive film industry environment. Collective filmmaking might also be found in Hong Kong films of the 2010s in which veteran film practitioners participated in the crews and casts. The veterans were not there to steal the spotlight from the new filmmakers. On the contrary, their presence helped create a special vibe of ‘succession and spread’, which was so much needed in an industry whose perceived mainstream segment had continued to rely on its past glamour to survive.6 This chapter discusses the politics of ‘succession and spread’ of creative labour in the Hong Kong film sector, with specific attention to films made by small- to medium-sized film companies based in Hong Kong. Some of the films under discussion might not have been independently produced in the strictest sense, but they were all locally oriented via the place of origin of their main production companies, and/or their subject matter closely related to the lives and emotions of Hongkongers in the second decade of the twenty-first century. I argue for the need to take a closer look at what multidirectional, intergenerational interactions of film’s creative labour might have contributed to the sustainability of the Hong Kong film industry. After presenting an overview of the power relations within the film industry’s creative labour through the lens of the political economy of communication, I turn to three types of collective filmmaking

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by filmmakers who entered the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s. They are illustrated by case studies of Rigor Mortis (Juno Mak, Hong Kong, 2013), Trivisa (Jevons Au/Frank Hui/Vicky Wong, China/Hong Kong, 2016), and Still Human (Oliver Chan, Hong Kong, 2018).

The Political Economy of Creative Labour in Film and Precarity I use the term ‘creative labour’ here with reference to practitioners working in various functions in creative industries broadly defined (of which film is one), regardless of the level of skills the performance of their tasks requires. Their contributions, whether financially fairly rewarded or not, make them part of the labour forces in these industries. In the film industry, while some of these creative labourers, for example, actors, film directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, film editors and so on, utilize their ‘creativity’ (itself difficult to measure) to produce the main products (films), others assume supporting, yet also important, functions, such as location managers, runners, programme researchers, accountants, etc. Thus, I use this term in relation to the film industry in a somewhat broader scope than that put forward by scholars of media industries, e.g., David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, who use ‘creative labour’ to refer to ‘those forms of labor with an especially strong element of aesthetic, expressive, and informational symbol making’.7 However, the authors also acknowledge the existence of hierarchies in the division of labour in cultural production.8 Hence, they include, for instance, administrators and unskilled labourers in what they identify as ‘creative labour’. Many of these labourers may not have the privileged jobs that outsiders would imagine; their working conditions may not be as desirable as laymen would think. Accordingly, most of the jobs and jobholders in film projects are easily neglected in academic research. In giving an overview on traditions of the political economy of communication, communication scholar Vincent Mosco points out that political economists have paid much attention to institutional power and control over production and audiences (a point echoed by communication scholars Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson).9 Communication studies, on the other hand, have largely focused on the audience’s consumption of texts.10 According to Mosco, creative labour and its process are still under-researched in both disciplines. Labour, as Mosco opines, is a ‘blind spot of western communication studies, including the

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political economy tradition’.11 Many of the existing studies are related to journalism. For investigations on creative labour and/or film industries, such as those conducted by cultural economists, they tend to concentrate on Hollywood, according to cultural economist Ruth Towse.12 Unsurprisingly, many researchers have been drawn to study those who hold the power and control in the Hollywood film industry, e.g., studio executives and managers. Curtin and Sanson investigate power and control in the global film industries from the other side, focusing on the precarious working conditions of film industry labourers across the world.13 Among the undesirable working conditions that film practitioners in different parts of the world have to endure, these two authors discuss increasing working hours per shift, work safety, growing work pressure, decreasing pay rates and so on. The issues of precarity among film practitioners, understandably to be especially those who are powerless to even lay claim to their own work delivered via their subordinate positions, have been unresolvable. They are believed to be among the results of ‘flexible forms of capitalism’,14 an expression that communication scholar Michael Keane uses when contextualizing precarity in cultural and creative labour. Although Curtin and Sanson stress that their regards arise out of the relationship between film production and the quality of social life of film practitioners,15 they also indirectly bring forward the confrontation between those who hold power and control in the global film sector and those who do not. The authors believe that more scholarly attention should be paid to the nuances of cultural work, including ‘specificities of screen media’s industrial mode of production […] and […] particular qualities of its highly specialized and detailed division of labor’.16 However, what complicates the confrontation between those who are in power in creative industries (including film) and those who are not is that some of the disadvantaged labourers have unintentionally helped those in power perpetuate the unpleasant working situations for themselves and others. For example, mass media scholar Anthony Fung, who studies creative labour in the gaming industry in East and Southeast Asia, identifies those in China as ‘contented bourgeois’.17 They do not care much about individual creativity and poor working conditions in the pre-existing political-economic climate in China, as long as they receive immediate financial rewards for their work. Fung’s findings are applicable to our understanding of the disagreeable working environment of creative labour in most of the mainland Chinese film industry. These precarious

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working conditions have been allowed to continue in mainland China, albeit indirectly, under the auspices of the state authorities. Keane notes that, on top of the harsh working conditions such as long hours of work and poor pay, the precarity of cultural and creative industry labourers in China stems from state censorship of various media industries.18 Although 2010s Hong Kong was not yet under the impact of strict media censorship exercised by the Chinese state authorities, since the signing of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), job opportunities have improved noticeably only for a small number of established or new film labourers in the local film sector. The result was that the perceived mainstream portion of the Hong Kong film industry has remained inaccessible to many local film practitioners. Moreover, this part of the local film sector has been saturated with China–Hong Kong co-produced films. Those local film practitioners working on these films would often find themselves lending their knowhow and international network to a pan-Chinese mainstream film industry located in the Greater China region. As film scholars Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen point out forthrightly, ‘This co-production model allows experienced, above-the-line producers and directors to make it big beyond Hong Kong, often faring better in China. Their survival and success[,] however, actually depends on sacrificing Hong Kong junior and below-the-line laborers as jobs migrate to China’.19 Ironically, then, all through the 2010s, ‘mainlandization’ helped perpetuate to a significant extent the precarious working conditions of many Hong Kong film labourers (especially those working below-the-line, not directly involved in the creative process).20 Under these circumstances, intergenerational interactions among film industry practitioners in collectivity in the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s, particularly in its uncharted, believed-to-be minority, film segment, might have been a natural consequence of the tensions found in the local film sector. Up until June 2020, there were around 16,068 persons working in Hong Kong’s film and other entertainment industries.21 Surprisingly, although the local government took the lead in defining the scope of what was perceived to be the ‘mainstream’ part of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s (see Chapter 2), such intergenerational interactions were not seriously considered by the authorities to be a possible major driver of local film projects. Some new government measures to help young and inexperienced filmmakers were taken in that decade. But observers and veteran film

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practitioners note that the local government’s film funding scheme for this group of filmmakers, namely the First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI; established in 2013 as a competition for debut filmmakers), is not necessarily useful for new filmmakers, as the award sums have been too small for the production of quality films.22 At the start of this scheme, there were two categories of winners: a maximum of HK$2 million (£0.2 million or US$0.3 million) was awarded to each of the two winners in the Higher Education Institution Group (HEIG), and a maximum of HK$5 million (£0.5 million or US$0.6 million) to the single winner in the Professional Group (PG). A major requirement was that the winning project should be the film director’s very first commercial feature film. In the FFFI’s second edition, the award sums per project were raised to HK$3.25 million (£0.4 million or US$0.4 million) for the HEIG winners and HK$5.5 million (£0.6 million or US$0.7 million) for the PG winners.23 By 2020, these sums had been further raised to HK$5 million (£0.5 million or US$0.6 million) and HK$8 million (£0.9 million or US$1 million) respectively.24 Young and inexperienced film practitioners were often left in the dark during the funding decision process because the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government did not allow young people on the board of the funding scheme. It was not until 2020, after the FFFI had run for about seven years, that the local government announced the introduction of new government funding initiatives providing bigger grants per project to help, in a better way, ‘succession and spread’ in the local film industry.25 Entitled ‘Directors’ Succession Scheme’, this new scheme now allows for qualified, established filmmakers to co-produce films with new film directors. Each of their projects will be subsidized with approximately HK$9 million (£1 million or US$1.2 million). However, only five new directors are confirmed to participate in the first round of this scheme. These five new directors (Ralph Chau, Wong Chun, Keane Wong, Norris Wong and Ronald Zee) are not really newcomers to the local film sector. In particular, Wong Chun (director of Mad World [Hong Kong, 2016] and Norris Wong (director of My Prince Edward [Hong Kong, 2019]) have one highly acclaimed debut film respectively under their belts. Their debut films were previous winners of the FFFI under the Film Development Fund of the HKSAR government. Thus, the pool of actual beneficiaries among all other newcomers to the local film industry remains extremely small.

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While the HKSAR government sporadically gave support to a selected small number of new Hong Kong filmmakers through film funding schemes and other film policy manoeuvres, there were no systematic or concrete plans and encouragement from the local authorities to allow continuous ‘succession and spread’ in and beyond contemporary Hong Kong cinema. Nonetheless, I would contend that the area not strictly stipulated in film policy holds limitless potential for career exploration for film practitioners, particularly those who have been inevitably sidelined by the government’s support initiatives for film. These film practitioners include new and veteran filmmakers working on documentaries or shorts, or those choosing to work only locally and not in mainland China. Based on strong convictions regarding ‘succession and spread’ via intergenerational interactions and inspirations, collaborations, mentor–mentee-ships, etc., new Hong Kong filmmakers’ career exploration through trial and error brightened up Hong Kong’s film sector in the 2010s (see more in the next section). My study of these intergenerational interactions in Hong Kong cinema largely responds to Curtin and Sanson’s call for closer scrutiny of the local nuances of cultural work. However, practitioners of small- to mediumbudget purely Hong Kong films made in the 2010s did not fit well in the highly specialized mode of division of film labour on a global scale, as identified by Curtin and Sanson, because those new Hong Kong filmmakers who insisted on making their own films usually initiated their projects from within Hong Kong. They were not playing any part in the local arm of mainstream or runaway productions from Hollywood, Bollywood, or their Chinese counterparts, which the two authors are concerned with. Even more distinctly, the works of this group of Hong Kong filmmakers displayed uniqueness coming predominantly from the political-economic, sociocultural and historical specificities of 2010s Hong Kong. As such, the local nuances of creative labour in Hong Kong cinema might not be replicated easily in other sections of the global film industries. In terms of the benefits resulting from working in collectiveness, the intergenerational interactions of filmmakers in Hong Kong in the 2010s could be regarded as some of the latest additions to what Curtin describes as the clustering of creative labour for mutual learning effects and work opportunities.26 As acknowledged by media scholars James Graham and Alessandro Gandini, ‘collaboration’ has become the ‘buzzword of the

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creative economy’.27 Nonetheless, instead of being the result of the ‘centripetal logic of accumulation and of creative migration’,28 which Hong Kong being a ‘commercial media capital’ once had,29 the collectivity formed by these Hong Kong filmmakers counteracted the tendency for famous and established Hong Kong filmmakers to be drawn to work elsewhere in East Asia, e.g., Beijing or Shanghai.30 Under state and local governmental orchestration, many of these places had become attractive to better-established Hong Kong film practitioners. Curtin thus called these mainland cities ‘official media capitals’.31 The intergenerational interactions of filmmakers in 2010s Hong Kong were, nevertheless, very different from numerous incarnations of local collective filmmaking in earlier years. Filmmakers, who were protégés of influential Hong Kong filmmakers such as Lau Kar-leung in the 1970s and 1980s, would immediately come to mind.32 The ‘big names’ had been in the local film sector for decades. They had usually started work in only one of the departments (action design in the case of Lau Kar-leung) of the big film studios, e.g., the Shaws Brothers and Golden Harvest, and then spent years accumulating their reputational capital and forging solid bonds with studio executives and financiers. They later became part of the establishment of the local film industry. Effectively, they themselves were eminent ‘brands’ and box-office earning guarantees. In order to show loyalty to these ‘brands’, their protégé film labourers rarely worked under other experienced and influential individuals in the film industry. Contrarily, collective filmmaking in 2010s Hong Kong was much more fluid in terms of the formations and modes of operation. Under the existing film policy initiatives (which were less likely to benefit those working on the margins of the local film industry), practitioners of the local film sector in this decade were left on their own to figure out different ways of capitalizing such intergenerational interactions. There might not be a particular anchor within the collective units. The driving forces might come from different directions within and outside specific groupings. Sometimes the new filmmakers who participated in collective filmmaking would take turns to be the team leaders, trying out different ways of making screen products, however experimental these might have been, such as Neo Yau (aka Yau Hawk-sau)’s Trial & Error channel on YouTube (see ‘Chapter Introduction’ in Chapter 2). In other cases, veterans and newcomers would find themselves blending together to forge innovative filmmaking composites, thus giving the impression

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that their fluidity was both a response to the local film industry environment and a pre-emptive action to empower practitioners against the increasingly precarious working situation in Hong Kong cinema. I should also note that in the political-economic and sociocultural contexts immediately prior to the passing of the new film censorship law in Hong Kong on 27 October 2021 (see Chapter 2), which followed the passing of the ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ on 30 June 2020 (see Chapter 1, note 120), the precarity of Hong Kong film labour was generated not so much by the harsh working conditions at that time. The poor working conditions had in any case been infamously around for a very long time in the local film sector.33 What possibly seemed most relentless for the film labourers in the city in the 2010s was the fast-dwindling number of work opportunities over a matter of a decade, along with a continuous flock of newcomers trying to join the local film sector each year. Many of the newcomers were recent graduates of filmmaking courses in local universities. They would find themselves unemployed after graduation, as there were not enough film-related jobs for them: this shortage was a direct result of the mainlandization of the Hong Kong film sector in the early 2010s after the CEPA was concluded.34 Hence, in the cases of these new Hong Kong film practitioners, precarity arguably grew out of the uncertainty of whether they would be able to even join the local film sector, which itself was ever shrinking in reputation and in the number of its outputs within the pan-Chinese film industry environment in East Asia in the 2010s. But then, if successful, the films made by some of these new Hong Kong filmmakers in this period might still have the chance to tap into the international film audience markets, allowing the filmmakers to continue their careers either locally or in nearby regions of East Asia. Though such successes were few, they helped raise hopes among their local fellow filmmakers of achieving them. The threshold for these newcomers entering the Hong Kong film industry, or more generally, Chinese-language film industries, over the past ten years or so has thus been much higher than it was for their earlier veteran counterparts. Even if the newcomers were fortunate enough to enter the local film sector, they would not have been working long enough in it to build up a reputation of their own and give themselves enough bargaining power to develop longer and continuous career paths in the local and other film sectors in East Asia, such as that based in mainland China. In addition, unlike established film industries elsewhere in the world that have their national governments, film industry bodies

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and/or trade unions (such as in Hollywood) to help individual filmmakers to overcome adversity at work,35 Hong Kong’s new filmmakers in the contemporary era have been acquiring only weak support from similar local sources. The HKSAR governmental support has remained inadequate for most of them and trade unions in the film sector have been weak.36 The new filmmakers had to rely on their own personal and professional networks to work around the ubiquitous precarity. Many new Hong Kong film directors have not had many other choices but to concentrate on building their careers locally with limited film finances (I do not rule out cases of new Hong Kong filmmakers successfully finding ways to develop their film careers on the mainland). In 2010s Hong Kong, forming collective film directorship and/or teaming up with veteran practitioners to make films, independently or not, were two of the main ways for new filmmakers to at least take a first step to start their careers in the local film industry.

Collective Filmmaking of Hong Kong New Indies It was imperative to discuss, in the previous section, the precarious working conditions of Hong Kong film labourers, as this helps us appreciate the different ways in which above-the-line and below-the-line film labourers would resort to innovativeness in order to start and sustain their professional careers as long as possible. Collective filmmaking was one such resource. Interestingly, films made independently with collective filmmaking in mind caught media attention when they were celebrated by the critics and/or for their excellent box-office performance. In this section, I examine three main types of such filmmaking formations, accompanying my discussion with three respective case studies: Rigor Mortis (2013), Trivisa (2016) and Still Human (2018). Type 1: Tribute to a Foregone Era of Hong Kong Cinema via Particular Film Genres—Rigor Mortis (2013) The first type of collective filmmaking by new film directors of 2010s Hong Kong new indies showed huge respect for various components of Hong Kong cinema from its last golden era. These films were inspired by, or imitated and/or re-enacted elements of, specific popular film genres of the past. The collectiveness found in these 2010s films might not be evident in terms of the number of film directors on the projects. It

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had more to do with the new filmmakers collaborating in spirit with their predecessors, who had firmly entrenched themselves in the same film genres in a bygone era of Hong Kong film. For example, Gallants (Clement Cheng/Derek Kwok, China/Hong Kong, 2010), a China– Hong Kong co-produced film, was made by two new Hong Kong film directors who had previously worked in other positions in the local film industry (see also Derek Kwok’s filmmaking trajectory in ‘Concluding Remarks’ in Chapter 2).37 Although not an independent production, the film’s strong orientation to local Hong Kong issues gives an impression of being an independently made, purely local film.38 In particular, the film pays tribute to Hong Kong kung fu films of the 1960s and 1970s. Half of its cast members had been featured stars in such films. Telling of the effort to keep a school of kung fu alive, and offering uplifting dialogues between characters played by elderly kung fu actors and younger cast members, the film audio-visually enables the spirit of persistence and holding on to one’s cultural heritage. Tales from the Dark 1 (Fruit Chan/Lee Chi-ngai/Simon Yam, Hong Kong, 2013) and Tales from the Dark 2 (Lawrence AhMon/Gordon Chan/Teddy Robin, Hong Kong, 2013) gathered six Hong Kong directors to re-create the frightening ambience of Hong Kong horror films of the 1980s to the early 2000s. Simon Yam, a veteran actor with more than forty years of professional experience, debuted his directorship in the first of these two omnibus films. He was in the company of five other well-established Hong Kong directors in the two films, which resonate with the omnibus setup of Three (Peter Chan/Kim Jee-won/Nonzee Nimibutr, Hong Kong/South Korea/Thailand, 2002) and Three… Extremes (Fruit Chan/Miike Takashi/Park Chan-wook, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea, 2004). Unlike these early 2000s films, the two parts of Tales from the Dark are saturated both on-screen and off-screen with distinct local Hong Kong specificities dating to the 2010s. ‘Succession and spread’ in this case was more of a horizontal than vertical kind, going from the past to the current and then into the future. The kung fu and horror genres (with supernatural and ghost subgenres) were undeniably among those that made Hong Kong cinema famous in the past. They have also had regular reincarnations (or modifications) in more recent periods. But what was absolutely unique in Hong Kong cinema was the time-specific genre of geung si (Cantonese transliteration) / jiangshi (Mandarin transliteration), which means ‘stiff corpse’. These films feature Chinese hopping vampires dressed in Qing Dynasty costumes. The genre was famous as a specific product of Hong

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Kong cinema of the 1980s and early 1990s. After the 1990s, this film genre was close to extinction. One of the reasons was that the Hong Kong film industry became saturated with China–Hong Kong film coproductions. The resulting films had to be scrutinized by the Chinese film censors, in order to obtain official permission to be shown on the mainland. However, supernatural and ghost films had been among the forbidden genres on the mainland. To produce such films would immediately kill the chances of entering the lucrative mainland Chinese audience market, and hence would not be contemplated by many filmmakers and investors in the post-CEPA period. Thus, the geung si/jiangshi genre represented the prosperity of Hong Kong cinema in its past and Hong Kong at that time. It re-appeared, after a hiatus of more than two decades, when Rigor Mortis was introduced to Hong Kong film admirers as a twenty-first-century tribute to the genre. The film was made under the single directorship of Juno Mak, a debut director who intended to follow in the path of predecessors in this fiction film genre. That is why Rigor Mortis is a suitable case for my close study of collective filmmaking in 2010s Hong Kong. Juno Mak first joined the Hong Kong entertainment industry of the early 2000s at the age of eighteen as a Cantopop singer. He later branched out to act in TV dramas and small-budget local films, while also gaining a foothold in the local fashion industry by creating his own fashion brand. Seen by critics as multifaceted, Juno Mak became involved in Hong Kong’s low-budget, (perceived) independent filmmaking in 2011. He assumed the roles of co-producer, co-scriptwriter as well as the male lead in Revenge: A Love Story (Wong Ching-po, Hong Kong, 2010).39 Among other awards from different film festivals and events, this film earned Juno Mak and his co-scriptwriters the Best Screenplay Award and Wong Chingpo the Best Director Award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2011. Wong Ching-po himself has been active in low-budget Hong Kong indie productions since the late 1990s. He made several critically acclaimed fiction feature films, such as Fu Bo (Hong Kong, 2003), which explores the philosophical question of life and death. He also made rather commercial mainstream films, such as the gangster film Jiang Hu (Hong Kong, 2004). The success of Revenge: A Love Story gave Juno Mak the bargaining power and creative clout of a serious filmmaker, with which to attract the attention of producers and investors. This directly led him to the idea of making Rigor Mortis .40 The film was one of the early projects of Kudos

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Films, co-founded in 2011 by Juno Mak and his talent manager, Willie Chan.41 It was made on a budget of about HK$12 million (£1.3 million or US$1.5 million),42 quite large for a debut director in Hong Kong. Other debut filmmakers could only raise budgets of around HK$3 million (£0.3 million or US$0.4 million) (see, for instance, Still Human’s case below). Rigor Mortis premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2013, subsequently travelling along the international film festival circuit for about a year and a half.43 On the home front, its theatrical release in Hong Kong garnered local box-office takings of about HK$17 million (£1.8 million or US$2.2 million).44 The film was the highest-grossing purely Hong Kong film in 2013. It also earned multiple awards from international film events, such as the Prix FIPRESCI at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival in 2013. According to Juno Mak, Rigor Mortis captures his childhood memory of the geung si/jiangshi genre, of which the most famous example was the Mr. Vampire series.45 The first Mr. Vampire (Ricky Lau, Hong Kong, 1985) was directed by Ricky Lau and produced by Sammo Hung. Far from being frightening, Mr. Vampire and its sequels are comical. Important characters in the films perform great amounts of action film stunts. The series can be classified under a subgenre of the kung fu comedy genre, which also featured Hung, Jackie Chan and other kung fu film stars of 1970s and 1980s Hong Kong cinema. Mr. Vampire series’s main trio cast included Lam Ching-ying (playing the male lead as the Taoist vampire hunter), and Ricky Hui and Chin Siu-ho (both playing the disciples of the vampire hunter). The supporting roles were frequently played by a recurring group of actors, such as Anthony (Friend) Chan and Billy Lau. Rigor Mortis was inspired by Chinese hopping vampire films made in the 1980s, but was not intended to be a remake of these older films.46 Under Juno Mak’s directorship, Rigor Mortis removed all the comic elements of the classical Chinese hopping vampire films. Instead, Juno Mak presented his own vision of the evolution of geung si/jiangshi genre into something claustrophobic and melancholic, with an exploration of the dark side of human nature. The film’s constant eerie non-diegetic sound, ashen/greyish palette and CGI effects, borrowed from J-horrors, were the contributions of co-producer Shimizu Takashi, a famous Jhorror filmmaker (Mak is also credited as co-producer).47 Rigor Mortis reassembled Chin, Anthony (Friend) Chan and Billy Lau, actors from the original Mr. Vampire series. It added Richard Ng, an actor who had also appeared in some 1980s Chinese hopping vampire films. At the end of the

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film, special mention is made of two other actors from the original Mr. Vampire series: a black intertitle card (with bilingual tribute texts in white) reads ‘As if you were still around [my translation from the original traditional Chinese script] / In your footsteps [in English]: Lam Ching Ying (1952–1997), Ricky Hui (1946–2011)’. This special tribute to the two deceased actors re-emphasizes the legacy and influence of 1980s geung si/jiangshi genre, and more generally of the golden age of Hong Kong cinema. Not only do the cast of actors and the geung si/jiangshi genre help Juno Mak, the director of this twenty-first-century Chinese hopping vampire film, manifest collective filmmaking in spirit with his predecessors in the same genre, but also the story and the action sequences of Rigor Mortis show collective-in-spirit filmmaking at other levels as well. The film tells a fictional, semi-autobiographical story of Chin (a character bearing the same name as the actor who plays him), who is a fifty-yearold retired Chinese hopping vampire film star. He moves into a haunted flat (whose number, ‘2442’, is pronounced in Cantonese ‘easily die; die easily’) in a semi-deserted, haunted multi-storied public housing estate. He initially plans to commit suicide but is saved by a Taoist vampire hunter (played by Anthony [Friend] Chan) who subsequently asks Chin to help him hunt down vampire Tung (played by Richard Ng). Tung was turned into a vampire by a black Taoist Gau (played by Chung Fat) at the request of Tung’s wife, Mui (played by Nina Paw) after Tung (unbeknownst to Mui) was accidentally murdered by Gau. Most of the film is narrated from the perspective of Chin. The finale is a flashback to the point when Chin moved into that public housing estate. It reveals that Chin did indeed hang himself. The whole vampire hunting story in the public housing estate occurred in his imagination just before he draws his last breath. The action sequences in Rigor Mortis are reminiscent of the agile stunts that Chin used to perform in those 1980s–90s Chinese hopping vampire films. Such parallels can be drawn, for example, from the fight sequence that spotlights the vampire, Chin and Feng (played by Kara Wai, who played in many Hong Kong martial arts films in the 1980s– 90s). Feng is the mother of the vampire’s victim, the only primary-school boy (an albino) living in the block with the other much older characters. The fight takes place in a deserted nearby indoor wet market (of a type often attached to many public housing estates in Hong Kong), shortly after Feng encounters the ghost of her young son (just killed by

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the vampire) at the end of a long, dark corridor outside their flat. Against a very dark and greyish colour tone, several medium and long shots, alternating with different high and low camera angles, are used to portray the bloody combat between the vampire and Feng, who is avenging her son’s death. The long shots from a high camera angle suggest the claustrophobic environment in which Feng and the vampire are trapped. Chin finds the two after the vampire has hurled Feng against the wall and fatally injured her. He takes over the fight with the vampire (a dolly shot tracks the fifty-year-old character as he throws a Molotov cocktail at the vampire). Chin manages to subdue the vampire with several more punches; thrown into the air, the vampire lands and collapses in a heap (shown by jump cuts). A pair of twin ghosts, who were haunting Chin’s flat, are now perched nearby to take the opportunity to gain possession of the vampire’s body and thus become resurrected (the camera, panning horizontally, re-emphasizes the suffocating setting inside the wet market). The possession increases the power of the original vampire, who subsequently pierces Chin’s abdomen with a broken metal rod. Rigor Mortis conveys the image of a group of lost souls holding onto the things/persons dearest to them (somewhat like Juno Mak holding onto his love for and memory of the original geung si/jiangshi genre).48 The film, an audacious move on the part of the director, turned out very successful in reviving the genre in 2010s Hong Kong film industry: several vampire and zombie-related Hong Kong films featuring Chin were filmed after Rigor Mortis .49 After this project, made under his co-owned production company, Juno Mak moved on to working with Miike Takashi, an important Japanese film practitioner well-known for his violent and gory films including Audition (Japan/South Korea, 1999) and Ichi the Killer (Japan, 2001).50 Locally, Juno Mak also worked with a superstar cast in his following project, the crime thriller Sons of the Neon Night (China/Hong Kong; not yet released at the time of writing). Type 2: Collective Directorship of New Filmmakers—Trivisa (2016) The second type of collective filmmaking among 2010s Hong Kong new indies referred to collective film directorships as found in omnibus films. Ten Years (Jevons Au/Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai]/Kwok Zune/Ng Ka-leung/Wong Fei-pang, Hong Kong, 2015) is a typical example of such filmmaking. It consists of five unrelated short films, each made by a new film director. Inspired by the 2014 Umbrella Movement in

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Hong Kong and made on a shoestring budget of a total of about HK$0.5 million (£54,000 or US$64,000), all five short stories in this omnibus film explore a possible futuristic but dystopian Hong Kong in the year 2025.51 The film has become highly controversial because of its strong political subtext. First of all, its subject matter was unacceptable to the mainland Chinese authorities, which regarded the film as ‘spreading desperation’; even news about it was banned in mainland China after the film was nominated for, and then won, the Best Picture Award at the 35th HKFA presentation ceremony, 2016.52 In addition, although perceived by many as an independent film, it initially made use of the mainstream film distribution and exhibition networks in Hong Kong and garnered handsome box-office earnings before its theatrical release period was cut short as a result of suspected self-censorship on the part of local theatre operators.53 Ten Years has since continued to be shown around the world via local and international community screenings, as well as online streaming platforms (see the film’s subject matter in Chapter 4 and its circulation in Chapter 6). The film has also spawned territory-specific versions under the Ten Years International Project, including versions for Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, disseminated by the same distributor of the original Ten Years .54 I argue elsewhere that Ten Years has become a watershed of the Hong Kong film industry in terms of practice, especially in the areas of distribution and exhibition.55 Film directorship was also collective when a group of new filmmakers intended to maintain a relatively consistent film style and narrative among themselves within their works, even though different portions of the films were spearheaded by different co-directors. Trivisa offers for close study an example of this type of collective filmmaking. While this was Jevons Au’s second co-directed feature film (Ten Years being his first), it was a co-directed debut of Frank Hui and Vicky Wong. The film was lauded as ‘exceptional’ and ‘powerful’ by film critics in various mass media,56 with the recognition that culminated in multiple awards such as the Best Film Award, Best Director Award, Best Screenplay Award, Best Film Editing Award, Best Actor Award at the 36th HKFA presentation ceremony in 2017, among other major awards received at important film-related events. The size of the film’s budget was not widely publicized by official sources. But the HKSAR government has a record of the film’s boxoffice earnings: the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association box-office statistics as published by the Create Hong Kong (CreateHK, which is a government agency; see Chapter 2) show that Trivisa was

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ranked No. 9 on the lists of ‘All Hong Kong Films’ and ‘China–Hong Kong Co-produced Films’ theatrically released in the city in 2016.57 The film’s English title Trivisa is derived from the Buddhist concept of the ‘three root poisons’—greed, anger and ignorance.58 As for its Chinese title, the expression (樹大招風 / 树大招风) means ‘big trees caught in the wind’. The film is a fictional action crime thriller inspired by the biographical stories of three notorious real-life criminals in Hong Kong— Cheung Tze-keung, Kwai Ping-hung and Yip Kai-foon, who were active in their respective fields of crime prior to the city’s sovereignty transfer at midnight on 30 June 1997. In the film, their names are changed to Cheuk Tze-keung (played by Jordan Chan), corresponding to Cheung Tze-keung; Kwai Ching-hung (played by Gordon Lam, who won the Best Actor Award for his performance in this film at the 2017 edition of the HKFA presentation ceremony), referring to Kwai Ping-hung; and Yip Kwok-foon (played by Richie Jen), standing for Yip Kai-foon. Most of the plot is set in late May of 1997. The narrative of Trivisa is character driven. It contains three separate stories, each featuring the fictionalized lead-up to the arrest of a criminal. The three aspiring film directors, Au, Frank Hui and Vicky Wong, each shot a separate story, while in the film’s ending credits, each script is shown as written by a designated scriptwriter. Au is credited as the director of the part about the character Yip; the credited scriptwriter is Thomas Ng. Frank Hui is credited as the director of the story about the character Kwai; its credited scriptwriter is Loong Man-hong. Vicky Wong is credited as the director of the part about the character Cheuk, and the credited scriptwriter of this part is Man Tin-shu. The three separate stories were edited together by the film’s editors, Allen Leung and David Richardson, into a trifurcated narrative structure, exquisitely intertwined throughout the film. It took them about a year to complete the film’s editing.59 In addition to the collective basis of its directorship, Trivisa has an interesting background indicating the continuous creative labour precarity in the post-CEPA Hong Kong film industry and a possible local (and not ‘China’-driven) solution put forward by one person—the internationally acclaimed Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To. To begin with, Trivisa has three credited production companies: Milkyway Image (an independent Hong Kong-based production company, co-established by Johnnie To in 1996), Media Asia Films (Hong Kong-based), and Hairun Pictures (Beijing-based). Although the film was an official China–Hong

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Kong co-production, it arguably leaned towards an indie mode of purely Hong Kong films of the 2010s, as it could not be shown publicly in mainland China, allegedly due to its subject matter: criminal activities in colonial Hong Kong and corruption among government officials in mainland China.60 The film could not enjoy any of the benefits and resources normally open to China–Hong Kong co-produced films. The fact that Au was a co-director of Ten Years would additionally make it extremely difficult for Trivisa to be screened publicly in mainland China. The film’s strong tie with Johnnie To’s Milkyway Image further increased the perception that it was a new kind of Hong Kong indie. Johnnie To himself has been cleverly striking a balance between making purely Hong Kong films and making China–Hong Kong co-produced films via Milkyway Image (although, interestingly, he is normally regarded as part of the establishment of the local film sector because of his close connection with commercialized filmmaking). Such a mode of operation in the local film sector has become a possible alternative to the over-reliance of the Hong Kong film industry on the mainland Chinese audience market in the post-CEPA era.61 Nonetheless, what caught the attention of film journalists and critics locally and internationally was Trivisa’ s direct lineage to the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival (Fresh Wave ISFF), before the film’s connection with Milkyway Image. Trivisa’s three directors were award winners at different editions of the Fresh Wave ISFF, founded by Johnnie To. After their success at the festival, the three were appointed as junior staff members (e.g., scriptwriters) in Milkyway Image. They were later given a chance to cowrite the script and co-direct Trivisa under the mentorship of Johnnie To and his disciple Yau Nai-hoi, who is a scriptwriter-film director making films under the brand name of Milkyway Image. As mentioned in a media interview with the three directors of Trivisa, Johnnie To was the one to decide who of the three would be directing which character’s story in the film.62 Trivisa and the emerging filmmaking careers of the three new film directors therefore provided convincing proof that the mission of ‘succession and spread’ could be made possible systematically and strategically under non-governmental, grassroots initiatives driven by highly respected individuals. In the case of Trivisa, Johnnie To was such an individual, based on what he had established under his own (brand) name. Through the Fresh Wave ISFF, Johnnie To has institutionalized a much-needed and highly sustainable mentor–mentee system to nurture new talent in the local film industry when neither the HKSAR government nor the

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perceived mainstream segment of the local film sector has yet managed to fully materialize such a continuous nurturing role.63 Obviously, Johnnie To needs kindred spirits in the local film sector to help him maintain this mentor–mentee system. At the Fresh Wave ISFF, veteran film directors such as Fruit Chan and Herman Yau have been the mentors guiding qualified Fresh Wave ISFF participants, who would be given small budgets to work on projects with which to compete in the festival. Winners would also be given financial support by the Fresh Wave ISFF to enter their works into major international film festivals.64 The Fresh Wave ISFF has thus given aspiring Hong Kong filmmakers a very solid platform to find their way into the local film industry. Under Johnnie To’s leadership, and in addition to Milkyway Image, the Fresh Wave ISFF has provided yet another feasible means of overcoming the continuous adversities that beset local film practitioners. Specifically, and at least temporarily, the combination of Johnnie To’s vision, Milkyway Image and the Fresh Wave IFF has helped tackle part of the problem related to the lack of job opportunities, from which newcomers to the local film sector often suffer in the contemporary era. At Milkyway Image, Au, Frank Hui and Vicky Wong received further intensive training and hands-on filmmaking experience. According to Au, Trivisa was in creation over a course of five years.65 Such a long creative production process can rarely be found in the fast-paced Hong Kong film industry. However, both Johnnie To and Yau Nai-hoi were very patient in guiding the three new directors during the long scripting and making of this film. Johnnie To and Yau Nai-hoi recollect in a media interview: [For Johnnie To] It was more a case of they give me homework, and then I say if it’s okay or not. Following the director from the beginning to end is Nai-hoi’s job … [For Yau Nai-hoi] I would meet them every one to two weeks. In the creative process, they would submit the script to me and he [Johnnie To] would give feedback. This took three years. During shooting they would submit a storyboard to me to comment, and at each stage during shooting they meet. So I would act as quality control.66

The rigorous training they were subjected to has been confirmed separately by the three new film directors. Au remembers that, after the characters they would be working on were designated, the three new filmmakers were also assigned the responsibility of interpreting the

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topic.67 Frank Hui complements, ‘As we were filming, Yau [Nai-hoi] and [Johnnie] To gave us a lot of advice on how to make sure we could connect each others’ characters through plausible scenarios and dialogue. Since we were shooting separately, there were logistical elements that needed to be accounted for, so the story doesn’t have strange gaps’.68 The film’s twists and turns as well as the melding of the trifurcated storylines, are typically displayed in sequences such as the penultimate one. The plot comes to the point where the arrogant Cheuk acts on a rumour that he has been working with Yip and Kwai. The three have been nicknamed ‘The Three Kings of Thieves’, although they have never formally met one another. Cheuk is excited by the thought of teaming up with the other two men to blow up the Handover ceremony. Being clueless about their whereabouts, Cheuk sets up a specific mobile phone number as a hotline on which informants can provide information about the two men. He even goes via an illegal route from Hong Kong to Guangdong, in mainland China, to look for Yip, who has set up a base there under a fake identity. Yip, who is noisy and loud, is travelling the same night to Hong Kong on his trafficking boat (which he uses to smuggle electronic goods between Hong Kong and mainland China). He lands in Sai Wan on Hong Kong Island. Kwai, looking sinister and sneaky, is hiding in a friend’s place in Kowloon City in the Kowloon Peninsula of Hong Kong. The time is around 1:24 am when the three criminals finally connect via mobile phone. Cheuk talks to the two in turn, talking to each while putting the other on hold. The film quickly cross-cuts from Cheuk in Guangdong, to Yip in Sai Wan, and to Kwai in Kowloon City, then back to Cheuk, and so on, sometimes with a voice-over of the other interlocutor on the phone; thus, the three supposedly separate stories are skilfully connected. This sequence is characterized by much shorter scenes between cuts than in other parts of the film, which creates a fast on-screen rhythm corresponding to Cheuk’s excitement. The cuts in turn signify changes of settings (the criminals’ physical locations), mise-en-scene, and lighting (mostly dim) against a similar colour tone (dark bluish); thus, the trifurcated story moves excitingly forward at a cracking pace. Changes in camera distance and angles, presented by the fast cross-cutting between the three separate plotlines related to the three characters, fully visualize their personality traits, which eventually lead to the demise of each.

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Type 3: On- and Off-Screen Partnership—Still Human (2018) The third type of collective filmmaking, which was more frequently used by filmmakers of 2010s Hong Kong new indies, referred to the teaming up of debut or relatively new film directors with famous veteran film practitioners in the crews and/or casts of their films, thereby enabling ongoing and flexible ‘succession and spread’ on-screen and off-screen. Admirably, these veterans were frequently willing to downplay their stardom, thereby allowing the new directors to shine. Hence, unlike the second type of collective filmmaking discussed above, mentoring was kept to a minimum in the third type. The stages of the whole process of film pre-production, production and post-production were often conducted in an egalitarian manner. This type of collective filmmaking was similar to the first, except that it did not carry the specificity of a particular film genre. Since the new film directors had not been around long enough to develop unique auteur qualities of their own, this type of collective filmmaking contributed to a distinct anti-auteur and anti-star ambience in the uncharted ‘independent’ film sector of 2010s Hong Kong. Needless to say, the new filmmakers were not the only ones to benefit from the learning opportunities often found in ‘media capitals’ and praised by Curtin,69 but the veteran Hong Kong film practitioners working on the film projects were, for their part, able to prolong their careers by partnering with the much younger filmmakers. It was a win–win situation, especially as it would not have been easy for most practitioners to find local job opportunities in the post-CEPA Hong Kong film industry. In turn, this type of collective filmmaking also made Hong Kong’s new indies of the 2010s very different from other contemporaneous independent cinemas globally, for example, those studied by Ran Ma and discussed in my overview of independent cinemas in different geographical regions in the Introduction to this book. Some outstanding examples of this type of collective filmmaking in 2010s Hong Kong new indies included, for instance, Amos Why’s Dot 2 Dot (2014), the product of harmonious teamwork between the debut director; veteran actors Moses Chan, Susan Shaw (aka Siu Yam-yam), David Siu; and new actor Meng Tingyi. Steve Chan (aka Chan Chi-fat)’s Weeds on Fire (2016) teamed the debut director with veteran actors Liu Kai-chi and Poon Chan-leung. Veteran scriptwriter-film director Chan Hing-ka and veteran cinematographer O Sing-pui were the producers. Wong Chun’s Mad World (2016) saw the debut director teaming up with

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veteran actors Elaine Jin, Eric Tsang and Shawn Yue. The film’s producers included veteran film director Derek Chiu and another experienced (but younger) scriptwriter-film director Heiward Mak (see more details of this film in Introduction and Chapter 4). Chan Tai-lee’s Tomorrow Is Another Day (2017) saw the debut director’s partnership with veteran actors Teresa Mo, Prudence Liew, Ray Lui, and new actor Ling Man-lung. Jun Li’s Tracey (2018) saw the partnership between the debut director; veteran actors Philip Keung, Kara Wai; and veteran scriptwriter-film director-producer Shu Kei. Lee Cheuk-pan’s G Affairs (2018) teamed the debut director with veteran actor Chapman To and veteran film directorproducer Herman Yau. Norris Wong’s My Prince Edward (2019) saw the debut director partnering with veteran actors Stephy Tang and Nina Paw. Chan Hing-ka was one of the producers, while William Chang (set designer and long-time collaborator of Wong Kar-wai) co-edited the film (see Chapter 4 for the subject matter of these films). The above films were nominated for, and/or won, different awards at the HKFA presentation ceremonies in the 2010s. Steve Chan, Lee Cheuk-pan, Wong Chun and Norris Wong were also winners of different editions of the HKSAR government’s FFFI, which awarded full government financial support for eighteen new, purely Hong Kong films (under the helms of nineteen debut directors) between 2013 and 2020 (i.e., the first six editions since the commencement of this government film funding scheme).70 Looked at more closely, the FFFI seemed to have been a major factor in bringing forward this type of collective filmmaking by debut directors and veteran film practitioners. But the FFFI funding in question was not necessarily truly welcome by the participants in these winning projects, especially the film veterans who had long experience in the local film sector and knew how things worked. They felt that the sum of awarded money per film project was not enough for making highquality films.71 Let me turn to the case of Still Human, made by debut director Oliver Chan, and show how inadequate film funding for these debut films was compensated for by, among others, the film practitioners’ passion for filmmaking as a labour of love. Like Rigor Mortis and Trivisa, Still Human was the winner of multiple awards at the 38th HKFA presentation ceremony in 2019, including those for Best New Director, Best Actor, and Best New Performer, besides other important awards received at other significant film events. According to Box Office Mojo, the film was ranked No. 3 in its opening week in Hong Kong’s local box office and climbed to the top of the same

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box-office chart in its second week of theatrical release.72 Yet, unlike the two other debut films, which received private investments, Still Human was fully subsidized by the HKSAR government. Hence, in terms of financing, it was not independently made in the strictest sense. The film was the sole winner in the Higher Education Institution Group (HEIG) of the third edition of the FFFI, 2017. Oliver Chan, the sole scriptwriter and debut director, won a sum of HK$3.25 million (£0.4 million or US$0.4 million) via the FFFI to make the film. The other FFFI winner of that edition was The Assassination of G in the Professional Group (PG) (the film later adopted another English title, G Affairs ). Winning the FFFI awards was not easy, as the competition was very keen and based on strict eligibility criteria. The latest ‘eligibility of participation’ (at the time of writing) stipulates that the HEIG of the FFFI is open to ‘student[s] or graduate[s] of not more than ten years from film/TV production or similar disciplines of a local or overseas higher education institute or a professional school’.73 The participating teams have to be screened first and then nominated by the ten local higher education institutions in Hong Kong that have study programmes related to film/TV production. In 2017, the year when Oliver Chan won the award, only five teams qualified for participation in the HEIG section. While the award money, meant to provide full financial support by the HKSAR government for the FFFI (HEIG) winner, was indeed useful for the making of Oliver Chan’s first ever feature film, it proved to be a poisoned chalice. The director remarks in a media interview: ‘We had a limited budget and we weren’t allowed to get more funding. That’s the problem… […] they [FFFI] want us to be original and not been affected by commercial funding. So we could not get more money, that is the FFFI deal. I think this movie cost only 8M HK dollars, so I had to go around saying: “Sorry I have no money”.’ (the first ellipsis from the original).74 The whole film production and sales process (including planning, shooting and distribution) had to be completed within a year and a half.75 Due to the tight budget, the shooting period lasted only for twenty days. Under these circumstances, two important persons, who heroically joined the project in an egalitarian fashion as Oliver Chan’s on- and off-screen collaborators, made a big difference.76 The first was veteran independent filmmaker, Fruit Chan (not related to Oliver Chan), the film’s producer. Fruit Chan had been one of Oliver Chan’s instructors in

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her Master of Fine Arts course in film at the Hong Kong Baptist University.77 This veteran filmmaker’s name was attached to the project from the start of the debut director’s participation in the FFFI. Fruit Chan was aware that his presence in their films would be helpful for young directors, who might otherwise find it very difficult to obtain film finances. According to Fruit Chan, ‘Investors are the biggest concern and a film with a young director, without any old people like me working with them, makes [funding] even harder’.78 Anthony Wong, who initially worked for free on the project of Still Human after Oliver Chan had won the FFFI award, is of a similar opinion. As Anthony Wong recalls, ‘[…] I liked the story […] She (the director) didn’t have a lot of money and she couldn’t afford me. I cannot lower my fee, so I did it for free. (laugh) But if the movie makes money, I get some profit sharing’.79 The onand off-screen filmmaking partnership, displayed by the strong presence of the two veteran film professionals in the film, arguably enabled Oliver Chan to achieve success much sooner than she being a new film director would have otherwise. The filmmaking partnership was completed by the participation of a first-time film actor, Crisel Consunji, in the female lead role. Still Human is a fiction film telling the story of the mutual friendship and soul-searching journey of Leung Cheong-wing (played by Anthony Wong), a working-class middle-aged man who is paralysed and uses a wheelchair, and Evelyn Santos (played by Consunji), his Filipino domestic helper, who is also an aspiring photographer. Anthony Wong was the winner of several Best Actor Awards at different important film-related events, including two such awards from different editions of the HKFA presentation ceremonies (his third of such HKFA award came for his performance in Still Human).80 Thus, he is obviously one of the major appeals of this film. However, his star persona comes across as rather subdued because he skilfully blends into his role of a socially marginalized figure, as well as blending in with the rest of the film cast, which includes veteran actors Sam Lee (as Fai, the male lead’s best friend) and Cecilia Yip (as Jing-ying, the male lead’s sister). The characterizations, the interaction between the characters, and their mutual inspiration successfully elicit a positive outlook and hope in this socially and culturally marginalized group of individuals, whom the director allows to be seen and heard here. The film depicts them via four seasonal dividers, starting with the summer and ending with the following spring. Cheong-wing is initially a

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grumpy man who has lost faith in himself because of his physical disability (the result of a workplace accident at the construction site where he was a menial worker). He talks in a loud, harsh, rasping voice, peppering his speech with Cantonese swear words that match his low social, economic and educational status. Speaking little English, Cheong-wing is suspicious of the motives of overseas domestic helpers; hence, he does not trust Evelyn, his newly hired helper, who is a university graduate and a former nurse. In contrast, Evelyn speaks fluent English in a soft voice; but she does not speak Cantonese. Due to the language barrier, there are brief moments of awkward confrontations, visually expressed by the physical distance between them in long shots and close-ups of their embarrassed facial expressions. After Cheong-wing’s fall in his home and Evelyn proves not strong enough to move her employer between the wheelchair and his bed, Evelyn is eager to train herself to be physically strong enough to perform her job. This employer–employee relationship then starts to improve. Also, she later asks Cheong-wing to teach her Cantonese. In the course of their interaction, the portrayal of their characters and backgrounds is enriched via their dialogues with supporting characters, such as Evelyn’s friends (likewise Filipino domestic helpers working in Hong Kong), Fai, Jing-ying, Cheong-wing’s son, Cheongwing’s ex-wife and her current husband (the last three presented via video chats). Throughout the next three seasonal episodes, both Cheong-wing and Evelyn work hard to break the language and cultural barriers between them. They share their dreams with each other: Evelyn aspires to be a professional photographer; Cheong-wing wants to go on a trip with his son when the latter graduates from medical school in New York. Their inner thoughts, facial expressions and concerns for each other are shown through multiple close-ups and extreme close-ups of their faces. Both are afraid to fulfil their dreams, thinking reality will make this impossible. But they manage to comfort and encourage each other, and move towards fulfilment. Later, each of them takes the initiative to help the other fulfil those dreams, without the other’s knowledge. On the one hand, Evelyn prompts Cheong-wing’s son to visit his father after graduating. On the other hand, with Cheong-wing’s help, Evelyn wins a special mention award in a photography competition and later gets a job as a photography assistant to a London-based photographer. In preparation for Evelyn’s job interview, Cheong-wing and Fai secretly help her put together a photo portfolio entitled ‘Still Human Still Dreaming’, which features her portraits of various unnamed people from different

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age groups and various cultural backgrounds, whom she encountered on the streets of Hong Kong. The last picture in the portfolio is of Cheongwing in his wheelchair. By that point of the plot, Cheong-wing has found that he has something to offer even when bound to a wheelchair, for he has taken up the role of protector, close friend and non-blood family of Evelyn. He also speaks in a calmer voice now and often smiles. They part in the spring, moving on to the next stage of their lives.

Concluding Remarks All three films chosen for close study in this chapter did well at the local box office, as made evident by their high ranking on box-office charts. They were also award winners, gaining for the debut directors the reputational success needed to continue their filmmaking careers. While the films might not be ‘independent’ in the strictest sense, together they showed undisputable signs of emerging hope, which, I argue, became the unexpected lifeblood of the Hong Kong film industry in the 2010s and beyond. Moreover, they offered empirical evidence of possible solutions to precarity in the local film sector. However, whether such solutions would indeed work depends very much on the effective, efficient and systematic long-term planning of individual filmmakers and the sector as a whole. Lifeblood was not limited to these cases of collective filmmaking. The concern of Hong Kong’s new indies with local subject matter as well as their insistent use of the Cantonese language reinforced these films’ abilities to gain empowerment for the whole industry. I will discuss these cinematic elements in the next two chapters.

Notes 1. Hong Kong Film Awards, ‘“Keep Rolling” Will be the Theme for This Year’s Presentation Ceremony. The Announcement of Nominations in a Total of 19 Categories’ (in English and traditional Chinese), the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards press release, no date, accessed 19 December 2022, http://www.hkfaa.com/news120219.html. 2. Hong Kong Film Awards, ‘“Keep Rolling”’. 3. Yip Sze, ‘Exclusive Interview with the Creative Team behind the 2019 Hong Kong Film Awards Presentation Ceremony’ (in traditional Chinese), HK01, 17 April 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hk01.com/電影/316118/金像獎2019-獨家專訪幕 後創作團隊-keep-rolling唔係得個口號.

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4. Hong Kong Film Awards, ‘Master of Ceremonies of This Year’s Presentation Ceremony’ (in English and traditional Chinese), the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards press release, no date, accessed 19 December 2022, http:// www.hkfaa.com/news1203.html. 5. Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), 4; Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito, ‘Introduction’, in DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film, ed. Zhang Zhen and Angela Zito (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 21. 6. Yiu-Wai Chu, Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (New York: State University of New York Press, 2018), 118. 7. David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, ‘Toward a Political Economy of Labor in the Media Industries’, in The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications, ed. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock and Helena Sousa (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011), 382. 8. Hesmondhalgh and Baker, Creative Labour, 9. 9. Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson, ‘Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor’, in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, ed. Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 7–8. 10. Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2009), 139. 11. Vincent Mosco, ‘The Political Economy of Labor’, in The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications, ed. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock and Helena Sousa (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011), 358. 12. Ruth Towse, A Textbook of Cultural Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 448. 13. Curtin and Sanson, ‘Precarious Creativity’, 2–5. 14. Michael Keane, ‘Unbundling Precarious Creativity in China: “KnowingHow” and “Knowing-To”’, in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, ed. Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 216. 15. Curtin and Sanson, ‘Precarious Creativity’, 5. 16. Curtin and Sanson, ‘Precarious Creativity’, 9. 17. Anthony Fung, ‘Redefining Creative Labor: East Asian Comparisons’, in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, ed. Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 211–13. 18. Keane, ‘Unbundling Precarious Creativity’, 226–27. 19. Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, ‘To Work or Not to Work: The Dilemma of Hong Kong Film Labor in the Age of Mainlandization’, Jump

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Cut : A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 55 (Fall 2013), http://eju mpcut.org/archive/jc55.2013/SzetoChenHongKong. See also: Vivienne Chow, ‘Fund Fails Young Movie Makers, Says Hong Kong Film Community amid Calls for Overhaul’, South China Morning Post, 3 September 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www. scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1302063/filmmakers-call-fundingoverhaul. Charlotte Man, ‘Film Entertainment Industry in Hong Kong’, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 23 October 2020, accessed 1 April 2021, https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/MzExMjc4NDIz. Martin Sandison, ‘A City on Fire Interview with Hong Kong Actor Anthony Wong’, cityonfire.com, 29 July 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https://cityonfire.com/exclusive-interview-with-hong-kong-actoranthony-wong; Edith Chung, Johanna Chan and Selena Chan, ‘Screen Revival: Independent Filmmakers are the New Standard-Bearers for Hong Kong Cinema’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp.com/2018/03/24/screen-revivalindependent-filmmakers-new-standard-bearers-hong-kong-cinema; Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, ‘CreateHK Launches First Feature Film Initiative to Groom Talent’, press release, 19 March 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/gen eral/201303/19/P201303190353.htm. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, ‘Winners of 3rd First Feature Film Initiative Announced (with Photos)’, press release, 13 January 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.info.gov.hk/ gia/general/201701/13/P2017011300610p.htm. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, ‘Government Launches Measures to Energise HK Films’, press release, 13 July 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202 007/13/P2020071300574.htm. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, ‘Government Launches Measures’. Michael Curtin, Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 16–17. James Graham and Alessandro Gandini, ‘Introduction: Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries’, in Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries, ed. James Graham and Alessandro Gandini (London: University of Westminster Press, 2017), 6. Curtin, Playing to the World’s, 19. Michael Curtin, ‘Regulating the Global Infrastructure of Film Labor Exploitation’, International Journal of Cultural Policy 22, no. 5 (2016): 673.

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30. Karen Chu, ‘Can Hong Kong’s Film Sector Stand up to China?’, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 November 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/can-hongkong-s-film-sector-stand-up-china-1252888. 31. Curtin, ‘Regulating the Global Infrastructure’, 674. 32. Shu Kei, ‘Foreword’, Masterpieces of LAU Kar-leung: A Retrospective— Programme Guide (Hong Kong: Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival, 2021), 6–7. 33. Szeto and Chen, ‘To Work or Not to Work’. 34. Szeto and Chen, ‘To Work or Not to Work’. 35. Miranda Banks and David Hesmondhalgh, ‘Internationalizing Labor Activism: Building Solidarity among Writers’ Guilds’, in Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor, ed. Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 267–80. 36. Szeto and Chen, ‘To Work or Not to Work’. 37. Ruby Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 132–35. 38. Yip Ching-ha, ‘Sunny Chan and Derek Kwok on Purely Hong Kong Films amid National Cinema’ (in traditional Chinese), Ming Pao Weekly, 7 August 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.mpweekly.com/ culture/港產片-香港電影-國產片-80073. 39. Pam Jahn, ‘Rigor Mortis: Interview with Juno Mak’ (interviewed by Mark Player), Electric Sheep, 24 April 2015, accessed 19 December 2022, http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/2015/04/24/rigor-mor tis-interview-with-juno-mak. 40. Andrew Heskins, ‘Juno Mak: “I Always Wanted to be a Librarian!”’, easternKicks.com, 23 April 2015, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www. easternkicks.com/features/juno-mak-i-always-wanted-to-be-a-librarian. 41. Liz Shackleton, ‘Chan, Mak Launch HK Production Outfit Kudos Films’, Screen Daily, 2 August 2011, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/chan-mak-launch-hk-production-out fit-kudos-films/5030438.article; Liz Shackleton, ‘Mak Lines up Psycho Thriller with Miike’, Screen Daily, 20 March 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/mak-lines-up-psycho-thr iller-with-miike/5053085.article. 42. Lau Hei-tung, ‘Juno Mak Debuting Film Directorship’ (in traditional Chinese), HK01, 25 November 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hk01.com/電影/553232/殭屍-麥浚龍自爆首次執導 過份執迷-花一個月令錢小豪崩潰. 43. Heskins, ‘Juno Mak’. 44. Lau, ‘Juno Mak’.

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Jahn, ‘Rigor Mortis’. Jahn, ‘Rigor Mortis’. Jahn, ‘Rigor Mortis’. Jahn, ‘Rigor Mortis’. Source: ‘Siu-Ho Chin’, Chin Siu-ho’s entry on IMDb.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Shackleton, ‘Mak Lines up’. Ten Years —Inside and Outside (in traditional Chinese), Ten Years ’s DVD Book (Hong Kong: Ten Years Studio, 2016), 85. Chantal Yuen, ‘Dystopian HK Film Ten Years Leads to Chinese Media Boycott of Hong Kong Film Awards’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp.com/2016/02/ 22/ten-years-banned-in-china. Nan-Hie In, ‘Q&A: “Ten Years” Filmmakers on Their Surprise Hit and Controversy’, Forbes, 28 April 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nanhiein/2016/04/28/ten-yearsfilmmakers-on-their-surprise-hit-and-controversy-qa. Leiya Lee, ‘Interview with the Producers of the TEN YEARS Series: Conducted, Recorded, Edited and Subtitled by Leiya Lee’, Frames Cinema Journal 15 (June 2019), http://framescinemajournal.com/art icle/interview-with-the-producers-of-the-ten-years-series-conducted-rec orded-edited-and-subtitled-by-leiya-lee. Ruby Cheung, ‘Ten Years: An Unexpected Watershed of TwentyFirst-Century Hong Kong Film Industry’, Frames Cinema Journal 15 (June 2019), https://framescinemajournal.com/article/ten-years-an-une xpected-watershed-of-twenty-first-century-hong-kong-film-industry. Edmund Lee, ‘Film Review: Trivisa—Hong Kong Criminals at Crossroads in 1997-set Drama’, South China Morning Post, 8 April 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/article/ 1933678/film-review-trivisa-hong-kong-criminals-crossroads-1997-setdrama; Clarence Tsui, ‘“Trivisa” (“Shu Dai Jiu Fung”): Berlin Review’, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 February 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/trivisa-shudai-jiu-fung-864939. Source: ‘Publications’, the Create Hong Kong’s official website (English), https://www.createhk.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Fionnuala Halligan, ‘“Trivisa”: Berlin Review’, Screen Daily, 25 February 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/rev iews/trivisa-berlin-review/5100883.article. Halligan, ‘“Trivisa”’; Andrew Heskins, ‘Johnnie To Interview: “We Almost Used a Whole Year for Editing!”’, easternKicks.com, 4 May 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.easternkicks.com/features/joh nnie-to-interview.

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60. Edmund Lee, ‘Why So Sensitive? A Closer Look at Trivisa, the Hong Kong Film Awards Best Picture Banned in China—Just Like Ten Years’, South China Morning Post, 10 April 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2086356/why-so-sen sitive-closer-look-trivisa-hong-kong-film-awards-best?module=perpetual_ scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=2086356; Prince Lee, ‘Ten Years and Trivisa Director Jevons Au’s New Film Banned in China (Again!)’, easternKicks.com, 31 July 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// www.easternkicks.com/news/ten-years-and-trivisa-director-jevons-ausnew-film-banned-in-china-again. 61. Yiu-Wai Chu, ‘Johnnie To’s “Northern Expedition:” From Milkyway Image to Drug War’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2015): 192–205; Yiu-wai Chu, ‘Johnnie To, Hong Kong Cinema and the Mainland’, The Asia Dialogue, Asia Research Institute, the University of Nottingham, 7 September 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://theasiadialogue.com/2016/09/07/johnnie-to-and-hongkong-cinema-let-it-be-gone-with-the-wind; Y.-W. Chu, Found in Transition, 117–49; Sun Yi, ‘Renationalisation and Resistance of Hong Kong Cinema: Milkyway Image’s Journey to Mainland China’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 19, no. 2 (2018): 220–33. 62. Arthur Tam, ‘Interview: The Directors of Trivisa on Their AwardWinning Film’, Time Out, 10 April 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/film/interview-the-direct ors-of-trivisa-on-their-award-winning-film. 63. Kevin Ma, ‘Fresh Wave’, the Far East Film Festival, Udine, no date, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.fareastfilm.com/eng/archive/ catalogue/2012/fresh-wave-short-film/?IDLYT=31711; Dan Krátký, ‘No-One’s Ever Really Gone: Johnnie To and the Next Generation of Hong Kong Filmmakers’, NANG, no date, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.nangmagazine.com/ten-years-after-entries/dan-kratky. 64. Kevin Ma, ‘Fresh Wave Short Films (Far East Film Festival)’, Hong Kong Women Filmmakers, 4 February 2015, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hkwomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/freshwave-short-films-far-east-film-festival. 65. Ho Siu-bun, ‘Interview with Jevons Au’ (in traditional Chinese), Life Style Journal, 24 September 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://lj.hkej.com/lj2017/artculture/article/id/1948494/【人 物】歐文傑+仙人掌的刺. 66. Heskins, ‘Johnnie To’. 67. A. Tam, ‘Interview: The Directors of Trivisa’. 68. A. Tam, ‘Interview: The Directors of Trivisa’. 69. Michael Curtin, ‘Media Capital: Towards the Study of Spatial Flows’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2003): 213–22;

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Curtin, Playing to the World’s, 14–19; Michael Curtin, ‘Global Media Capital and Local Media Policy’, in The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications, ed. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock and Helena Sousa (West Sussex: Blackwell, 2011), 546–48. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, ‘Applications for 7th First Feature Film Initiative to Open Tomorrow’, press release, 14 March 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.fdc.gov.hk/en/ whatson_detail.php?id=2022032600000080000. Sandison, ‘Interview’; Chung, J. Chan and S. Chan, ‘Screen Revival’. Source: ‘Still Human (2018)’, Box Office Mojo, https://www.boxoffice mojo.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI) under ‘Applications’ of ‘Funding’, the Hong Kong Film Development Council’s official website (English), https://www.fdc.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Adriana Rosati, ‘Interview with Director Oliver Siu Kuen Chan, Actress Crisel Consunji and Actor Anthony Wong: “I Had to Manage Lots of People that, Like Me, Were Not Familiar with What They Were Doing”’, Asian Movie Pulse, 15 May 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// asianmoviepulse.com/2019/05/interview-with-director-oliver-siu-kuenchan-actress-crisel-consunji-and-actor-anthony-wong. Film Searcher, ‘Interview with Oliver Chan’ (in traditional Chinese), HK01, 15 April 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hk01. com/電影/318072/淪落人-專訪-為夢想放棄高薪厚職-新晉導演陳小娟 崛起之路. Film Searcher, ‘Interview with Oliver Chan’. Liz Shackleton, ‘Talent Focus: Hong Kong’s New Generation Make Waves in Uncertain Times’, Screen Daily, 10 September 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/features/talent-focushong-kongs-new-generation-make-waves-in-uncertain-times/5152925.art icle. Elizabeth Kerr, ‘What Makes Fruit Chan a Hong Kong Film Legend?’, Zolima CityMag, 9 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://zolimacitymag.com/what-makes-fruit-chan-a-hong-kongfilm-legend. Rosati, ‘Interview’. Mathew Scott, ‘“Still Human” Stars Anthony Wong and Crisel Consunji on Their Roles of a Lifetime’, PrestigeOnline.com, 5 July 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.prestigeonline.com/hk/people-events/ people/still-human-stars-anthony-wong-crisel-consunji.

CHAPTER 4

Subject Matter

Chapter Introduction On 15 October 2013, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government announced that it was rejecting the request for issuance of a free-to-air TV programme service licence for the Hong Kong Television Network (HKTVN); no clear explanation for the decision was given.1 The company, established in 2009 by local telecommunications entrepreneur Ricky Wong, was a major contender in the creation of a more open TV audience market environment in the city, where for decades there had been only two free TV programme service providers. One of them was the Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which had been single-handedly dominating the local TV sector,2 but its programmes had been declining for lack of competition. The HKTVN was thus poised to bring more diversity to Hong Kong’s TV industry. It had invested HK$900 million (£96.7 million or US$115.1 million) over the four years it had been operating and employed a staff of 500 persons, including some of the best talent from Hong Kong’s entertainment industries.3 More than 300 hours of TV programmes were made in preparation for the new TV service provider’s official commencement.4 However, instead of issuing an unlimited number of TV licences to all bidders, as originally promised, the local authorities only granted licenses for two of the three bidders: PCCW and i-Cable.5 These two TV programme service providers had been operating pay-television networks only. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4_4

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The news that the HKTVN request had been rejected provoked anger across Hong Kong. Many citizens had been impressed by the high-quality pilot episodes of the HKTVN drama series, made available free of charge on YouTube.6 The government’s decision was a disappointment, as it meant that people could no longer watch the series made by a new, energizing TV programme service provider, which aimed to revolutionize the local TV industry, so as to meet the audience’s cultural and entertainment needs. Some saw the decision as yet another act that facilitated the further Sinicization of the city, alongside other unpopular government measures, such as the introduction of ‘Moral and National Education’ in the school curriculum, attempted by the Leung Chun-ying administration of the HKSAR government in 2012.7 Many parents and older school children suspected that this discipline would be a brainwashing device imposed on them by the mainland Chinese authorities. The angry Hongkongers felt that their sociocultural freedom to choose what to watch on TV was curtailed. Also, after the government decision, the HKTVN would have to lay off most of its 500 staff members, which would exacerbate civic dissatisfaction with the government.8 Within days, what seemed to be a purely economic decision on the part of the local authorities turned into a sociopolitical issue. Around 120,000 Hongkongers took to the streets to peacefully protest against the government.9 Different grassroots organizations also openly condemned the local authorities and urged that the HKTVN be issued the expected licence. One act of condemnation was a joint statement released by ten Hong Kong film industry bodies representing more than 1,000 practitioners, including film directors, cinematographers, screenwriters, stuntmen, film editors, cinematography lighting and post-production professionals, and film production executives.10 Although the denial of a free-to-air TV licence was not directly related to the film industry, these film practitioners were very concerned, because in Hong Kong, ‘TV was where the great film directors, actors and technical staff got their start’.11 It was not the only time in the 2010s that film professionals gathered to make public statements on sociopolitical and cultural events on behalf of Hongkongers. In 2019, for example, different film industry bodies made either single or joint statements openly criticizing the ‘Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019’ (in short, the ‘Hong Kong Extradition Bill 2019’), proposed by the then government head Carrie Lam in April 2019. The bill, if passed, would make it possible to extradite suspected

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offenders who might then have to face notoriously non-transparent trials in nearby regions, such as mainland China.12 This bill proposal alarmed Hongkongers by the possibility that it would further restrict the sociopolitical freedoms and human rights of Hong Kong’s citizens. The bill proposal directly provoked a massive reaction: nearly two million people (out of the city’s population of 7.41 million) took to the streets in peaceful protest to urge for the withdrawal of the bill.13 This was the largest gathering of protesters in recent history of Hong Kong. The government proposal was ultimately withdrawn in September 2019, five months after it was first initiated.14 Hong Kong filmmakers in the 2010s did not shy away from expressing their love and concern for their hometown. Undeniably, they were expressing themselves as ‘Hongkongers’, an identity that was perhaps more poignantly precious than ever in the face of ever-increasing Sinicization not only in the film sector but also in the everyday life of the city. Many locally produced Hong Kong films of the 2010s featured a variety of local subject matter related to non-mainstream and marginalized discourses in Hong Kong society. Some of the topics, e.g., old-age dementia, mid-life crisis, LGBTQ+ issues, migrant workers, language use, and many more, were in fact very topical for contemporary world cinemas. These themes, however, did not usually appear in commercially oriented Chinese-language mainstream films. This chapter discusses how and why these narratives mattered in 2010s Hong Kong new indies. I argue that the issues and subject matter in question added multiple dimensions to the intents and visions of Hong Kong filmmakers, who often worked in the uncharted, ‘independent’ segment of the local film industry. Many of these Hong Kong new indies expressed hope for the future rather than bemoaning the dire situation of the city and its film industry; ultimately, they shed new light on how we understand this industry. My discussion here starts with revisiting the issues of Hongkongers’ identity politics. I go on to explore an array of subject matter found in Hong Kong new indies under three main categories: socioculturally marginalized Hongkongers, the interactions between the people and the place called Hong Kong, and historical moments in the city’s past.

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Geo-temporal Politics of the Identities of Hongkongers In my book New Hong Kong Cinema,15 I dissect the complexity of the identities of Hongkongers, especially those ethnic Chinese residing in Hong Kong since the 1970s.16 I also stress the plurality of these identities. To present Hongkongers as people with just a single ‘identity’, connected to the place Hong Kong, within an understudied East Asian setting would not do much justice to the topic. Like any other geographically based identities, those of Hongkongers have not been stagnant but continue to change in relation to the geopolitical, economic and sociocultural surroundings, among other possible signifiers of temporal flow. This is one of the main reasons why I argue that contemporary Hong Kong cinema should be studied based on the ‘cinema of transitions’ model, which can reflect the identities in question at any particular point in history. In the present book, when investigating 2010s Hong Kong film industry, I continue to look at the multiple dimensions of Hong Kong identities from the ‘transitions’ perspective. As my focus here zooms in on the versions of the geographical, political, economic, social and cultural identities of Hongkongers in the 2010s as evolved from earlier versions dating from the 1970s to the early 2010s, I bring forward adjustments to my perspective. These adjustments will help me investigate, in the last section of this chapter, cinematic representations of Hongkongers’ multifaceted and multi-layered identities via the diverse subject matter of 2010s Hong Kong new indies. Temporal Diaspora In Situ? My first adjustment is related to the ‘time’ element in the negotiations of Hongkongers’ identities in the 2010s. When we look at how the Hong Kong population has been formed and transformed over the linear course of history from the beginning of the city’s colonial history under the British rule in 1841 to shortly after the transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, it is not difficult to see the actual, existential conditions of most members of this population as related, at some point, to the concept of ‘diaspora’. These existential conditions did not change much even in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Excluding the natural birth and death rates in Hong

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Kong, the increase and decrease in the number of inhabitants have been mostly connected to places outside the city’s geographical boundaries. According to the 2011 and 2021 Hong Kong population censuses,17 the total population of the city rose from 7.07 million in 2011 to 7.41 million in 2021. In 2011, about 60.5 percent of this population was born in Hong Kong; the percentage rose slightly to 61.7 percent in 2021. The majority of Hong Kong inhabitants were ethnic Chinese, accounting for 93.6 percent of the total population in 2011 and 91.6 percent in 2021. As I explained in my investigations for New Hong Kong Cinema a few years ago, the ethnic Chinese community, which are the majority ethnic group in Hong Kong, had long displayed a mentality of ‘situational, diasporic consciousness’.18 It came from their understanding of people’s existential conditions as outlined above. Due to Hong Kong’s vicinity to mainland China, over the last two centuries or so, China has naturally been a major place of origin of immigrants into Hong Kong. Some of them would later continue their sojourns elsewhere, for example, across the Pacific, where they would find jobs and finally resettle.19 Those who decided to resettle in Hong Kong were soon assimilated into the ethnic Chinese majority there and regarded this British colonial outpostturned-global city as their current ‘home’. However, whenever important international events related to the political, economic and national ‘China’ occurred before the city’s sovereignty transfer in 1997, the Hong Kong Chinese inhabitants were exposed to difficult questions related to ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ in their ongoing identity negotiations.20 The existential consciousness of the ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong thus inevitably acknowledged the fact that they felt, at least at an emotional level, they belonged to a segment of the Chinese diaspora that did not live on the mainland of China. The interconnectedness between the distinctive existential consciousness of diaspora members and their emotional operations could be explained by situating emotions amid other factors of the choices of individuals’ multiple identities and identifications. For example, Rosie Roberts, scholar of human migrations, develops her concept of ‘citizenly identities’,21 with an emphasis on the importance of emotions for the migrants’ sense of belonging, citizenship and, ultimately, for their continuous identity negotiations. Media historian and social theorist John Durham Peters interprets ‘diaspora’ as a group of people living outside their ancestral land (their ‘home’) and suffering from ‘perpetual postponement of homecoming’.22 Based on this interpretation and what it entails, the Hong Kong Chinese

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segment of the larger Chinese diaspora across the world would have a ‘home’ that they could not return to during an extended period of time. Before Hong Kong’s sovereignty transfer from the UK to the PRC, ‘China’ was that bygone ‘home’ for many Hong Kong Chinese, whereas the colonial Hong Kong was only a host territory for them, when not considered a current ‘home’. In 1999, scholar of international relations Stephen Chan asked a valid question, ‘What is this thing called a Chinese diaspora?’, without giving a direct answer to it.23 Such an answer would be forever delayed, as one might gather from what the author tried to argue. Understandably, there could be numerous ways, but no definite way, to answer the question correctly as the ethnic Chinese living outside ‘China’—be it the geopolitical, sociocultural and/or economic ‘China’— would have countless individual perspectives on their own status and the status of others. This remotely echoes Ien Ang’s opinion on the concept of ‘Chineseness’, which ‘is a category whose meanings are not fixed and pregiven, but constantly renegotiated and rearticulated, both inside and outside China’.24 For Ang, Chineseness is an ‘open signifier’ for overseas Chinese people or ethnic Chinese not living on the mainland of China because their Chineseness ‘acquires its peculiar form and content in dialectical junction with the diverse local conditions in which ethnic Chinese people, wherever they are, construct new, hybrid identities and communities’ (my emphasis in italics).25 Hence, even after the sovereignty transfer, many ethnic Chinese based in Hong Kong were, and probably still are, in a state of diaspora in situ insofar as this city lies effectively on the margins of Chinese geopolitical territory. One of the main reasons for this diasporic condition is that many of them, even those who were first-generation immigrants to the city, did not have the same historical, political-economic and sociocultural experience that their mainland Chinese counterparts had had continuously since the establishment of the PRC on the mainland in 1949. Considering only the spatial dimension of diasporic consciousness thus provides a limited explanation to the phenomenon of diaspora in situ with regard to these Hong Kong Chinese. Sociologist Ipek Demir adds another dimension to comprehending the composition of different diasporas, theorizing that there is an understudied link between empires and expansion. The author primarily focuses on the interventions made by diasporas in these situations.26 While this underscoring can bypass the limitations of the view of space/placebased modern nation states being the imaginary ‘homes’ among different

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segments of the same diasporas, one may wonder whether other types of units could replace nation states, empires or suchlike space/placespecific establishments. Even if, as Demir regards, diasporas are collective ‘agents of decolonisation’,27 which can achieve either ‘foreignisation’ or ‘domestication’ in their host societies,28 it would generally take time for such effects to eventually take place via the interventions of the diasporas. But the time factor would be most unpredictable in these cases because no one can absolutely tell when the ‘foreignisation’, ‘domestication’ and/or assimilation of the immigrants into different aspects of the host regions could complete. This, I believe, is one of the main reasons why, since diaspora studies began to flourish in the late 1980s to early 1990s, a wide spectrum of diaspora theorists (from Stuart Hall, William Safran, Rey Chow, Homi K. Bhabha, to Ien Ang, etc.) conceptualizing the characteristics of different diasporas have not always underscored the temporal circumstances of diasporas.29 As Demir comments, ‘A temporal dimension to understanding diaspora also allows for the recognition that diaspora is not the same as ethnicity or migrancy. Certain migrant groups can become diasporic over time through politics, newer formulations of identity and increasing questioning of coloniality at home or in the new home’.30 More and more recent academic studies on diasporas began to emphasize temporal considerations. For example, scholar Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho investigates both spatial and temporal dimensions of ethnic Chinese’s multidirectional migrations in China, Canada and Singapore over time, uncovering certain challenges to social cohesiveness in these countries.31 The author explores the social, cultural, political and territorial concepts of ‘China’, ‘Chinese citizenship’, ‘Han Chinese’, ‘citizenship constellations’, among others, as well as ‘extraterritorial reach’ of the (mainland) Chinese state power via ethnic Chinese diasporic groups in different places of the world in different time periods.32 Extrapolated from the author’s discussion, a distinct worldview of what it means to be ‘Chinese’ to different (self-proclaimed) Chinese individuals and communities under a highly contestable ideological construct of ‘China’ could inevitably be understood as reinforcing the extremely hierarchical racial stratification within and outside ethnic Chinese society(ies). Historian Martin Jacques justifiably describes it as the ‘Middle Kingdom mentality’ of China.33 The Orwellian satirical quotation in Animal Farm (1945) can be borrowed and modified here to crystallize the case:34

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All ethnic Chinese are equal But some ethnic Chinese (e.g., Chinese living in Chinese-dominated societies and/or ‘Han Chinese’—itself a cultural-political homogenizing construct,35 and not a racially or biologically identifiable group, especially in its usage in the PRC) are more equal than others (e.g., diasporic Chinese populations and/or ‘non-Han’ ethnic minorities under the PRC rule).

Likewise, in understanding Chinese diasporas (in plural form as indicated by the author) from a global perspective, scholar Steven B. Miles presents the changes in the nature of these diasporic people over the most recent several decades.36 Although Miles does not overemphasize the time factor in his case studies of a range of different diasporic Chinese groups (e.g., students, skilled migrants, investors), the temporal consideration is deeply embedded in his discussion of a social history of various Chinese diasporic communities. The ‘new Chinatowns’ formed in suburban areas in a diverse range of countries, as studied by Miles, indicate the transnational dimension of Chinese diasporic segments now based outside the geopolitical reach of ‘China’.37 These ethnic Chinese mostly originate from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Their choices of resettlement in multicultural areas outside the typical ‘old Chinatowns’ in city centres of their host countries can be understood as trajectories and evolutions of the Chinese diasporic populations in different places over time. In the case of the ethnic Chinese community connected to Hong Kong, what if the real ‘home’/‘homeland’ for the displaced people currently or previously residing in this city is not ‘China’ but Hong Kong itself? What if the displaced people currently based in Hong Kong have over time come to form the majority of the host population there? (That is, immigrants in preceding waves of migrations into Hong Kong have become the hosts for immigrants coming to the city more recently.) And what if the Hongkongers’ displacement has less to do with the place and more to do with the time, and the ‘Hong Kong’ that was once their real ‘home’ no longer exists for the people to return to with the passage of time? This last question is inspired by cultural theorist Ackbar Abbas’s ideas of ‘[…] migrancy too can take an extensive or intensive form. In the latter case, we can be migrants without going anywhere’,38 and ‘[t]racing this other history, of migrancy and disappearance, requires a shift in attention away from the immediacy of events to the space in which they take place’.39 I would like to push these ideas further by

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looking at the representations of Hongkongers’ localness in films via the lens of their displacement in temporal sense, which people have come to terms with. Far from just being nostalgic or post-nostalgic, as some scholars like Vivian P. Y. Lee might argue,40 the diasporic sentiments of 2010s Hongkongers prepared them to move forward with their lives, keeping their ‘Chineseness’ to a minimum (applicable only to the ethnic Chinese community in the city). Indeed, a compression of the turbulent ten years of Hong Kong history in the 2010s amplifies the complications underlying the diasporic mentalities and emotions of many Hongkongers, whether they be ethnic Chinese or ethnic minorities who arrived in Hong Kong at different time periods, but all living in the city in the 2010s. More precisely, such turbulence caused by a series of political, social and cultural events in 2010s Hong Kong catalysed the rapid evolvement of the identification known as ‘Hongkongers’ on top of the potentially unlimited number of identities and identifications of the city’s residents. When we add this temporal consideration to the study of their ongoing identity negotiations in this recent decade (the 2010s), the conception of ‘Hong Kong’ as simultaneously its inhabitants’ home, homeland and/or host city no longer appears so simple. From ‘Local’ to ‘Translocal’ My second adjustment is concerned with the notion of ‘Hong Kong being My Home’. This idea has been accentuated among self-identified Hongkongers, or more precisely, the Hong Kong locals, repeatedly and energetically by different political-economic and sociocultural stakeholders throughout the past several decades since the 1967 Hong Kong Riots.41 Due to the presence of a large ethnic Chinese community there, Cantonese-language films/TV drama series/Cantopop songs, and newspaper reports/novels/novellas, etc., written in traditional Chinese script have been some of the main vehicles frequently used for this purpose. The thoughts behind ‘Hong Kong being My Home’ involve more than just spatial considerations; they often include a mixture of spatial, emotional and psychological reflections. In addition, it is not a matter only among the ethnic Chinese people currently or previously residing in Hong Kong, but also among any other ethnic groups that have made the city their home at any point in their lives. The notion of ‘Hong Kong being My Home’ thus builds, promotes and reinforces a sense of belonging to the place itself, its history, its current affairs, its discourses and so on among

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the ethnic majority as well as other inhabitants. It quintessentially helps express the localness of past and present citizens of Hong Kong, where ‘local’ can be defined as an inward-looking understanding of all living and non-living beings/things as well as all matters related and restricted to one’s ‘self’. This definition covers more than what can be conveyed via its written Chinese equivalent (本, 地/土) as ‘my/self’ and ‘land/soil’. In Cantonese (the lingua franca of Hong Kong, spoken by 88.2 percent of the total population in the city),42 the phrase is pronounced as bun dei or bun tou; in Mandarin, it becomes bendi or bentu. Yet, the localness embedded in the notion of ‘Hong Kong being My Home’ is intriguing. First of all, it is understandably at odds with the 1967 Hong Kong Riots, which were widely known as orchestrated by pro-Chinese Communist, Chinese nationalist grassroots groups active in the city, with the intention of expressing their remote support for the notorious Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–76) on the mainland and their grievances against British colonialism in this British Crown Colony. The event marked one of the major turning points in the post-war history of Hong Kong; the late 1960s was a time when many ethnic Chinese Hongkongers felt oppressed in their daily lives by the British colonizers. Extremely strong diasporic sentiments were especially noticeable among members of the working class, e.g., menial workers in factories and secondary school students in pro-Chinese Communist schools, who had come to Hong Kong as refugees from mainland China and regarded themselves as part of the Chinese diaspora. Even in the 2010s, some Hong Kong new indies were made against the backdrop of the 1967 Hong Kong Riots and/or were directly connected to those sociopolitical events, as filmmakers attempted to take stock of Hong Kong’s local history. For example, Vanished Archives (Connie Lo [aka Lo Yan-wai], Hong Kong, 2017) is a documentary that aims to revisit, rediscover and preserve the historical facts concerning the 1967 Hong Kong Riots. According to the director, relevant accounts and documents have been fast disappearing from many publicly run libraries and archives operating under the aegis of the HKSAR government (see Chapter 6 for the film’s circulation).43 No. 1 Chung Ying Street (Derek Chiu, Hong Kong, 2018) fictionalizes an episode from the 1967 events. The film also tries to draw a parallel between the 1967 Hong Kong Riots and the 2014 Umbrella Movement, although these two sociopolitical events, which took place in the same city, were completely different in nature.

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The localness expressed in and through ‘Hong Kong being My Home’ is in fact a self-contradictory proposition, as the embedded ‘local’ has never been derived from any prototypes purely rooted in Hong Kong. The initial and radical development of the sense of localness among Hong Kong residents in the post-1967 Hong Kong Riots era was conducted in a top-down manner by the British colonial government under the 25th Governor of Hong Kong, Crawford Murray MacLehose (in office: 1971– 82), whose main intention was arguably to make colonial governance easier for himself. MacLehose introduced a considerable range of beneficial sociocultural measures to improve the quality of life for Hongkongers (especially those at the grassroots level), including, for instance, nineyear free compulsory education, low-rent public housing campaigns, the establishment of Independent Commission Against Corruption of Hong Kong (aimed to achieve a bribery-free local society), etc. Many of these measures proved extremely beneficial for the Hong Kong locals even beyond MacLehose’s mandate in the city. But they would not have been so successful and felt in every corner of the city for decades, had it not been for the effort of Hong Kong’s native and non-native, ethnic Chinese or other, citizens to readjust their mindsets and outlooks on various aspects of their lives in the city. Hence, their interventions (in Demir’s sense) and manifesting of their own localness have always been socially, culturally, politically, economically and religiously heterogeneous, and far from genuinely indigenous. Helena Y. W. Wu, scholar of Hong Kong cinema, literature and culture, propounds that there are many versions of ‘Hong Kongs’ relayed by various individual stakeholders and groups with differing social, cultural, political, economic and ethnic backgrounds, who are constantly in power struggles with one another when telling their separate versions of the city.44 Accordingly, there would be many versions of ‘Hong Kongs being My Homes’ for different individuals and groups living in the city. The amalgamated senses of localness among different Hongkongers are then far from harmonious; contrarily, they are full of disjointedness and tension. Moreover, the Hongkongers’ senses of localness have evolved with the changes taking place in the city’s intrinsic and extrinsic environments. Internally, such senses have been related to Hong Kong’s own politicaleconomic and sociocultural development as a global/local cosmopolitan city, which has, in turn, been always open to external influences, largely thanks to its location on the geopolitical fringes of the PRC, the UK,

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and of the whole of East Asia during and after the Cold War (1947– 91). The city’s geopolitically peripheral and in-between status extended into the twenty-first century amid East Asia’s new regionalization, which began in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98.45 Thus, the Hongkongers’ senses of localness have constantly retained an element of being simultaneously somewhere else. Discussions of the localness of different Hongkongers’ identities and identifications would not be comprehensive if we fail to take into account its fundamental qualities of hybridity and synthesis, as rendered in a related concept—‘translocality’. Regarding the Hong Kong film industry and its outputs in the post1997 era, film scholars Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen look into the ‘Sinophone articulation of translocality’ to dissect the dynamics of the phenomenon.46 They see in Hong Kong’s film sector the translocality between this city and other Sinophone places on and outside mainland China (e.g., Guangzhou and Taipei) as possible sites for the alignment of the characteristics related to the Sinophone concept.47 The latter, advocated powerfully by scholar of literature and language Shu-mei Shih, shakes up the myths surrounding the concept of diaspora and related ideas, especially through the contention that the diasporic status of diasporas has an expiry date.48 This contrasts with Peters’s understanding of diaspora, which I mentioned in the previous section. But Szeto and Chen’s employment of Shih’s argument to elaborate on translocality displays inconsistencies when the two authors also align the forwardlooking spirit in Gallants (Clement Cheng/Derek Kwok, China/Hong Kong, 2010; see Chapter 3) with that present in the experience of the third and fourth post-war generations based elsewhere, as well as in parts of the Islamic world, and Japan and Malaysia, etc.49 In their case study of Gallants, the authors compare the ‘local’ of Hong Kong not to the ‘local’ of other similar localities, but to those larger ‘imagined communities’ of the post-neoliberalized, global economic world, of which ‘local’ might and might not be a part.50 In this way, the hegemonic ‘national’ (presumably the national ‘China’) and the Chineseness of people can be bypassed and transcended. Such a world would be operating in a mode closer to ‘transcultural’ (as in traversing and transcending cultures),51 than just to ‘translocal’. I would like to put aside the concept and manifestations of the Sinophone for the time being, returning to them in Chapter 5 when I discuss the use of language in Hong Kong’s new indies of the 2010s. For the purpose of this chapter, which explores the subject matter of these films,

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I concentrate here on the impact of translocality on the localness of Hongkongers and Hong Kong matters, when ‘local’ was explored in multiple dimensions through the topics of many 2010s independent films made in and about Hong Kong. Discussing translocality in the context of social mobility and inequality, human geographers Sabina Lawreniuk and Laurie Parsons define translocality as ‘the dynamic interconnectedness of localities linked by people, their actions, and activities, [sic: and] a framing that seeks to place human agency at its centre, whilst also accepting the role of non-human and structural factors in driving the systems within which mobility occurs’.52 Expatiating on this definition, I would contend that the concept and state of translocality include and build on ‘local’, but also break down the very boundaries that build the concept, transcending ‘local’ and allowing it the fluidity to establish interconnections between localities. Bearing in mind the social and economic inequality often found in diasporas’ trajectories, Lawreniuk and Parsons, however, do not consider translocality to be a condition that would truly unify people based in different places. This contrasts with the understanding of Szeto and Chen about translocality.53 The above contexts suggest that Hongkongers’ senses of localness have not emerged or disappeared easily before and during the transitional period of Hong Kong’s political Handover. Helena Y. W. Wu notes that in the years after the Handover, Hong Kong underwent (re)nationalization via ‘delocalization, dehistorization and dehybridization’ from every direction.54 But this trend has been developing schizophrenically alongside a multitude of heightened and intertwining senses of local consciousness and political awareness among individual Hongkongers. Some of them have articulated these senses via participation in various sociopolitical movements. The range of these movements has in turn multiplied and fuelled ever-increasing senses of localness and local identifications of those involved,55 culminating in events that made international headlines in the 2010s, such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement and related street protests.

Hong Kong New Indies and Local Subject Matter Hence, although in 1997 Abbas theorized about the disappearance of Hong Kong’s local culture, his view proved correct only with regard to a specific historical moment.56 With the benefit of hindsight after more than twenty-five years, I would argue the contrary. Rather than

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disappearing, 2010s Hong Kong local cultures (in the plural) and the corresponding mindsets of many, though not all, Hongkongers had in fact been rooted at a much deeper level awaiting further rejuvenation. These people were still haunted and yet enriched by their evolving diasporic consciousness about the foregone decades of ‘Hong Kong’, which had been their home in ‘time’, if not in ‘space’. Helena Y. W. Wu says that ‘the bifurcation of “Hong Kong” and “local” is a hegemonic construction in which local consciousness has been undermined and the development of Hong Kong […] has been unreflectively glorified in a formula of growth and an automatism of progress through colonialism and nationalism’.57 But this is only one of the countless sides of life in Hong Kong’s post-millennial era. The (trans)local existential consciousness of Hongkongers can be easily detected in and through many 2010s Hong Kong new indies and their subject matter if we look closer at the consequences of how Hongkongers’ ‘situational, diasporic consciousness’, embedded in their ongoing identity negotiations, was metamorphosed in multi-layered directions during that particular decade. Indie filmmakers’ choices of topics related to local people and matters in 2010s Hong Kong were further, and indeed ironically, empowered by their having worked for an extended period of time outside the so-called mainstream segment of the local film industry. As I discuss in Chapters 2 and 3, such a thought-to-be mainstream segment of the local film industry and its overt mainstreamness have been continuously defined, facilitated and yet also confined by various types of local establishments. My idea here is in a similar vein to the views of Szeto and Chen, who opine that catering to local concerns and sensibilities could be part of the filmmakers’ resolve to counteract Hong Kong cinema’s mainlandization in the period following the signing of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA).58 While Szeto and Chen’s contention held true to a certain extent in the greater part of the 2010s, I believe that it is also imperative for us to distinguish the nuances of these filmmakers’ visions and intents when working in the uncharted area of the local film industry, which extended from the margins to completely outside of the so-called mainstream segment. There, they were relatively free from many political-economic, sociocultural, artistic and creative constraints usually imposed on their counterparts in the perceived mainstream segment. The indie filmmakers thrived in the uncharted area of the film industry not by resisting what they could not fight off, but by experiencing, experimenting with, exploring and expanding that with which they felt most

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comfortable in their directorial visions and intents in the limits of their own constraints, e.g., limited time and finances for making films. They utilized their films to connect themselves online/offline translocally with kindred spirits among like-minded film industry practitioners and audiences based in specific geopolitical, economic, sociocultural and emotional ‘sites’ in and outside Hong Kong. Moreover, those who were interconnected in these translocal settings would not need to be in the same eras. Extending from this point, 2010s Hong Kong new indies and the ethos they represented would thus easily become the prototypes of the next generation of Hong Kong films, which is previously unthinkable in any positive sense. This is not wishful thinking, as already made evident in some Hong Kong indies of the early 2020s. I will come back to this point in Chapter 7. In this section, I group under three main categories Hong Kong new indies that explored topics related to local people and matters. The films in question were concerned with: (1) the everyday lives and stories of socioculturally marginalized Hongkongers, (2) the interactions between the people and the place Hong Kong, and (3) the city’s historical moments. Such a grouping is meant for illustration only. Due to the length constraints of this chapter, I do not intend to include any close and long textual analysis of specific films. The same constraints of chapter length also preclude my discussing here all the relevant indies made in the 2010s. I therefore refer only to feature-length fiction and non-fiction films, while excluding short films or animations. For non-fiction films (e.g., documentaries), I indicate that they are of the documentary genre when I introduce them, while leaving out such a mention of genre for fiction films. Moreover, films in one category may have elements that qualify them to be part of the other two categories in this section. The list of films I include under each category here is not exhaustive, for quite a large number of other independent films made in 2010s Hong Kong could also fit in there. A large portion of the films illustrated here were made in the second half of the 2010s, a time that witnessed a mushroom growth of independent films made by debut feature film directors (e.g., Jun Li, Norris Wong, Ray Yeung) in the local film sector. The films went through a normal industrial process of production, distribution and exhibition, the latter consisting, among others, of public release in cinemas, at film festivals and/or on DVDs. Some also attracted a wide coverage by the local and international film industry trade press after winning awards at

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important film events locally and internationally. Wide local and international publicity in turn facilitated the expansion of these films’ sale potential and circulation on international audience markets, effectively helping these films become Hong Kong’s cultural artefacts of translocality (see Chapter 6). Group 1: Indies about the Everyday Lives and Stories of Socioculturally Marginalized Hongkongers Many stories as told by films in this category explore the lives of socially and culturally marginalized individuals and groups. The films may fictionalize (or sometimes dramatize) how these individuals and groups struggle and come to terms with their situations in society. Far from being judgemental, in the films the filmmakers often show great concern and sympathy for these characters. These films thus endeavoured to ensure that these stories would be heard, seen, understood and received without bias and prejudice by the general public. Hopefully, the cases depicted would eventually be included in the local mainstream public discourses. In particular, the films focused on issues previously regarded as sociocultural taboos, e.g., LGBTQ+ issues, prostitution, mental health sufferers, children and youths with special education needs, etc. As a global city, with sociocultural influences coming from the East (mainly Chinese cultures) and the West (mainly the Anglo-American world), Hong Kong would be regarded as slow in its concern for LGBTQ+ matters. Although there have been more local awareness of relevant issues, with human rights groups such as BigLove Alliance (officially established in 2014) fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, members of these communities are still constantly facing bias, prejudice and discrimination. There are still no ordinances in Hong Kong protecting them from sociocultural discrimination. In film, Ann Hui kick-started the 2010s with her All about Love (Hong Kong, 2010), a film portraying lesbian love, albeit in a subtle fashion. It would take the Hong Kong film industry another few years to allow greater acceptance, on the part of filmmakers and the audience, for two Hong Kong new indies that explored local gay and transgender topics more straightforwardly. Tracey (Jun Li, Hong Kong, 2018) is about the story of a married man Travis Tung (played by Philip Keung), who has grown-up children but is a woman at heart. His soul-searching journey leads him to confront his family, who do not understand him. Travis

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Tung makes his final decision to have gender affirmation surgery, after which ‘she’ renames herself ‘Tracey’, after her mother. Twilight’s Kiss (aka Suk Suk) (Ray Yeung, Hong Kong, 2019) is much more dismal in portraying the fleeting relationship between two gay men in their sixties and early seventies respectively. They have lived most of their lives as straight men before meeting and developing intense feelings for each other. Their respective families become their major concern when they have to make the choice of moving forward. Their final decision, to give up their belated relationship, is due to their succumbing to the sociocultural pressures of their environment. Through a non-judgemental lens, both Tracey and Twilight’s Kiss show the film directors’ sympathy for the protagonists’ suppressed feelings, although Tracey’s finale suggests a positive outlook while the ending of Twilight’s Kiss is more pessimistic. Male and female prostitution was another popular topic of Hong Kong indies of the 2010s. Such films were debatably inspired by predecessors made in earlier decades, such as Fruit Chan’s Durian Durian (China/France/Hong Kong, 2000) and Hollywood Hong Kong (France/Hong Kong/Japan/UK, 2001); Herman Yau’s Whispers and Moans (Hong Kong, 2007) and its sequel True Women for Sale (Hong Kong, 2008). These earlier films, by the two filmmakers who frequently situated their works between the so-called mainstream and independent segments of the local film industry, unveiled prostitution as a dark side of the cosmopolitan. Fruit Chan’s first two films from his Prostitute Trilogy highlighted mainland Chinese prostitutes working temporarily in Hong Kong before returning to their places of origin or going elsewhere in search for a better life. Herman Yau’s films featured the lives of local Hong Kong prostitutes. Prostitution in these earlier films is portrayed as a provincial phenomenon. Four of 2010s Hong Kong new indies followed their footpaths, while zooming in on Hong Kong’s translocality. Port of Call (Philip Yung, Hong Kong, 2015) features the investigation of the murder of a teenaged prostitute who was a new mainland Chinese immigrant in Hong Kong. Sara (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2015) depicts the translocal story of Sara, a local teenaged prostitute-turned-investigative journalist in Hong Kong. Sara’s encounter and friendship with a teenaged prostitute in Thailand highlights the protagonist’s role as an on-screen translocal personality moving between Hong Kong and Thailand, as well as between the city’s recent past and present. In portraying male prostitution and dealing with gay issues, Thirty Years of Adonis (Scud,

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China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 2017) transports the protagonist Yang Ke between different geo-cultural environments in order to explore the deeper philosophical questions of life and death, fate and karma. Three Husbands (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong, 2018) is the final film of the director’s Prostitute Trilogy. A supposedly mainland Chinese prostitute (who does not speak much in the film) plies her trade on a fishing boat shared with three Hong Kong men; thus, Hong Kong is effortlessly linked to other places across the water. Translocality inside and outside the boat/Hong Kong is a subtext too clear to be missed by the audience. Disabilities, which used to be taboo topics in the local film industry, are some of the main signifiers of important characters in independent films of 2010s Hong Kong. Examples of disabilities are abundant, e.g., Mad World (Wong Chun, Hong Kong, 2016; bipolar disorder), Tomorrow Is Another Day (Chan Tai-lee, Hong Kong, 2017; autism), Somewhere beyond the Mist (Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong, 2017; dementia), Distinction (Jevons Au, Hong Kong, 2018; special needs education), and Beyond the Dream (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2019; schizophrenia). The filmmakers explicitly display in their films their empathy and understanding for the sufferings that these disabilities bring to the characters and their loved ones, who in turn help propel the plots. These films thus foregrounded the directors’ belief in humanism and the universality of human rights, which securely placed Hong Kong on the map of places concerned with and supportive of equality, diversity and inclusion for all people. Group 2: Indies on the Interactions between People and the Place Called Hong Kong Many Hong Kong new indies of the 2010s investigated how people interacted with Hong Kong and with other places. Interestingly, many of the films in question visualized hope via stories set at a time when drastic changes in the city’s political-economic and sociocultural situation generated what would be depressing memories for many Hongkongers. These films also probed into what hope might mean for different individuals and groups rooted in a city where everything was developing so quickly and seemed so ephemeral at a time in the recent past. While the characters in the films experience different modes of life’s transience and vicissitudes, in addition to their possible state of diaspora in situ, as discussed above,

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they experience some of the most uplifting epiphanies portrayed in Hong Kong films in recent years. Some of the films were concerned with specific genders and age groups. For example, 29+1 (Kearen Pang, Hong Kong, 2017), adapted from the director’s own stage play of the same name, presents an introspection on what it means to be a woman turning the age of thirty amid the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong. The story is told via the outlook of two female protagonists who are about to become flatmates. Men on the Dragon (Sunny Chan, Hong Kong, 2018) looks at the male midlife crisis through the stories of four downcast middle-aged men working as technicians at a local telecommunication company. Their involuntary participation in training for their company’s dragon boat team in a forthcoming dragon boat race reignites their hope in life and rebuilds their dignity, which has been shattered by the pressure of life. Contemplating the themes of marriage, divorce, freedom, My Prince Edward (Norris Wong, Hong Kong, 2019) tells the story of Fong, a thirty-something Hong Kong woman who overcomes the sociocultural pressures that define her and confine her to the expectations of society. She eventually chooses to set herself free from all these pressures and live her life as she freely wills. Some of 2010s Hong Kong new indies connected Hongkongers with the city via particular activities, such as sports, dance, rituals and mundane life experiences typical for the city’s residents. The activities highlighted in these films are seemingly local, but also have international relevance and make subtextual references that resonate with audiences around the world. In terms of dance and performances, The Way We Dance (Adam Wong, Hong Kong, 2013) portrays a group of local university students seeking their personal paths via hip hop dancing. My Voice, My Life (Ruby Yang, Hong Kong, 2014), a locally produced documentary, follows the story of a group of underprivileged and problematic teenaged students when they are going through six months of vigorous training for a musical performance. The training is a soul-searching journey, in which they overcome social biases. They perform excellently on stage, revealing how hard and perseveringly they have worked, and also the love and care their parents and teachers have given them. In the context of the post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong, the documentary The Taste of Youth (Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong, 2016) unfolds the dreams, hopes and fears of local youths participating in the mega music event Ode to Joy, held at the

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Hong Kong Coliseum in 2014. The event set the Guinness World Record with 10,000 live performers from local schools and choirs. Sports were another topic that inspired Hong Kong’s new indie filmmakers during the 2010s. Weeds on Fire (Steve Chan [aka Chan Chi-fat], Hong Kong, 2016) is based on the true story of Shatin Martins, the first Hong Kong teenage baseball team, formed in the 1980s at the lowestranked school in Shatin, the New Territories of Hong Kong. Most of the story is set in a period of history when many Hongkongers were anxious about the city’s political future. The film talks about the personal struggles of the baseball team members and the school principal, who does not give up hope and fights hard to form a baseball team, which eventually wins the baseball championship. The storyline in The Empty Hands (Chapman To, Hong Kong, 2017), set amid a previous financial crisis and the current skyrocketing housing prices, portrays the identity negotiations of a woman of mixed Japanese and Chinese descent. She is in her thirties. By practising karate, she gradually comes to terms with the memory of her deceased Japanese father (a karate master from whom she was estranged) and with her own self. Other themes specific to Hong Kong, such as public transportation in the very densely populated city, or the activities of the triad society, also inspired indie filmmakers in the 2010s. Dot 2 Dot (Amos Why, Hong Kong, 2014), which can be understood as the director’s love letter to Hong Kong, relates the story of a returned emigrant and a mainland Chinese language teacher working in Hong Kong. The two protagonists connect by means of the dot-patterned graffiti drawn near mass transit railways stations (usually referred to as MTR stations in Hong Kong) and on other historic landmarks in Hong Kong. At the same time, the director helps connect the Hong Kong of the 1970s to the present via the return emigrant’s anecdotal stories of his childhood. The Midnight After (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong, 2014) is a futuristic adventure story adapted from the first part of a web novel of the same name. The film starts with a group of ordinary passengers riding on a red mini-van during the night. Such transportation typically runs between Mongkok (in Kowloon) and Tai Po (in the New Territories). The drivers of these red mini-vans are notorious for driving at breakneck speed so as to increase the number of runs. After midnight, when there is not much other available public transport, mini-van rides are welcome for working-class and middle-class Hongkongers. The topic is purely local and yet different references in the

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film, e.g., David Bowie’s 1972 song Space Oddity as a score, are internationally relevant. The film has a strong political subtext conveyed through dialogues between characters. Another film that carries strong political subtext, especially with regard to Hong Kong’s lack of genuine universal suffrage, is The Mobfathers (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2016). It depicts how the internal election is held within a local triad society and makes intertextual references to a similar triad election in Johnnie To’s Election series, including Election (Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 2005) and Election 2 (aka Triad Election; Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 2006). Through a vintage photography studio rarely found in Hong Kong at present, The Moment (Wong Kwok-fai, Hong Kong, 2016) depicts interpersonal relations that are ultimately about people’s strong feelings for the city. Group 3: Indies about Historical Moments in Hong Kong’s Past The third category of new indies from the 2010s evoked strong connections with the place Hong Kong through specific personalities, families and groups. These films differ from the second category in that their topics, while also local, were concerned with specific moments of the city’s history. More than half of the films I list in this category used the documentary genre to tell about Hong Kong’s (hi)story, (re-)constructing a sense of authenticity and poignancy by presenting real places and lives. Golden Gate Girls (S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2013) is a documentary about Esther Eng (1914–70), a forgotten Chinese-American female filmmaker. Born in San Francisco, Eng was a transcultural, openly lesbian filmmaker who often dressed in men’s clothing. The documentary collects episodes from the life of this pioneer of female filmmaking, who worked transnationally in the Chinese-speaking world. All of Eng’s films, which are in Cantonese, are anti-war and/or feminist social commentaries. She worked both in Hollywood and Hong Kong, making five films in the latter city in 1936–39, when she was in her early twenties. Flowing Stories (Jessey Tsang, Hong Kong, 2014), a documentary on the migration history of Hong Kong, is based on the life stories of Jessey Tsang’s fellow villagers born in Ho Chung (in Sai Kung, the New Territories of Hong Kong). Ho Chung is a village with a history dating back more than 500 years ago. The place is very rural and slow-paced, unlike most parts of Hong Kong. In the post-war years, many Ho Chung villagers emigrated to Europe for economic reasons. But they would return to the village to take part in a local festival held every ten years

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in honour of their ancestors. The villagers’ diasporic sojourns between their home/ancestral village in Hong Kong and their new homes in host countries touchingly echo the experience of many other Hongkongers, especially in the recent two/three decades. Reunification (Alvin Tsang, Hong Kong/USA, 2015) is a self-reflexive documentary focusing on the director’s own experience of migrating from Hong Kong to Los Angeles at the age of nine in the early 1980s. Inasmuch as it depicts a soulsearching journey of one Hong Kong family, the Tsangs, the audience gets a glimpse of what the lives of many Hongkongers were like during those years. It was a time in history that witnessed the start of negotiations between the British and Chinese authorities over Hong Kong’s political future, in which only a handful of Hongkongers were allowed to participate. Many Hong Kong families found themselves at a political-economic crossroads, and tried to find their own paths in life by either staying in the city or moving away from it amid various uncertainties and anxieties related to the imminent sovereignty transfer. The historical moments of 2010s Hong Kong motivated young and inexperienced filmmakers to articulate through images and sound what they saw and heard. Their senses of (trans)localness connected them to almost anyone who had gone through those moments, especially the younger generations of Hongkongers. They had the courage to continue fighting for their rights (e.g., freedom of expression and universal suffrage) that were promised them before the sovereignty transfer, which have still not fully materialized. For example, Lessons in Dissent (Matthew Torne, Hong Kong/UK, 2014) is a biographical documentary that follows the everyday activities of two teenaged activists, Joshua Wong and Ma Jia, during the time when they were heavily involved in protests against the ‘Moral and National Education’ to be introduced in the local school curriculum in 2012 (see the film’s circulation in Chapter 6). Lost in the Fumes (Nora Lam, Hong Kong, 2017), which is another biographical documentary, spotlights the life journey of Edward Leung (a highly controversial young activist-turned-politician). Edward Leung quickly rose to political popularity after the 2014 Umbrella Movement; he was arrested for rioting during the 2016 civil unrest in Mongkok, imprisoned in 2018 and released from jail in early 2022. The film sheds light on Edward Leung’s thoughts and motivations, which were previously unknown to the public. While many non-fiction films in 2010s Hong Kong were used by independent filmmakers to articulate their feelings and strong connections to

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the city, and present specific moments in its recent history, fiction films were employed for the same purpose with greater dramatic effect. For instance, Ten Years (Jevons Au/Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai]/Kwok Zune/Ng Ka-leung/Wong Fei-pang, Hong Kong, 2015), a five-segment omnibus film inspired by the 2014 Umbrella Movement,59 works like a futuristic dystopian speculation of its five relatively new directors.60 They use their short segments (ranging from twelve to twenty-five minutes long) to estimate what would happen in Hong Kong in the year 2025 from the perspective of 2015. Yet, the filmmakers’ foresight in the film are far from pure speculation, being based on what had been happening in and to Hong Kong under mainland Chinese rule. Au’s segment, entitled Dialect, focuses on the power dynamics between the use of Mandarin and Cantonese languages, when Cantonese is becoming increasingly marginalized in different areas of life (see more in Chapter 5). Kiwi Chow’s segment, entitled Self-Immolator, is about sociopolitical activism in the extreme form of self-immolation. Kwok Zune’s segment, entitled Extras, foregrounds governmental incompetence and a fearsome topic— the National Security Law (which became a political reality in Hong Kong in 2020). Ng Ka-leung’s segment, entitled Local Egg, concentrates on how a group of Hongkongers fight against all odds to preserve their sense of localism; the story ends on a positive note. Wong Fei-pang’s segment, entitled Season of the End, talks about the city’s conservation movements and indirectly points to the preservation of the sense of ‘self’ (see also Ten Years ’s collective filmmaking in Chapter 3 and its circulation in Chapter 6).

Concluding Remarks This chapter has discussed the main concerns related to the (trans)localness of Hongkongers as represented in 2010s Hong Kong new indies. As I have explained, this kind of existential realization has much to do with the ongoing ‘situational, diasporic consciousness’ of the ethnic majority group (the Chinese) residing in this global city. The extrinsic and intrinsic political, economic, social and cultural factors influencing Hong Kong, together with the polarization between the supposed mainstream and independent sectors of the Hong Kong film industry, further provided a timely opportunity for indie filmmakers to explore different kinds of local subject matter in their films. It is noteworthy that many of 2010s Hong Kong new indies, whether fiction or non-fiction films,

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were drawn to issues concerning Hong Kong’s most recent past. The small- to medium-sized budgets of the films could explain why the filmmakers tended to choose topics from their immediate surroundings in the city. The three categories of new indies I have identified in this chapter thus help illustrate the diverse range of their topics, which were rooted in local settings but were also transnationally relevant. Contrarily, expensively produced period costume dramas, for instance, were rarely found among these indies. In the next chapter, I will turn to a specific feature of these films—the use of Cantonese language, a feature that may counteract the inclusiveness of their subject matter.

Notes 1. ‘Government Announced Free-to-Air TV Licence’ (in traditional Chinese), Eastweek.com.hk, 15 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://eastweek.my-magazine.me/main/29398. 2. Patrick Brzeski, ‘Public Outcry in Hong Kong after Upstart TV Network Denied Broadcast License’, The Hollywood Reporter, 17 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/ tv-news/public-outcry-hong-kong-upstart-649188; Kelly Yang, ‘Why People in Hong Kong Protest over Bad Television’, The Atlantic, 6 November 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.theatlantic. com/china/archive/2013/11/why-people-in-hong-kong-protest-overbad-television/281210. 3. K. Yang, ‘Why People in Hong Kong’. 4. Brzeski, ‘Public Outcry’. 5. Vivienne Chow and Amy Nip, ‘Who’s Who of Film Unite to Attack TV Licence Decision’, South China Morning Post, 19 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/ 1334794/whos-who-film-unite-attack-tv-licence-decision?module=perpet ual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=1334794. 6. K. Yang, ‘Why People in Hong Kong’. 7. K. Yang, ‘Why People in Hong Kong’. 8. Brzeski, ‘Public Outcry’. 9. ‘Hong Kong Television Network: Protest over Licence Ruling’, BBC News, 20 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-asia-china-24600971. 10. V. Chow and Nip, ‘Who’s Who’; Lee Hing-chun, ‘Hong Kong Film Industry Urging for Explanation over TV Licence Decision’ (in traditional Chinese), Wen Wei Po, 20 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, http://paper.wenweipo.com/2013/10/20/YO1310200018.htm.

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11. Amy Nip and Tony Cheung, ‘Filmmakers Blast Rejection of HKTV Freeto-Air Licence’, South China Morning Post, 20 October 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/ 1335578/filmmakers-blast-rejection-hktv-free-air-licence?module=perpet ual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=1335578. 12. Lau Hei-tung, ‘Film Industry Bodies Condemning the Police for Doing Nothing during Thugs Attacking Civilians En Masse and Calling for the Establishment of an Independent Commission of Inquiry’ (in traditional Chinese), HK01, 24 July 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// www.hk01.com/電影/355615/元朗黑夜-電影業界發聲明譴責警方失職籲成立獨立調査委員會; ‘Hong Kong: Timeline of Extradition Protests’, BBC News, 4 September 2019, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-49340717; Laurel Chor, ‘From Packed Streets to Silence: Documenting the Fall of Hong Kong’, The Guardian, 16 June 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.the guardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/16/from-packed-streetsto-silence-documenting-hong-kong-authoritarianism. 13. Source: The 2021 Population Census, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government’s official website (English), https:// www.census2021.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 14. ‘Hong Kong: Timeline’, BBC News. 15. Ruby Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 7–22. 16. Scholar of literature and language Shu-mei Shih notes that ‘ethnic Chinese’ is a misnomer because there are fifty-six official ethnic groups in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), whereas ‘ethnic Chinese’ is usually understood as the ‘Han’ group only. My use of ‘ethnic Chinese’ in this book does not confine to ‘Han Chinese’ only, but it also includes any individuals who proclaim themselves as ‘ethnic Chinese’. I also note here that ‘Han Chinese’ is a problematic identification when used to denote a certain group of people. It is a cultural-political homogenizing construct, rather than a racially or biologically determined denotation, especially when ‘Han’ is used in the PRC context. See: Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 24; Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 307. 17. Sources: ‘2011 Population Census’ and ‘2021 Population Census’, the Census and Statistics Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.censtatd.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 18. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 43–47.

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19. Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013). 20. R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 8–9. 21. Rosie Roberts, Ongoing Mobility Trajectories: Lived Experiences of Global Migration (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 139–68. 22. John Durham Peters, ‘Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the Western Canon’, in Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, ed. Hamid Naficy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 39. 23. Stephen Chan, ‘A Chinese Diaspora? What Is This Thing Called a Chinese Diaspora?’, Contemporary Review (February 1999): 81–83. 24. Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 25. 25. Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese, 35. 26. Ipek Demir, Diaspora as Translation and Decolonisation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022), 3, 30. 27. Demir, Diaspora, 7. 28. Demir, Diaspora, 6. 29. Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ (first publ. in 1989 in Framework 36: 68–82), in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 222–37; William Safran, ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora 1, no. 1 (1991): 83–99; Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Oxon: Routledge, 1994), 199–244; Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese; Demir, Diaspora, 13–34. 30. Demir, Diaspora, 32. 31. Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, Citizens in Motion: Emigration, Immigration, and Re-migration across China’s Borders (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), 3–4. 32. E. L.-E. Ho, Citizens in Motion, 7–13. 33. Jacques, When China Rules, 294–41. See also: Song Xianlin and Gary Sigley, ‘Middle Kingdom Mentalities: Chinese Visions of National Characteristics in the 1990s’, Communal/Plural 8, no. 1 (2000): 47–64. 34. George Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, 1945; repr. London: Penguin Books, 2008). 35. Jacques, When China Rules, 307. 36. Steven B. Miles, Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 228–49. 37. Miles, Chinese Diasporas, 233–36.

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38. Ackbar Abbas, ‘Building, Dwelling, Drifting: Migrancy and the Limits of Architecture. Building Hong Kong: From Migrancy to Disappearance’, Postcolonial Studies 1, no. 2 (1998): 185. 39. Abbas, ‘Building, Dwelling, Drifting’, 191. 40. Vivian P. Y. Lee, Hong Kong Cinema since 1997: The Post-nostalgic Imagination (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1–18. 41. For example, in Cantopop singer Sam Hui’s 1990 song ‘In the Same Boat’ (同舟共濟), several lines of lyrics in the chorus show: ‘Hong Kong being My Home / How Could I Lose it / Really Unwillingly / Moving away to Other Countries to Take up Lowly Jobs’ (my translation of the original: … 香港是我家, 怎捨得失去它, 實在極不願, 移民外國做遞菜斟茶 …). A pro-democracy online Chinese-language Hong Kong newspaper article, published in 2015 under the series entitled ‘Hong Kong being My Home’, covers an interview with an American gay expatriate. The interviewee talks about moving out of Hong Kong, which has been his home in most of his adult years. See: Ching Pui, ‘I Think, I Am Leaving Soon’ (in traditional Chinese), inmediahk.net, 24 July 2015, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.inmediahk.net/生活/【香港是我家系 列(三)】−-「我想,我要離開了!」. The then Chief Secretary for Administration of the HKSAR government, Matthew Cheung, published an official blog post entitled ‘Hong Kong being My Home; No Distinction among You, Me and Them’ (publication date: 1 October 2017) (in traditional and simplified Chinese only) on his office’s official website to talk about inclusion and diversity in Hong Kong. Source: ‘My Blog’, Chief Secretary for Administration of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.cso. gov.hk/eng/blog/blog20171001.htm (accessed 19 December 2022). 42. Source: ‘Hong Kong—The Facts’, GovHK of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/facts. htm (accessed 19 December 2022). 43. Connie Lo, ‘Vanished Archives : People and Occurrences in Those Years’ (in traditional Chinese), Citizen News, 8 March 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hkcnews.com/article/2377/消失的檔案 ——那些年的人和事. (Notes on source: Citizen News was among the Hong Kong Chineselanguage mass media outlets that ceased to operate after the passing of the ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ on 30 June 2020 and the subsequent government crackdowns on a number of local, Chinese-language, prodemocracy mass media outlets under this law. See also Chapter 1, note 120).

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44. Helena Y. W. Wu, The Hangover after the Handover: Things, Places and Cultural Icons in Hong Kong (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 18. 45. Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Regionalism and Asia’, New Political Economy 5, no. 3 (2000): 353–68; Richard Pomfret, Regionalism in East Asia: Why Has It Flourished since 2000 and How Far Will It Go? (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, 2011), 74–130. 46. Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, ‘Mainlandization or Sinophone Translocality? Challenges for Hong Kong SAR New Wave Cinema’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6, no. 2 (2012): 118. 47. Szeto and Chen, ‘Mainlandization or Sinophone Translocality?’, 123, 127. 48. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 185–92. 49. Szeto and Chen, ‘Mainlandization or Sinophone Translocality?’, 126–27. 50. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 51. Yingjin Zhang, ‘Comparative Film Studies, Transnational Film Studies: Interdisciplinarity Crossmediality, and Transcultural Visuality in Chinese Cinema’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 1, no. 1 (2006): 37–38. 52. Sabina Lawreniuk and Laurie Parsons, Going Nowhere Fast: Mobile Inequality in the Age of Translocality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 3. 53. Lawreniuk and Parsons, Going Nowhere Fast, 3–5. 54. Wu, The Hangover, 6. 55. Wu, The Hangover, 14. 56. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 57. Wu, The Hangover, 33–34. See also: Nicole Kempton, ‘Performing the Margins: Locating Independent Cinema in Hong Kong’, in Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier, ed. Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti and Tan See-Kam (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 95–110; Sebastian Veg, ‘Anatomy of the Ordinary: New Perspectives in Hong Kong Independent Cinema’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 8, no. 1 (2014): 73–92; Vivian P. Y. Lee, ‘Relocalising Hong Kong Cinema’, Wasafiri 32, no. 3 (September 2017): 64–70. 58. Szeto and Chen, ‘Mainlandization or Sinophone Translocality?’, 121. 59. Ten Years—Inside and Outside (in traditional Chinese), Ten Years ’s DVD Book (Hong Kong: Ten Years Studio, 2016), 5. 60. Ruby Cheung, ‘Ten Years : An Unexpected Watershed of TwentyFirst-Century Hong Kong Film Industry’, Frames Cinema Journal 15 (June 2019), https://framescinemajournal.com/article/ten-years-an-une xpected-watershed-of-twenty-first-century-hong-kong-film-industry.

CHAPTER 5

The Use of Language

Chapter Introduction The conclusion of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) on 29 June 2003, three days before the sixth anniversary of the celebration of Hong Kong’s sovereignty transfer to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), appeared to be a poisoned chalice for the Hong Kong film industry. The CEPA is essentially a trade arrangement across different sectors of the economy, film being one of these.1 The main aim of this trade arrangement is to enable a better amalgamation between the local capitalist practice in Hong Kong and the PRC’s socialist market economy. On the one hand, the CEPA was cheered in different sectors, e.g., by mainstream film industry bodies and different governmental units, who welcomed the immediate, positive effect of the access it gave Hong Kong filmmakers to the lucrative mainland audience market. As I discuss in Chapter 2, many scholars interpret China–Hong Kong film co-productions (enabled under the CEPA) as a possible remedy for rescuing the ailing Hong Kong film industry as well as preserving Hong Kong’s film culture (although much of the latter was initially carried out on the mainland).2 On the other hand, the arrangement has also been one of the driving forces behind the mainstreamization and the concomitant polarization of the local film industry over the past two decades. This effect was especially obvious when the

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Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government incorporated the part of the CEPA related to the film sector into its film policy initiatives for supporting film industry activities in Hong Kong. However, the issues of Hong Kong cinema’s mainlandization and Sinicization, as well as mainstreamization and polarization, have been left unresolved by the establishment over the years since the CEPA was put in place. Interestingly, the matters of concern standing at the top of the agendas of cheerleaders for the CEPA have been mostly economic, if not the less obvious political ones.3 But the CEPA and its supplements over the years have had far more than just political and economic effects on Hong Kongrelated Chinese-language films. This is because one of the main areas in its early implementation was related to the language used in China–Hong Kong co-produced films. The language spoken and the corresponding written Chinese subtitles in these films have become a pre-requisite, as well as an area of constraints, for the films produced, distributed and exhibited through official channels on the mainland. Over the last two decades, there have indeed been several trajectory threads of the language used in Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films. The threads have been far from harmonious or gone parallel to each other. Contrarily, the developments of the language used in these films have been at times conflicting, although not without their silver linings. An unexpected benefit the CEPA brought was that Hong Kong filmmakers, especially those working on the local subject matter in their indie films and not caring about the mainland audience market, were willing to utilize their films as vehicles to display the characteristics of the Cantonese language. This spoken language is the lingua franca of the Hong Kong Chinese community (which amounts to 88.2 percent of the city’s total population).4 Cantonese has also been one of the distinctive linguistic features of contemporary Hong Kong cinema since the 1970s. Even with the dominance of China–Hong Kong co-produced films in the Hong Kong film industry in the post-CEPA era, this language frequently remains one of the main characteristics exhibiting the films’ ‘Hong Kong’ element. With language politics inevitably linking prevalent local film policy to language policy in Hong Kong, some of the indie filmmakers of the 2010s took the use of Cantonese further. Their films often served as a cinematic defence of the historical and social-cultural-political value of this spoken language in ways not seen in Hong Kong cinema before. Such language use came across as a kind of sociocultural and political

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manifesto by which these filmmakers rose against the overt Sinicization in the local film sector and, more generally, of Hong Kong society. In Chapter 4, I explore how filmmakers of many 2010s Hong Kong new indies expressed through the subject matter of their films their views about Hong Kong’s (trans)localness. This chapter investigates the intricacies of the use of the Cantonese language in which these filmmakers told their stories through speech (e.g., the characters’ lines and voice-overs) and written words (e.g., subtitles). I argue for a consideration of the effects and politics of mutual exclusiveness from a sociolinguistic perspective, while also employing ideas related to the concepts of ‘accented cinema’ and the ‘Sinophone’. My exploration starts with a review of the linguistic requirements in the CEPA and its supplements. I discuss how these requirements contrasted with Hong Kong’s prevailing language policy, and thereby seek the roots of the lingering sociolinguistic effects of the CEPA and its supplements on Hong Kong new indies of the 2010s. This discussion is followed by sociolinguistic considerations, which inform my argument as to the potential danger of mutual exclusiveness in the language used in films—exclusiveness that, if not handled properly, might go against the subject matter and international relevance of the new indies, discussed in Chapter 4. Three fiction and non-fiction films serve as case studies in this chapter. They are Dialect (Jevons Au, Hong Kong, 2015; in Ten Years , 2015), Vulgaria (Edmond Pang [aka Pang Ho-cheung], Hong Kong, 2012), and Last Exit to Kai Tak (Matthew Torne, Hong Kong/UK/USA, 2018).

The Political Economy of Linguistic Imposition: The CEPA In order to understand why the CEPA and its supplements have had such a far-reaching and yet, I would argue, indirect impact on the language use of Hong Kong’s new indies in the 2010s, I shall briefly review the spoken and written languages used in Hong Kong films over the years. Here, I concentrate on the original spoken language and written subtitles of these films, primarily available in their first runs when they were theatrically released in Hong Kong and elsewhere. I should note that many Hong Kong films made from the 1970s to around the early 1990s were shown as dubbed films even in the first runs of their theatrical release in Hong Kong, mainly because it was allegedly cheaper and faster back then to shoot the films without recording the characters’ lines

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synchronously. For example, in their comic kung fu films made at the peak of their acting careers in Hong Kong in the 1970s–80s, Jackie Chan’s and Sammo Hung’s voices were dubbed over by regular voice actors, even though both actors are Hong Kong-born, native Cantonese speakers. My discussion here excludes the dubbed Chinese-language versions of Hong Kong-related films in the second (or later) runs of their theatrical release or in other formats of the publicly available exhibition (e.g., Bluray, DVD, VHS, etc.). This review helps unravel the ongoing dynamics between Hong Kong’s film policy and language policy, especially since the start of the new millennium. Hong Kong Cinema: Language and Linguistic Requirements of the CEPA The language spoken in films has been one of the defining characteristics of different stages of development of the Hong Kong film industry since the early post-war years. Not much subjected to requirements by the British colonial government, in the 1950s–60s the filmmakers in Hong Kong responded primarily to the sociocultural backgrounds of their target audience groups and concurrently produced Mandarin- and Cantoneselanguage films. While the former usually addressed a more sophisticated and educated diasporic, ethnic Chinese audience residing in Hong Kong and overseas, the latter was especially welcome among the grassroots, working-class, Cantonese-speaking viewers in Hong Kong. Amoy films were also produced in the city during that period. In 1963, films shown in Hong Kong (including Hong Kong-made films and foreign films) were all required by the British colonial government to carry English subtitles in order to facilitate government officials in expurgating any politically sensitive materials.5 Local filmmakers soon began to likewise subtitle their films in traditional Chinese script.6 Besides facilitating film censorship, which was mild at that time, subtitles helped increase the potential local and international reach of Hong Kong cinema to its target audiences scattered across the world.7 In any case, the mandatory enforcement of English film subtitles thus turned out to be a major blessing in disguise as regards Hong Kong cinema’s internationalization in the post-war years. Interestingly, some Cantonese-speaking films carried subtitles in ‘modern standard Chinese’ (which is the written form of spoken Mandarin Chinese); others, in written Cantonese. The practice of bilingual subtitling in Hong Kong-related films continues to this day.

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The Hong Kong film industry of the 1970s, however, witnessed the Cantonese-language films gradually overshadowing those using other Chinese languages. As Hongkongers cravingly developed their senses of local identities, while anxiously awaiting the city’s imminent changes of sovereignty ownership, mainstream Cantonese-language films unsurprisingly became the city’s single most important category of film output between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s. Ostensibly, the signing of the CEPA in 2003 was one of the muchneeded government-run remedies that many Hong Kong film professionals had been awaiting, for almost a decade, since 1994 when the downturn in the Hong Kong film industry began. According to official information from the HKSAR government, the CEPA is a free trade agreement between mainland China and Hong Kong.8 The main text of the CEPA was concluded on 29 June 2003 (with its six annexes signed on 29 September 2003) to cover trade in goods, trade in services, and trade and investment facilitation between the two places still having different political-economic systems. In the subsequent ten years between 2004 and 2013, the Chinese national authorities and the HKSAR government signed one additional supplement to the original CEPA each year. Sectors related to the film industry are placed under ‘Audiovisual Services’ covered by the CEPA and its ten supplements. According to the agreement, films produced in Hong Kong are no longer subject to the import quota that the PRC imposes on foreign films. Instead, they now enjoy unprecedented access to the mainland Chinese audience market by being solely imported by the state-owned China Film Group Corporation (CFGC) and then further distributed in the mainland of China by licensed film distributors. This reverses the situation between 1997 and 2003, the first seven years after Hong Kong became a special administrative region of the PRC, when films made in Hong Kong were still considered ‘foreign films’ if distributed in mainland China. Currently, thirty-four profit-sharing imported films per year are officially allowed to be shown publicly in mainland China.9 On the other hand, under the CEPA, China–Hong Kong co-produced films are treated as ‘Mainland motion pictures’, also for distribution purposes in the PRC. This treatment amounts to conferring a ‘national’ status on these co-produced films that may or may not be locally made in Hong Kong. It is therefore natural that there was an exponential growth in the number of film co-production projects between Hong Kong and the PRC almost immediately after the original CEPA was signed. Film co-productions between

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filmmakers from Hong Kong and mainland China have since been one of the main trends of both the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese film industries. By comparison, prior to the agreement, there had been only about ten films per year featuring the collaboration between Hong Kong and the PRC.10 Scholars of mass media Joseph M. Chan, Anthony Y. H. Fung and Chun Hung Ng note that by 2005, these China–Hong Kong co-produced films had generated more than 70 percent of the annual box-office takings in mainland China.11 One of the possible reasons was that the ‘Mainland’ and ‘national’ status allowed these co-produced films to enjoy incomparably privileged general release slots and undocumented protection during the ‘blackout period’ (aka ‘domestic film protection month’ policy) against fierce competition with foreign films in mainland China.12 The ‘blackout period’ usually takes place during festive seasons and long holidays, when the mainland Chinese public is eager to spend on film tickets. Many of these co-produced films have also registered some of the highest box-office records in mainland China in recent years. From the perspective of the film industry, there are, nevertheless, prices that Hong Kong filmmakers must pay when attempting to capture the benefits brought by the CEPA. One type of price is that films are subject to strict censorship in the state-approved mainland Chinese film production, distribution and exhibition system. Many film professionals from Hong Kong deem the mainland Chinese film censorship to be notoriously opaque.13 It often involves rounds of complicated state censorship procedures before and after the films are made,14 while ‘no one knows the precise boundaries of censorship in China’.15 Another drawback for Hong Kong film professionals jumping on the CEPA-driven bandwagon is related to the linguistic requirements stipulated in the legal texts of the trade arrangement and several of its supplements. Film Policy vs. Language Policy in Hong Kong The linguistic requirements for films under the CEPA and its supplements bring forward two kinds of awkwardness in the HKSAR policies for film and language respectively. As my discussion below shows, such awkwardness would unsurprisingly point towards, if not expose blatantly, the differences in political realities between mainland China and Hong Kong. In the film sector, from 2003 to 2013, there were several incarnations of the linguistic requirements for the CEPA-enabled, China–Hong Kong

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co-produced films to meet before getting official approval for distribution and then exhibition in mainland China. The specifications are stated in the legal documents of the original CEPA (2003), the CEPA Supplement II (2005) and the CEPA Supplement X (2013). These are publicly available on the official website of the Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government.16 The original CEPA (Annex 4) stipulates that: Motion pictures jointly produced by Hong Kong and the Mainland are treated as Mainland motion pictures for the purpose of distribution in the Mainland. Translated versions of the motion pictures in languages of other Chinese ethnic groups and Chinese dialects, which are based on the Putonghua version, are allowed to be distributed in the Mainland. (my emphasis in italics)

This requisite of dubbing other Chinese dialects (referring mainly to the spoken Cantonese in these cases) into Putonghua (i.e., Mandarin) sends a clear message to Hong Kong filmmakers that they must observe the Chinese national language policy, which maintains Mandarin as the only benchmark of Chinese-language films, if they intend to utilize the mainland film distribution and exhibition system to reach their mainland Chinese audience legally. The Cantonese language is, however, labelled and marginalized as a Chinese ‘dialect’ by the mainland Chinese authorities. This requirement is immediately at odds with the chief language spoken in films made by Hong Kong’s filmmakers since the mid-1980s. As such, it works literally to downplay a major socially and culturally specific element of contemporary Hong Kong cinema. Moreover, beyond the film sector, the required spoken language for films as stipulated in the legal texts of the CEPA and several of its supplements, when they were made effective, led to an almost immediate clash with what had been practised under the language policy in Hong Kong before 2003. A temporary digression to the languages used in Hong Kong is necessary here. In terms of written languages in Hong Kong, before 1974, under the rule of the British colonial government, Hong Kong’s only official language was English (when most of the ethnic Chinese Hong Kong inhabitants spoke Cantonese as their lingua franca in their daily lives). In 1974, upon increasing demand from the general public, a change in language policy in Hong Kong declared both written Chinese and English

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as official languages.17 These two written languages have remained official after Hong Kong became part of the PRC. They possess equal status, as stipulated in Article 9 of the Basic Law and the Official Languages Ordinance (Cap. 5 Section 3, version dated 15 February 2017).18 Hong Kong-based educationist Anita Y. K. Poon notes that there has been a lack of language planning in Hong Kong.19 The direct result is that: ‘Chinese’ itself has never been defined in the three official legal documents in Hong Kong, i.e.: ● the Official Languages Ordinance enacted in 1974 makes Chinese a co-official language alongside English; ● the Official Languages Ordinance amended in 1987 requires all new legislation to be enacted bilingually in both English and Chinese; and ● the Basic Law, a mini-constitution enacted by the PRC on 4 April 1990 for the Hong Kong SAR, stipulates the co-official language status of English alongside Chinese after the handover in 1997.20

While there are no further official specifications on whether the traditional or simplified Chinese characters should be used after 1997, most Hong Kong inhabitants are still using traditional Chinese script to write ‘modern standard Chinese’. The way many Chinese-speaking/reading Hongkongers write the ‘modern standard Chinese’ is usually closer to the practice of standard language in formal writing in Taiwan, than how it is written in mainland China under the PRC.21 On the other hand, spoken Cantonese, although commonly understood as the lingua franca of the Hong Kong Chinese community, has, until very recently, been considered unacceptable in formal writing, even though the language has a history dating back to 220 AD, the fall of the Han Dynasty of Imperial China (202 BC–9 AD; 25–220 AD).22 That is, the language in question is about 2,000 years old. Some words used in Cantonese are believed to come from Classical Chinese (the literary language used in formal writing in Imperial China up to the early twentieth century),23 with tones inherited from Middle Chinese (the historical variety of Chinese languages).24 Cantonese has nine tones. By contrast, Mandarin, which has four tones, is widely believed to have a much shorter history than Cantonese—Mandarin was noted in documents dating from the Yuan Dynasty of Imperial China (1271–1368).

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In terms of spoken languages in Hong Kong, in more recent years, spoken English, Cantonese and Mandarin have been the three most spoken languages of Hong Kong’ inhabitants,25 as a result of the ‘biliterate and trilingual’ policy (initially as a language-in-education policy) implemented by the HKSAR government since 1997.26 This policy aims to develop the ability of Hongkongers (particularly the ethnic Chinese) to write English and Chinese, and speak English, Cantonese and Mandarin. On the other hand, spoken Mandarin is currently regarded officially as the ‘national language’ by the authorities of the PRC in mainland China. It is one of the official spoken languages of the Republic of China in multilingual Taiwan, where most people speak Hoklo.27 Against these legal, sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic and historical backgrounds, the language requirements stipulated in the CEPA legal documents governing the spoken language used in China–Hong Kong co-produced films, therefore, equate more to a dissonance than to useful guidelines, especially when, in connection with the plots, settings, characters’ development, etc., these films need to use Cantonese as the main spoken language. The CEPA Supplement II, signed on 18 October 2005, allows limited distribution in the southern part (Guangdong Province) of mainland China for Hong Kong Cantonese-language films not dubbed into Mandarin. The CEPA Supplement X, signed on 29 August 2013, gives a bit more leeway for Hong Kong-related films distributed in China to use the Cantonese language. However, the film subtitles requirements are emphasized in a specific commitment of the CEPA Supplement X (Annex), which stipulates that: To allow the dialect version of motion pictures co-produced by Hong Kong and the Mainland to be distributed and screened in the Mainland, after obtaining the approval of the relevant authorities in the Mainland, on the condition that standard Chinese subtitles are provided on screen.28 (my emphasis in italics)

Another specific commitment in the same legal document, similarly worded, indicates the relaxation of the mainland Chinese authorities’ language requirements for films produced by Hong Kong and solely imported by the Film Import and Export Corporation of the CFGC for distribution and screening in mainland China.

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But a HKSAR government FAQ document related to the ‘Audiovisual Services’ (with unknown date) reveals that the main reason for requesting a subtitled version of Hong Kong Cantonese films under the CEPA was to facilitate the censorship on the part of the relevant mainland Chinese authorities. The part of its original texts related to subtitling of Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong films are as follows: Chinese-language motion pictures produced in Hong Kong and the Cantonese version of Hong Kong films have to be introduced and sent for censorship via China Film Group before being distributed and screened in the Mainland by distributors possessing “Operation Licence for Film Distribution”. The Cantonese version of Hong Kong films has to provide standard Chinese subtitles on screen.29 (my emphasis in italics)

It is clear in this excerpt of CEPA legal texts that there are political purposes behind the requirement about China–Hong Kong co-produced films under the CEPA having the need to carry ‘standard Chinese subtitles’, as a condition of distribution and exhibition in mainland China. It manifests an ongoing power struggle and distrust between the PRC and Hong Kong with regard to film matters. To the mainland Chinese authorities led by the Chinese Communist Party, film has been a political tool for supporting its communist ideology and cultural control.30 Yet, in the years following the political Handover, Hongkongers were still allowed freedom of expression under the Basic Law. Many Hongkongers were also trying to hold on to their unique sociocultural and political identities, as especially evident among the younger generation of Hong Kong filmmakers in their films. It would only be possible for the mainland Chinese authorities to weed out materials deemed challenging their governance through the approved subtitled version of Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong films before they were allowed to enjoy official circulation on the mainland. Hence, over the years since the first CEPA was signed, the limited relaxation of language requirements could be seen as granting Hong Kong Cantonese-language films only a restricted yet uncertain foothold, more than as providing them a completely secure position, within the Chinese national film industry. The latter has become one of the most powerful tools by which the PRC expands its soft power across the world,31 especially after the nation state’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. This is indeed worrisome from a film industry

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point of view because in this context, not only the language used in its films but also Hong Kong cinema’s worldwide influence would eventually be curbed.

Hong Kong Cantonese Language and Films: Sociolinguistic Concerns Given the above contexts, the CEPA, being part of the HKSAR government’s film policy initiatives since 2003, unexpectedly magnifies the gaps not only between language uses in films made by Hong Kong vs. mainland Chinese filmmakers but also within the linguistic practice of Hong Kong society, from a legal and political perspective. On a more positive note, the language requirements in the CEPA legal texts could be viewed as a blessing in disguise—a wake-up call alerting locally oriented Hong Kong filmmakers to preserve Hong Kong’s imaginaries and cultural specificities via the language used in their films, before it becomes too late (I will return to this point in the section on film cases in this chapter). Yet, there could also potentially be inevitable setbacks produced by over-embracing a sociolinguistic culture that excludes non-native speakers and readers from truly appreciating that particular culture’s qualities. Hence, I resort to investigating relevant issues from a sociolinguistic perspective, in order to justly appreciate from multiple angles the potential impacts of the fact that 2010s Hong Kong indie filmmakers wielded their films as a defence for spoken Cantonese, alongside the continued use of traditional Chinese subtitles as a historical and social-cultural-political artefact. My exploration builds on the combined use of the concepts of ‘accented cinema’ and the ‘Sinophone’, which arguably can help me more fully dissect the possible mutual exclusiveness of the languages of films than if I were to employ only one of these two concepts. Worth noting here is that although accented cinema and the Sinophone are concepts built on examples from different contemporary geopoliticalbased cultures, they are inextricably entwined with the notions related to ‘diaspora’ (see Chapter 4), albeit from different angles. Sociolinguistic Dominance and Accentedness A few years ago, when I explored for New Hong Kong Cinema the interconnections between the sovereignty transfer of Hong Kong and Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films made during the 1980s to

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circa mid-2010s, I formulated the ‘cinema of transitions’ model.32 The accented cinema paradigm by Hamid Naficy, scholar in the disciplines of diaspora studies and media studies, served as one of my major academic foundations in that study of contemporary Hong Kong cinema.33 My advocacy for employing the ‘cinema of transitions’ model came from my focus on the diasporic mentalities of many Hongkongers as the underlying support of the Hong Kong films in question. The presence of such existential consciousness has disputably driven many Hongkongers, especially the ethnic Chinese who resettled in Hong Kong after permanently leaving mainland China, to see themselves and others in a particular way. Similarly, the diasporic and exilic realities and mentalities have also driven many filmmakers of accented cinema, hailing from the ‘Third World and postcolonial countries (or from the global South)’ according to Naficy,34 to convey their feelings and messages through their films, when they no longer reside in their ancestral lands but somewhere in the West. The reasons for many Hongkongers (and the Hong Kong filmmakers under study in New Hong Kong Cinema) being in diaspora and exile are fundamentally different from those of third-world filmmakers (under Naficy’s study). However, their feeling of not being based in their ancestral homes and their longing to be there could contestably reflect a similar kind of difficult-to-fulfil human desire. The accentedness conveyed through their films is saturated with poignancy, if not with outright melancholia. It reflects the filmmakers’ working ‘within and astride the cracks’ of the establishment (or established systems outside their own ancestral lands).35 It also reveals the filmmakers’ rather passive interstitiality amid the broad political, economic, sociocultural (and sometimes film industrial) environments, which these filmmakers are unable to significantly change. The accentedness in films made by third-world diasporic/exilic filmmakers as well as by Hong Kong filmmakers can be observed in various areas. They range from the films’ on-screen elements (e.g., visual styles, narratives and structures, subject matter and topics, characterization) to their off-screen environments (e.g., modes of film production/distribution/exhibition and spectatorship).36 The language used in films is, I would argue, the single most easily detectible component of their accentedness, especially when the actors or voice-overs speak with an accent distinct from the dominant language used in their host countries or territories.37 This is because the actors or voice-overs immediately convey a sense of foreignness uneasily situated in the interstices of their

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current surroundings. But what if such surroundings are already filled with syntheses of different languages and accents, to the extent that these syntheses have become the dominant language? Let me take as an example the Cantonese language spoken in Hong Kong. From a sociolinguistic angle (mainly the Western one), there have been ongoing academic debates as to whether Cantonese has the status of a Chinese language or a Chinese dialect.38 Sinologist Victor Mair categorizes the world’s natural tongues in a hierarchy (based on descending sizes) of ‘family, group, branch, language, dialect, subdialect’.39 According to the author, Cantonese and Mandarin are two mutually unintelligible tongues within the group of Sinitic languages that form part of the greater Sino-Tibetan language family.40 They are two different languages.41 This view is shared by later generations of scholars of Chinese languages and linguistics, especially those who base their views on the criterion of ‘mutual intelligibility’.42 Mair further points out that ‘dialect’, as we understand it in the West, differs from its thought-to-be Chinese equivalent, fangyan, a term that, according to Mair, has been wrongly translated as ‘dialect’.43 Fangyan in its Chinese original could literally mean spoken words of a particular region. Mair suggests a new word, ‘topolect’, which could replace the usual English translation for fangyan into ‘dialect’.44 For the purposes of this book, I adopt this sociolinguistic angle and regard spoken Cantonese as a language with distinct vocabulary, idioms, syntax, phonology, tones, sentence-final particles, etc. All of these linguistic characteristics of Cantonese are continuously developing, even though the language has a very long history. This sociolinguistic choice allows me to avoid unnecessary bias, which might taint the first and foremost use of any natural language—sociocultural intercommunication between individuals in everyday life.45 Within the system of the Cantonese language, there are nuances that may not be immediately noticeable to non-speakers. For example, the specific version of the Cantonese spoken by Hong Kong natives (including ethnic and nonethnic Chinese) carries a specific accent, which in turn distinguishes it from the accent of the Cantonese-speaking people living in other parts of Southern China, e.g., Guangzhou. Scholar of linguistics Andrew D. Wong attributes such a difference between Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese to the loss of the ‘high-falling tone’ in the former.46 As noted further by scholars of Chinese language and literature Siu-Pong Cheng and Sze-Wing Tang,

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Hong Kong and Guangzhou Cantonese belong to the Guangfu Branch of Yue. In addition to this Yue Branch, there are a few more branches that might share the label “Cantonese.” They include Siyi, Gao-Yang, Guan-Bao, Goulou, Xiangshan, Guinan, and Wu-Hua, etc., depending on different classification systems […] The mutual intelligibility between Cantonese as used in Hong Kong and Guangzhou and some varieties in these other branches can be marginal.47

As in any other language, the accents of different Cantonese speakers then help their Cantonese-speaking listeners to locate the speakers’ places of origin. Yet, due to the complicated contemporary political realities, in the wider sociopolitical context of mainland China, Cantonese is regarded not as a separate spoken language but as a Chinese ‘dialect’. This is from the perspective of the Chinese national authorities. The PRC has a current population of about 1.4 billion (latest information from the 2021 Chinese population census data).48 The ‘Han’ group is the ethnic majority, amounting to 1.28 billion people, or about 91.11 percent of the total population. In addition, there are fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minority groups, amounting to about 125 million people, or about 8.89 percent of the country’s total population.49 These ethnic minorities are officially called ‘minority nationalities’ in mainland China.50 Fiftythree of these ethnic minority groups have their own languages,51 while recent linguist studies show that there are more than 200 languages in use among members of different ethnic groups in the PRC.52 From a governance perspective, the mainland Chinese authorities started formulating their language policy as early as in the 1950s in order to further their purposes of nation-building.53 Ethnic minority languages were at first acknowledged. Starting from the late 1950s, however, Mandarin has been promoted as the ‘national language’, whereas ethnic minority languages have been marginalized. Under these circumstances, it is not difficult to see why Cantonese has been downgraded from the level of language to that of dialect (in Mair’s sense) by the PRC authorities. This is especially evident in how Cantonese is described in the legal texts of the CEPA, whose clauses reflect the official line of the PRC authorities. Nonetheless, the CEPA’s linguistic requirement and related matter could easily extend to the Hong Kong Chinese community’s ongoing sociocultural and political identity negotiations, with the everyday language used being an important component

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of identities. This is because the CEPA legal texts display what amounts to an imminent change of status of Hong Kong Cantonese from a dominant language within Hong Kong society, which carries the essence of Hong Kong culture, to a marginalized Chinese dialect under the national paradigm. This tendency has motivated many Hongkongers (especially the younger generations of Hong Kong Chinese) to fight for more proper recognition of Cantonese in Hong Kong society in general and in the indie film sector in particular.54 The Sinophone Implications The social-cultural-political turbulence that took place in Hong Kong in the 2010s further triggered many native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese to internalize this language as a tool for cultivating a sense of their uniqueness. In the local English-language Hong Kong newspaper Hong Kong Free Press, a US-born Hong Kong writer shares her sense of sociocultural and linguistic identity as follows: Cantonese, my native language, underlies my knowledge of the standard written language, so being Chinese for me is as much about understanding Stephen Chow’s untranslatable gags as about reading Confucian classics and training my mind and body through tai chi […] I struggle—emotionally as well as intellectually—to reconcile the pressure to feel part of the same political entity as someone, whether from Shandong or Sichuan, who has had vastly different experiences from me.55 (my emphasis in italics)

This self-reflexive statement is representative in that it allows us to see the limitations of embracing one’s mother tongue: that on the emotional and cognitive levels, in addition to the linguistic level, the speakers may not be able to feel the connections with their counterparts, who were from the supposedly same ancestral lands but may have different mother tongues. In this writer’s case, being a native Cantonese speaker, she would not be able to feel and perceive things in the same way as speakers of different tongues in Shandong or Sichuan. The only thing that really connects her with her mainland counterparts is the ‘same political entity’; this subtly suggests that the connection is politically imposed. From the perspective of language studies, scholar of literature and language Shu-mei Shih theorizes the concept of Sinophone to comprehend this kind of diasporic outlook.56 Shih defines the Sinophone as ‘a

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network of places of cultural production outside China and on the margins of China and Chineseness, where a historical heterogenizing and localizing of continental Chinese culture has been taking place for several centuries’ (my emphasis in italics).57 While the first ‘China’ in this working definition refers to the country’s actual geographical location in East Asia, the second ‘China’, linking up directly to Chineseness, could be understood as the cultural-political construct of ‘China’. There are two main recurring points in Shih’s Sinophone ideas. The first is that the ‘Sinophone’ is place-based and time-sensitive. It is closely related to the geopolitical and cultural constructs of ‘China’ and ‘Chinese diaspora’.58 However, it differs from accented cinema’s relationship with different diasporas in that one of the main elements of the Sinophone is anti-(Han) nationalism and anti-(Han) colonialism. This is insofar as ‘China’ was created as a cultural-political hegemony through various (internal) colonial polities, which governed (or still govern) the mainland of the geopolitical ‘China’ in the last two hundred years.59 This sort of internal colonial process commenced in the 1800s, during the Qing Dynasty of Imperial China. Shih acknowledges the changes that different segments of different waves of Sinitic-speaking/reading peoples have experienced through generations. Their heterogeneous and localized changes would also indicate the gradual removal of emotional connections of the descendants of firstgeneration Chinese diasporic people to their ancestral land as time went by. Shih sums it up forthrightly that ‘Diaspora has an end date […] Everyone should be given a chance to become a local’ of their current places of residence (emphasis in original).60 The second recurring point in Shih’s Sinophone concept is about both the audible and visual forms of language.61 The Sinophone signifies a kind of multilingualism, underscoring relevant communities’ polyphonic and polyscriptic practices.62 Sinophone speakers/writers/readers would have multiple linguistic, ethnic, sociocultural, political and national identities. They would be in constant linguistic interactions with the local cultures where they are based. As Shih opines, the Sinophone is part of the larger Sinitic language family. But the Sinophone is not equal to ‘the Chinese language’, which is widely received and perceived as being standard Mandarin. It follows that the Sinophone is a non-continental and non-conforming way of cultural (trans)formation among native speakers/writers/readers of Sinitic languages in non-mainland China locations that the Sinophone communities would call their ‘homes’. The Sinophone could also be

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understood as being the languages spoken/written by people living in mainland China, where ethnic minorities living under the jurisdiction of the PRC are compelled to speak standard Mandarin, or adopt the language willingly for specific reasons (this is an updated version of Shih’s ideas in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader).63 The written and oral languages that the Sinophone peoples not living in mainland China use will not be the minority linguistic cultures of the PRC, where standard Mandarin is currently the majority linguistic culture, but rather the minority linguistic cultures of where the respective segments of the Sinophone culture are created.64 Hence, the Sinophone does not refer only to the (self-proclaimed) ethnic Chinese, but to other ethnicities as well. Instead of having strong ties with ‘China’, the mythical motherland, the languages spoken and written by the Sinophone groups contain elements of anti-(Han) Chinese hegemony (or anti-China-centrism), which, according to Shih, is colonial in nature.65 In the same vein, the fact that the PRC authorities designate Mandarin as the only ‘national language’ would be considered an internal colonial act aimed at different ethnic groups in mainland China, whether they be ‘Han’ or non-‘Han’ (groups with languages, cultures and histories of their own). In such an environment, members of these ethnic groups are expected to show a state-recognized standard level of fluency in Mandarin. Such Chinese colonial imposition would be exercised upon ethnic Chinese descendants now living outside mainland China whenever their Chineseness is being called upon. Naturally, there are those Sinophone individuals who may still maintain certain links to the legendary 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization via being part of the Sinitic-speaking peoples.66 Shih’s Sinophone concept is thought-provoking and powerful, especially when, around the world, Mandarin alone is still widely considered to be the Chinese language. Her call for validation of Sinophone studies is ground-breaking. It shakes up many previous myths and misunderstandings about ‘China’, ‘Chineseness’, ‘the Chinese language’ vs. ‘Chinese dialects’, etc. Scholar in the field of modern Chinese literary and cultural studies Chien-hsin Tsai notes that this goes against the call that Chineseness be blindly conformed to by many (self-proclaimed) Chinese diasporic individuals, while also indirectly including the absolute Chinese hegemony with which the Sinophone refuses to comply.67 However, if we inspect the assumptions on which the ideas of the Sinophone are based, problems appear that cannot be instantly resolved.

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For instance, by acknowledging ‘Han Chinese’ as the main component of China-centrism (‘China’ being the present absence in the Sinophone concept),68 Shih inevitably also validates the ‘Han’ community as a homogenously defined ethnic group, which strongly points to a racial or biological distinction made in the term’s usage, especially in the context of the PRC. Critics have argued that ‘Han’ is a cultural-political construct.69 But when used in the PRC, ‘Han’ covers a large range of human communities of different cultures and languages. The way that the Sinophone theory juxtaposes ‘Han’ vis-à-vis the fifty-five ethnic minority groups in the PRC does not seem to differ Shih’s ideas from the official line of the PRC authorities. In her conception, Shih does not address this point of the problematics of ‘Han’ as an ethnicity.70 Moreover, the ideas of the Sinophone still tend to overgeneralize. It may not mean the same to different Sinophone individuals and groups,71 even though it is articulated to spotlight the heterogeneous linguistic practices of different Sinitic-speaking/writing/reading communities. For example, the Sinophone theory would not be adequate to explain the ideas of the US-born Hong Kong newspaper writer whom I quoted at the start of this subsection, and her clinging to the ‘Chineseness’ that she is proud of, if the Sinophone first and foremost means combatting against Chineseness and its hegemony, as other scholars do in their writings.72 Another example that challenges the stance of the Sinophone concept is that the second, third and later generations of ethnic Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong, who were born and raised in the city and call it their homeland, testify to having shed their emotional connections to their supposedly ancestral places of origin somewhere on the mainland. They would rather call themselves ‘Hongkongers’, an identification marker that Shih believes is absent in the scholarship on the Chinese diaspora.73 But these HongKong-born-and-bred, self-proclaimed ethnic Chinese individuals may be aware that their diaspora status is ongoing and changing into a possible diaspora-in-situ status. This is when the target of their diasporic longings has changed over the last two to three decades from ‘China’ as the mythical and imaginary motherland to the ‘Hong Kong’ lost over time (see my explanation of ‘diaspora in situ’ in Chapter 4). Furthermore, while I fully appreciate Shih’s intention to theorize the Sinophone as a way of acknowledging the cultural/linguistic multiplicities and dynamics of these different Sinitic languages and their variants (severely understudied or mis-studied in their own right),74 I

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am also cautious about the possible mutual exclusivity of the Sinophone ideas. That is, by attacking the failings of its opponent—standard Mandarin (and its hegemony) as officialized by the mainland Chinese authorities—the Sinophone may entail similar flaws insofar as nonSinophone speakers/writers/readers would be excluded or marginalized from meaningful sociolinguistic exchanges with the Sinophone peoples, were it not for the help of another language, for instance, English. These non-Sinophone peoples range from native ‘standard’ Mandarin speakers/writers/readers to non-Sinitic-language ones, such as native French or German speakers/writers/readers. Undoubtedly, the Hong Kong Cantonese that the ethnic Chinese community in Hong Kong speak offers a living example of Shih’s Sinophone theory. Especially in the 2010s, rather than just showing ‘dissonance in uniformity’,75 which indicates a hegemonic uniformity that ‘standard’ Mandarin is tasked to achieve by the PRC authorities, the dissonance of the Hong Kong Cantonese language spoken (and written) by many Hongkongers was saturated with an air of sociocultural and linguistic defiance, if not outright dissidence. This was part of their attempt to preserve their social-cultural-political identities, initially built in Hong Kong with a view to transcending the mainland Chinese national hegemony in order to lend the language a possible transnational or even international outlook (see again the newspaper writer’s case at the start of this subsection). However, this outlook would not be easily accomplished if the Hong Kong Cantonese language were used in a way that excludes non-speakers/writers/readers and turns the locally developed language into a secret linguistic code difficult for non-speakers/writers/readers to decipher. Many filmmakers of 2010s Hong Kong new indies reflect, and reflect upon, such a language issue in their films. Here, I scrutinize three cases, and their different malleable and witty uses of the Hong Kong Cantonese language: Dialect (in Ten Years , 2015), Vulgaria (2012) and Last Exit to Kai Tak (2018). Case 1: Audio-visualizing the Imminence—Dialect (in Ten Years, 2015) Jevons Au’s short film Dialect (about twelve minutes long) forms part of Ten Years (Jevons Au/Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai]/Kwok Zune/Ng Ka-leung/Wong Fei-pang, Hong Kong, 2015), an omnibus film comprising five shorts with unrelated plots. Their shared topic is

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how things might be in the year 2025 (see also Ten Years ’s collective filmmaking in Chapter 3, its subject matter in Chapter 4, and its circulation in Chapter 6). Au’s segment is the shortest of the five, but the most powerful in terms of its fictional speculation about the socio-political-linguistic environment in 2025 Hong Kong. Dialect juxtaposes the sociolinguistic imposition of Mandarin on Hongkongers and the rapid marginalization of Cantonese in a city where this language is the lingua franca. Au explicitly displays in his segment the ridiculous and helpless situation Hongkongers have to endure and adapt to. Dialect starts with a white-on-black intertitle introducing the specifics of Cantonese and the language’s flexibility in incorporating vocabulary and terms from English and other languages, when spoken by Hongkongers. It then tells the story from the perspective of the protagonist Han, a middle-aged male taxi driver. He is a native speaker of Cantonese and does not speak much Mandarin. However, due to his inability to communicate properly in Mandarin, his taxi has to carry a noticeable sticker indicating ‘No Putonghua’ (i.e., taxi driver not speaking Mandarin) as a kind of stigma in a future in which many restrictions on conducting business are put in place for non-Mandarin-speaking taxi drivers. For instance, they are not allowed to pick up passengers at the airport or the busiest commercial areas of the city. The film documents Han’s taxi-driving life via eight shorter segments. Each of these is introduced by a white-on-black intertitle featuring a written Cantonese or Mandarin phrase in traditional Chinese script, underscored by its pinyin pronunciation. Some of these eight phrases make sense when pronounced in both Cantonese and Mandarin; others do not. For example, the second, shorter segment features the Sinitic transliteration of the name of footballer David Beckham. The intertitle shows the traditional Chinese script of his name as 貝克漢姆, accompanied by its pinyin version, bèi kè hàn mu. ˇ ‘Beckham’ is, however, usually transliterated as bik haam in Hong Kong Cantonese, which carries the tones much closer to the name’s original English pronunciation, even though nowadays the pinyin version read out in Hong Kong Cantonese is gradually recognizable as Beckham’s other transliterated Sinitic name. The seventh, shorter segment featuring ‘I don’t understand’, is introduced by the white-on-black intertitle with the traditional Chinese script 唔識, accompanied by its pinyin version, wú shí. Since the written words 唔識 (denoting ‘I don’t understand’) are unique in Cantonese, they do not

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make sense when read out in Mandarin. This title card highlights the mutual unintelligibility between Cantonese and Mandarin. Dialogues between the taxi driver and other characters, especially in scenes of trouble and awkwardness, are also alarming. By way of illustration, when the taxi driver pleads with a policeman not to fine him for having picked up a Cantonese-speaking tourist at a restricted place, he does so in Cantonese: ‘而家講廣東話係咪犯法先?’ (English translation in the film’s DVD subtitles: ‘Is speaking in Cantonese against the law now?’). A Cantonese-speaking passenger loses her client and then her job, because she cannot communicate properly in Mandarin with her Mandarin-speaking client over the mobile phone. Right after this episode, she wants to change her destination but gets no response from the taxi driver. So, she yells at him in Cantonese in order to vent her frustration with Mandarin, saying: ‘係咪連廣東話你都唔識聽呀?’ (English translation in the film’s DVD subtitles: ‘Can you not understand Cantonese now?’). When the taxi driver asks a Western passenger in English where he would like to go, the latter replies in Mandarin, not English. These fictional dialogues mean to alert the audience, especially Hong Kong viewers, that it is still not too late to fight for and protect Cantonese as a living language and, more importantly, a very significant element of the senses of identities of Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers. Case 2: Engaging with Linguistic Filth—Vulgaria (2012) Indie filmmakers of the 2010s sometimes relied on filthy elements of the Hong Kong Cantonese language to carve out a sociolinguistic niche of their own. Many of their films in Cantonese are unprecedentedly saturated with mild to strong Cantonese foul language in characters’ dialogues (the HKSAR authorities thus rated many of them as ‘Category III’ films suitable for audience aged eighteen or above only, when these films were released theatrically). These Cantonese curse words are untranslatable, unintelligible and undecipherable in other Sinitic and nonSinitic languages. For instance, some swear words used in Hong Kong Cantonese are not used so frequently in other variants of Cantonese, such as Guangzhou Cantonese. If explained with Shih’s Sinophone theory, the films’ use of Hong Kong Cantonese swear words would represent a deliberate civil defiance of the linguistic requirements imposed on China–Hong Kong co-produced films, as defined in the legal texts of the CEPA and its supplements. This is because the filmmakers using a lot of

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Cantonese swear words in their films knew full well that their films would not be able to obtain approval from the mainland Chinese authorities for screening legitimately in the PRC.76 Another film scholar Victor Fan argues that the linguistic incongruence in a cinematic environment that is supposed to promote sociolinguistic and national unity constitutes ‘a process of reindividuation by performing the failure of any state or institutional attempts to contain these linguistic practices within a national model’ (my emphasis in italics).77 In aligning such ‘reindividuation’ in various films featuring Cantonese curse words and made in a matter of a few years in the 2010s, we will be able to distinguish not only individual acts but also a trend of defiance across films in various genres, from fiction to non-fiction films. Vulgaria, being a satirical, fictional comedy, is arguably one of the chief examples in this group of Hong Kong new indies utilizing Cantonese foul language to express the anger of the filmmakers, and by extension that of the local audience, over their helplessness and frustration with the rapidly deteriorating sociocultural and political relationships between Hong Kong and the PRC in recent years. The director Edmond Pang started filmmaking in the new millennium, quickly becoming one of the most popular Hong Kong filmmakers among the younger generation of the local audience. In more recent years, he engaged in making both Hong Kong indies and China–Hong Kong co-produced films. Made on a shoestring budget and without a complete script, Vulgaria was shot in just twelve days.78 This film was one of the top grossing locally produced Hong Kong films in 2012, ranked No. 2 of all Hong Kong films released in the city in that year.79 Vulgaria plays reflexively on the idea of cheesiness and vulgarity, presenting a clever sarcasm of the context of the endangered Hong Kong film industry amid the rise of the mainland Chinese film industry through the unexpected success story of a Hong Kong film producer To (played by Chapman To). Film scholar Vivian P.Y. Lee opines that, ‘Given its explicit linguistic and graphic display of vulgarity […] the film amounts to a declaration of “independence” from the China market’.80 Above all, Vulgaria stands out by its witty use of the Cantonese language with the directorial intent to defend Cantonese’s sociocultural status. As Edmond Pang mentions in a media interview, this film is ‘for Hong Kong people aimed at defending my mother tongue, Cantonese … Being brought up in [an] environment filled with Cantonese, I have a strong feeling towards

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this language and a desire to do something contributing to the preservation of Cantonese […] Obscene and foul language is the quintessence of Cantonese’ (the first ellipsis from the original).81 Some of the swear words uttered by the characters may refer to sex act; others make references to genitals. Many do not even have the corresponding ‘standard’ written form constituting parts of the subtitles in any language the film (DVD format) offers.82 The results apparently contribute to the full appreciation of the film, and its witty use of Hong Kong Cantonese foul language, only by a Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking audience based locally or elsewhere. At the same time, the swear words used may potentially turn away audiences of different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds, who, insofar as they understand the words, might find the film’s use of them overly offensive. Alternatively, non-Hong Kong Cantonese speakers might not get the gist and motivation behind the use of such language, and thus be excluded from the enclave of Hong Kong Cantonese speakers/writers/readers in the Sinophone world. Case 3: Anglicizing the Sinitic—Last Exit to Kai Tak (2018) The Sinophone features highly heterogeneous and integrative characteristics, blending excellently with other languages and cultures when used locally by speakers/writers/readers. These characteristics are to be found not only in dialogues in fictional Hong Kong new indies of the 2010s but also in independently made, non-fiction Hong Kong documentaries of that time. The sociolinguistic practices of the main protagonists/interviewees in these documentaries are such that they often speak their minds in languages with which they feel most comfortable. Last Exit to Kai Tak presents such a case. This 2018 documentary was British director Matthew Torne’s second feature-length documentary about Hong Kong’s sociopolitical activism and activists, after his documentary debut Lessons in Dissent (released in 2014) (see the film’s narrative in Chapter 4 and its circulation in Chapter 6). But unlike the latter film, Last Exit to Kai Tak encountered difficulties in securing distribution. It had only a few screenings at non-mainstream film exhibition outlets in Hong Kong, such as the Hong Kong Arts Centre and the Screening Room at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity (budget and box-office data for this film are not publicly available).83 The documentary follows five Hong Kong pro-democracy activists (in alphabetical order of their surnames: Denise Ho, Derek Lam, Ed Lau,

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Joshua Wong and Wong Yeung-tat), probing intertwiningly into their lives and thinking in Hong Kong during the four years after the Umbrella Movement of 2014. Their interview clips are edited together without any specific chronological order, indicating the chaos of Hong Kong society, according to the film’s opening intertitle. The filmmaker plays the role of a silent observer, allowing the interviewees to speak their minds freely in front of the camera. Of the five activists, Ed Lau is the most interesting in terms of his sociolinguistic identities. When the five characters are presented at the beginning of the film, Ed Lau is the only one introduced through a voice-over-like background conversation, in English, between him and his mother, regarding his personality traits. Ed Lau expresses himself in excellent English (with a British accent) and in Hong Kong Cantonese. Born in Hong Kong, he grew up and studied in the UK. He switches effortlessly from English to Hong Kong Cantonese and back to English, in monologues and in conversations with his mother and friends.84 The fluidity of Ed Lau’s sociolinguistic practice is also reflected in his various identities: he was an entrepreneur-turned-activist, who later ran for district councillor in Hong Kong but lost the election. Different identities in the same person may conflict. The filmmaker visually juxtaposes episodes of Ed Lau talking in English with his mother (who is in her sickbed; she is proud of him but also worried about his headstrong participation in local Hong Kong politics) with several enthusiastic episodes of Ed Lau standing at the forefront of political campaigns. For example, when telling why he became involved in local politics, he is shown working out alone in a gym; but in a voice-over monologue, mainly in Cantonese, he airs his grievances about the Umbrella Movement. His monologue also incorporates a few sentences in English, with extracts in Table 5.1. Evan Fowler, a newspaper commentator comments, ‘The story Torne documents […] is not that of a movement of people fighting for democracy as much as a people fighting to preserve their own distinct identity and way of life. It is not driven by hope but hopelessness’.85 In Ed Lau’s case, his bilingual ability and practice serve to represent on-screen his sociopolitical and Sinophone identities even before he explains his motives for engaging in local political campaigns, amid the pursuit of his private and professional struggles.

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Table 5.1 Extracts from Last Exit to Kai Tak (DVD format) Ed Lau’s voice-over monologue in Cantonese/English (original)

English subtitles from the film’s DVD Many people were very emotional during the Occupy Movement. So was I.

emotional, emotional

嗰陣時個 drive 係好深

The drive runs […] deep.

我話俾自己聽，我一定唔可以返屋企 […] 點解呀? 為咗身邊班戰友囉

I told myself that I couldn’t go home […] Why? [for] My Comrades.

Sure, 民主is a part of it, man!

Sure, democracy is a part of it, man!

去到更深層嘅一便就係 […] 我唔 […] 甘 心吖嘛 […]我同班戰友七十幾日喺金鐘, 乜都攞唔到, 點會甘心呀?

Deep down it was because I’d spent more than 70 days in Admiralty. How could I let it go when we hadn’t achieved anything?

Concluding Remarks I have explored in this chapter the specific use of language in 2010s new indies made in and/or about Hong Kong. On the one hand, the language these films feature vividly displays Cantonese as the common denominator of most contemporary Hong Kong films. On the other hand, the indie filmmakers’ flexible use of the language in their films (both fiction and non-fiction) suggests to the authorities that they would not compromise on the sociocultural and linguistic value of their mother tongue, which speaks more than just their minds in their films. The language also showcases their senses of continuing existence either in the Chinese diaspora or the Hong Kong diaspora in situ. But as shown in the three film case studies, especially Vulgaria, the Sinophone qualities of the Hong Kong Cantonese speakers/writers/readers can easily isolate these individuals/groups from those who do not fully understand the language and its deeper meanings. The next chapter will see how 2010s Hong Kong new indies managed to transcend their localness and reach out to kindred spirits internationally, via the experience of political documentaries travelling along international distribution and exhibition channels.

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Notes 1. Source: ‘CEPA’, the Trade and Industry Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 2. Gary Bettinson, ‘Yesterday Once More: Hong Kong–China Coproductions and the Myth of Mainlandization’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 14, no. 1 (2020): 16–31. 3. Source: ‘Promotional Materials’ under ‘CEPA’, the Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 4. Source: ‘Hong Kong—The Facts’, GovHK of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/facts. htm (accessed 19 December 2022). 5. Derek Elley, ‘Hong Kong Cinema Timeline: From “Duck” to Lee to Chan’, Variety, 15 May 2009, accessed 19 December 2022, http://var iety.com/2009/film/news/hong-kong-cinema-timeline-1118003687. 6. While the traditional Chinese script system remains the major one used in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and by the older generations of diasporic Chinese communities, the simplified Chinese script system that was promoted by the Chinese Communist Party after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now used in mainland China and among Chinese communities in Malaysia and Singapore. 7. Grace L. K. Leung and Joseph M. Chan, ‘The Hong Kong Cinema and Its Overseas Market: A Historical Review, 1950–1995’, in Hong Kong Cinema Retrospective: Fifty Years of Electric Shadows, 21st Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1997), 143–51. 8. Source: ‘CEPA’, the Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 9. Liz Shackleton, ‘China Focus: Box Office—The Quotas Question’, Screen Daily, 1 June 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screen daily.com/china-focus-box-office-the-quotas-question/5117763.article; Rebecca Davis, ‘By the Numbers: Foreign Titles Squeezed in China Film Market’, Variety, 12 January 2022, accessed 19 December 2022, https://variety.com/2022/film/news/foreign-titles-squeezed-in-chinafilm-market-1235151950. 10. Joseph M. Chan, Anthony Y. H. Fung and Chun Hung Ng, Policies for the Sustainable Development of the Hong Kong Film Industry (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010), 72. 11. J. M. Chan, A. Y. H. Fung and C. H. Ng, Policies, 73. 12. Yuxing Zhou, ‘Pursuing Soft Power through Cinema: Censorship and Double Standards in Mainland China’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9,

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no. 3 (2015): 245; Ruby Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 225. Zhihong Gao, ‘Serving a Stir-Fry of Market, Culture and Politics—On Globalisation and Film Policy in Greater China’, Policy Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 429–30; J. M. Chan, A. Y. H. Fung and C. H. Ng, Policies, 29–30. Laikwan Pang, ‘The State against Ghosts: A Genealogy of China’s Film Censorship Policy’, Screen 52, no. 4 (2011): 461–76. Y. Zhou, ‘Pursuing Soft Power’, 243. Source: ‘CEPA’, the Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Anita Y. K. Poon, ‘Language Policy of Hong Kong: Its Impact on Language Education and Language Use in Post-handover Hong Kong’, Journal of Taiwan Normal University: Humanities & Social Sciences 49, no. 1 (2004): 53–74; Anita Y. K. Poon, ‘Language Use, and Language Policy and Planning in Hong Kong’, Current Issues in Language Planning 11, no. 1 (February 2010): 27. Sources: Basic Law, the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022); Hong Kong e-Legislation’s official website (English), https://www.elegislation.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Poon, ‘Language Use’, 53. See also: Robert Keith Johnson, ‘Language Policy and Planning in Hong Kong’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 14 (1993/1994): 177–99. Poon, ‘Language Use’, 7. Johnson, ‘Language Policy’, 178. Juliana Liu, ‘Cantonese v Mandarin: When Hong Kong Languages Get Political’, BBC News, 29 June 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-40406429. See also: SiuPong Cheng and Sze-Wing Tang, ‘Languagehood of Cantonese: A Renewed Front in an Old Debate’, Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 4, no. 3 (2014): 389–98. S.-P. Cheng and Tang, ‘Languagehood of Cantonese’, 395. Andrew D. Wong, ‘Chineseness and Cantonese Tones in Post-1997 Hong Kong’, Language & Communication 76 (2021): 62. Source: ‘Official Languages Division’ under ‘Organisation’, the Civil Service Bureau of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.csb.gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). Poon, ‘Language Policy’, 60. Shu-mei Shih, ‘Against Diaspora: The Sinophone as Places of Cultural Production’, in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Shu-mei Shih,

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Chien-hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 26. Source: The Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk/english/cepa/ legaltext/files/sa10_annex_e.pdf (accessed 19 December 2022). Source: The Trade and Industry Department of the HKSAR government’s official website (English), https://www.tid.gov.hk/english/aboutus/faq/ files/faq_audiovisual.pdf (accessed 19 December 2022). Y. Zhou, ‘Pursuing Soft Power’, 239. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004); Chua Beng Huat, Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012). R. Cheung, New Hong Kong Cinema, 14–22. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 10. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 46. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 289–92. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 275, 290. Victor Mair, ‘What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms’, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 29 (September 1991): 1–31; S.-P. Cheng and Tang, ‘Languagehood of Cantonese’, 389–98. See also: Laikwan Pang, ‘Hong Kong Cinema as a Dialect Cinema?’, Cinema Journal 49, no. 3 (2010): 140–43. Mair, ‘What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”?’, 3. Mair, ‘What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”?’, 2. Mair, ‘What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”?’, 13. S.-P. Cheng and Tang, ‘Languagehood of Cantonese’, 390. See also: A. D. Wong, ‘Chineseness and Cantonese Tones’, 59; Shu-mei Shih, ‘Introduction: What Is Sinophone Studies?’, in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 1–16. Mair, ‘What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”?’, 6–7. Mair, ‘What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”?’, 7. A. D. Wong, ‘Chineseness and Cantonese Tones’, 58. A. D. Wong, ‘Chineseness and Cantonese Tones’, 61, note 2. S.-P. Cheng and Tang, ‘Languagehood of Cantonese’, 390. Source: ‘Main Data of the Seventh National Population Census News Release’, National Bureau of Statistics of China, 11 May 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202 105/t20210510_1817185.html.

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49. Source: ‘Ethnic Groups in China’, the State Council of the PRC, 26 August 2014, accessed 19 December 2022, http://english.www.gov.cn/ archive/china_abc/2014/08/27/content_281474983873388.htm. 50. Shih, ‘Introduction’, 3. 51. Yuxiang Wang and JoAnn Phillion, ‘Minority Language Policy and Practice in China: The Need for Multicultural Education’, International Journal of Multicultural Education 11, no. 1 (2009): 2. 52. David Bradley, ‘Introduction: Language Policy and Language Endangerment in China’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language 173 (2005): 12. 53. Wang and Phillion, ‘Minority Language Policy’, 2–3; Gulbahar H. Beckett and Gerard A. Postiglione, ‘China’s Language Policy for Indigenous and Minority Education’, in China’s Assimilationist Language Policy: The Impact on Indigenous/Minority Literacy and Social Harmony, ed. Gulbahar H. Beckett and Gerard A. Postiglione (New York: Routledge, 2012), 5; Minglang Zhou, ‘Historical Review of the PRC’s Minority/Indigenous Language Policy and Practice’, in China’s Assimilationist Language Policy: The Impact on Indigenous/Minority Literacy and Social Harmony, ed. Gulbahar H. Beckett and Gerard A. Postiglione (New York: Routledge, 2012), 18. 54. Alex Lo, ‘Why Cantonese Is a Real Language in Hong Kong’, South China Morning Post, 25 June 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1420098/ why-cantonese-real-language-hong-kong; Ben Sin, ‘Is Cantonese in Danger? Hongkongers Take Steps to Protect their Heritage’, South China Morning Post, 25 June 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// www.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/1450856/cantonese-dangerhongkongers-take-steps-protect-their-heritage?module=perpetual_scroll_ 0&pgtype=article&campaign=1450856; A. D. Wong, ‘Chineseness and Cantonese Tones’, 59, 65. 55. Charlotte Chang, ‘HK20: Hong Kong’s Language and Culture Is Endangered by a Purely Political Concept of Chinese Identity’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hon gkongfp.com/2017/07/04/hk20-hong-kongs-language-culture-endang ered-purely-political-concept-chinese-identity. 56. Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007); Shu-mei Shih, ‘Theory, Asia and the Sinophone’, Postcolonial Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 465–84; Shu-mei Shih, ‘The Concept of the Sinophone’, PMLA 126, no. 3 (May 2011): 709–18; Shih, ‘Against Diaspora’, 25–42; Shih, ‘Introduction’, 1–16. 57. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 4. 58. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 34.

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Shih, ‘Introduction’, 2–3. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 185. See also: Shih, ‘The Concept’, 713–14. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 5; Shih, ‘Introduction’, 7. Shih, ‘Introduction’, 10. Shih, ‘Introduction’, 11. Shih, ‘Introduction’, 7–8. Shih, ‘The Concept’, 710. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 30–31. Chien-hsin Tsai, ‘Issues and Controversies’, in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 20. Tsai, ‘Issues and Controversies’, 24. Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 307. Shih, ‘Against Diaspora’, 26. Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo, ‘Framing Sinophone Cinemas’, in Sinophone Cinemas, ed. Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 4. Ien Ang, ‘Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm’, boundary 2 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 223–42; Allen Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (New York: State University of New York Press, 2017), 103–23. Shih, ‘Against Diaspora’, 30. Shih, ‘Introduction’, 8. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 5. The Lady Miz Diva, ‘Vulgaria: Pang Ho-cheung’, The Diva Review.com, 29 June 2012, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.thedivareview. com/Vulgaria_Pang_Ho-Cheung_Exclusive_Interview.htm. Victor Fan, ‘Cinema of Reindividuation and Cultural Extraterritoriality: “Chinese” Dialect Cinemas and Regional Politics’, in The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic Difference, ed. Tijana Mamula and Lisa Patti (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 255. Deborah Young, ‘Vulgaria: Filmart Review’, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 March 2012, accessed 19 December 2022, http://www.hollywoodrep orter.com/review/vulgaria-filmart-review-303332. Liz Shackleton, ‘Hong Kong’s Box Office Grows by 12%’, Screen Daily, 21 January 2013, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily. com/hong-kongs-box-office-grows-by-12/5050844.article. Vivian P. Y. Lee, ‘Relocalising Hong Kong Cinema’, Wasafiri 32, no. 3 (September 2017): 67. Dean Napolitano, ‘“Vulgaria” Defends Local Culture’, The Wall Street Journal, 10 September 2012, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www. wsj.com/articles/BL-SJB-10042.

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82. Gilbert C. F. Fong, ‘The Two Worlds of Subtitling: The Case of Vulgarisms and Sexually-Oriented Language’, in Dubbing and Subtitling in a World Context, ed. Gilbert C. F. Fong and Kenneth K. L. Au (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2009), 45–46. 83. Cheng Chau-ling, ‘British Director Making Last Exit to Kai Tak Four Years after the Umbrella Movement: Go or Stay?’ (in traditional Chinese), HK01, 28 September 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hk01.com/社會新聞/238878/英國導演拍港紀錄片分域大道-雨傘運動後四年糾結-去或留. 84. Evan Fowler, ‘Matthew Torne’s “Last Exit to Kai Tak” Captures the Underlying Betrayal of Hong Kong by its Political System’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongko ngfp.com/2018/10/20/matthew-tornes-last-exit-kai-tak-captures-underl ying-betrayal-hong-kong-political-system; Wong Fei-bei, ‘Interview with Matthew Torne’ (in traditional Chinese), Passion Times, 30 September 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.passiontimes.hk/art icle/09-30-2018/48398. 85. Fowler, ‘Matthew Torne’.

CHAPTER 6

Distribution and Exhibition

Chapter Introduction Ten Years (Jevons Au/Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai]/Kwok Zune/Ng Ka-leung/Wong Fei-pang, Hong Kong, 2015) is more than just a film. It was one of the most visible exemplifications of the qualities that the so-called mainstream segment of 2010s Hong Kong film industry lacked: youth, courage, fearlessness, agility, perseverance, a forward-looking attitude, etc., evident in all of its stages of production, distribution and exhibition. When the film was released, it signified a kind of empowerment—not yet identified but burgeoning—coming from uncharted interstices of the attenuated local film industry. Such was a much-needed empowerment if the industry was to reinvent itself. I would go further to contend that the film was one of the first most recognizable instances of the scattered efforts of those 2010s indie filmmakers in Hong Kong who, from where they were positioned within the larger film industry, sought to do something to counteract the entrenched workings and perception of contemporary Hong Kong cinema (see Ten Years ’s collective filmmaking in Chapter 3 and its subject matter in Chapter 4). Ten Years has been controversial ever since its pre-production stage, not only by its minimal budget of about HK$0.5 million (£54,000 or US$64,000), shared by five short films carrying politicized narratives, but also, and perhaps more importantly, by its representation of Hongkongers’ firm belief in themselves at a tumultuous time of recent © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4_6

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Hong Kong history.1 In addition, all five directors were relatively new to the local film industry. They were trying to find their way around when the industry had been ‘mainstreamized’ for quite some time (see Chapter 2). Golden Scene took up the task of distributing the film locally and internationally, enabling its secure screenings via the mainstream local cinema network from 17 December 2015 to 16 February 2016.2 However, its local theatrical release period was cut short, even though it was earning more than ten times its budget at the box office: the handsome sum of HK$6 million (£0.6 million or US$0.8 million).3 The shortening of its release period was allegedly due to the mainstream exhibitors’ fear of screening this highly politicized film and thereby upsetting the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s authorities, as well as to the exhibitors’ supposed self-censorship subsequently.4 Needless to say, this decision on the part of the exhibitors went against the logic of capitalist market competition, while the evidence of their self-censorship never materialized. In any case, the filmmakers of Ten Years turned this crisis into an opportunity—the film began to be shown (in many cases, free of charge) via more than 150 local and overseas non-mainstream exhibition outlets, such as film festivals, community centres, university campuses, as well as at open air screenings in parks, etc.5 It was shown on 1 April 2016 simultaneously at around forty such non-mainstream outlets across Hong Kong. The film’s popularity later gained it contracts that made it available on online platforms, e.g., Google Play and iTunes. The above had likely contextualized the short but forceful speech made by Derek Yee (aka Yee Tung-sing), Chairman of the Hong Kong Film Awards Association, on 3 April 2016, right before he presented the Best Picture Award to Ten Years at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards presentation ceremony, an event held at the iconic Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Yee said in Cantonese: When we drafted the script for tonight’s award scriptwriter came to ask me if we could have the two our script. And I told him … Young man, President ‘The only thing we have to fear is ... fear itself’. And Years.6 (my translation; ellipses from the original)

ceremony, a young words ‘Ten Years’ in Roosevelt once said: the winner is … Ten

News of Ten Years ’s award was forbidden to be publicly broadcast in the PRC. Moreover, there were mixed feelings from within the Hong Kong film industry about whether Ten Years should receive the prestigious

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award. The film eventually brought seismic effects to the workings of the industry. In particular, it gave contemporary Hong Kong filmmakers, especially indie film directors, the idea and inspiration to break through and transcend the constraints of the established local film distribution and exhibition networks.7 This chapter probes into the international circulation of 2010s Hong Kong new indies after their local release, through the experience of a specific genre—political documentaries. This genre is of interest to my discussion in that, under the 2010s sociopolitical climate in Hong Kong, it was particularly difficult for local mainstream film distributors and exhibitors to even consider facilitating the circulation of such films. Firstly, there would be political risks to bear for these distributors and exhibitors, especially after the experience of Ten Years . Secondly, these films would likely generate insignificant box-office earnings. Here, I trace the local and international dissemination of several independently made, Hong Kongrelated political documentaries. They include Lessons in Dissent (Matthew Torne, Hong Kong/UK, 2014), Yellowing (Chan Tze-woon, Hong Kong, 2016), and Vanished Archives (Connie Lo [aka Lo Yan-wai], Hong Kong, 2017). I argue that these films’ trajectories in Hong Kong and outside (across other parts of East/Southeast Asia, Europe, the USA, etc.) empowered them to become truly transnational, albeit often involuntarily. Some of the main circulation routes they went through were various kinds of film festivals, severely under-researched grassroots channels and online platforms. Overcoming considerable obstacles, these films succeeded in speaking to new generations of transnational and transcultural audiences of Hong Kong films.

The Dynamics of Alternativeness: Internationalization of Film Distribution and Exhibition via Film Festivals Among various kinds of offline, non-mainstream film dissemination (including distribution and exhibition) channels, the issues and phenomena related to film festivals across the world are likely to amount to one word: alternativeness. This opinion is formed usually in relation to mainstream film circulation channels—in particular, to cinemas in fixed locations with auditoriums usually equipped with sizeable screens. Such cinemas normally have fixed screening schedules almost daily over the

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whole year, replenished with a continuous supply of various kinds of films. The film prints are provided to them either by film distributors, film sales agents, or, sometimes, by individual small-scale independent filmmakers.8 Some of the cinemas with fixed locations and film programming are dedicated to specialized films and arthouse films. Others show a mix of different film genres to their local audiences. Cinemas may be standalone and run independently, or they may be run as parts of networks owned by cinema operators. Apart from providing a space for spectators to see their chosen films and for the films to reach their target audiences, most of the operators of established cinemas would mainly be concerned with making money, no matter how artistic and non-commercial the films in their programmes may be. Their operations would also involve other businesses, such as the sale of popcorn and sweets at the venues, and the development of film education campaigns for the audience. In the UK, some of the cinemas in question offer live broadcast of dance and music shows from elsewhere, e.g., the Royal National Theatre, as part of their regular programmes. If we see film festivals as specific places and spaces in which films may reach their target audiences and festivalgoers (including, but not limited to, cinephiles), even the biggest international film festivals with regular annual periods would indeed be film screening outlets alternative to ordinary cinemas, such as those in our neighbourhoods or in multiplexes. I therefore use the study of film festivals as an entry point for my investigation of the local and international circulation of political documentaries made in and about Hong Kong in the 2010s. I believe that an updated comprehension regarding film festivals, and what they represent nowadays in terms of the global film industries, will facilitate our better understanding, as well, of the dynamics of those much less studied, non-mainstream, unfixed and alternative film distribution and exhibition outlets, e.g., local community centres, open air parks and university campuses. The quick and ever-changing development of different film festivals would also pose challenges to existing academic studies of them (whether the festivals are big, small, local, regional or international in nature), simply because the studies would not be able to catch up with the fast pace of this development in the global film festival sector.9 In this section, I review academic discourses regarding the ‘international film festival circuit’, particularly underlining the issues of alternativeness of film festivals in general and of the international film festival circuit in particular. After discussing the characteristics of this circuit, I present an overview of

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the opinions of major scholars regarding film festivals that have evolved since the 1990s. I then add updates on academic studies devoted to film festivals before moving on, in the next section, to exploring the rise of political documentaries in 2010s Hong Kong and their dissemination. My view is that the quality of alternativeness could serve as a basis of possible empowerment for individual filmmakers, films and film genres from within, rather than from without, the established global film distribution and exhibition networks (broadly understood as, but not limited to, the Hollywood system). Such empowerment, nonetheless, would be generated if, and when, the alternativeness of film festivals (as well as of the whole circuit) is used strategically by these filmmakers, films and film genres as a tactic to gain necessary footholds amid the power dynamics found in the global film industries.10 The alternativeness of film festivals and the circuit as a whole could also create a much healthier ecology of global film distribution and exhibition. But I also believe that there is no absolute alternativeness. This is because, if juxtaposed with other even more alternative film distribution/exhibition opportunities (such as one-off film club or film archive screenings), film festivals would seem to be a relatively ‘mainstream’ way of circulating films nowadays. That is, depending on the targets under scrutiny, we will always find something even more alternative than the means already identified in the arena of global film distribution and exhibition. Essentials of the International Film Festival Circuit The term ‘international film festival circuit’ is now very often used in the global film industries and academic studies of film festivals in reference to a group of important film events—film festivals—that are usually held every year, in roughly the same calendar months, and have their fixed locations in highly touristy cities and local regions across the world. For example, the Cannes Film Festival is usually held in that city in the month of May. Such events are usually, but not exclusively, those most prominent film festivals in the West (particularly in Europe) that may or may not work together. They usually include the word ‘festival’ in their names, which serves as an important identification marker. According to the scholar of film festivals Marijke de Valck, who published the first booklength monograph on the topic in 2007, the circuit originated in Europe, born out of specific geopolitical situations immediately before and after World War II.11 The three oldest and biggest international film festivals

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of this kind, in chronological order of their years of founding (in parentheses), are Venice (1932), Cannes (1946) and Berlin (1951). The circuit has now become a global phenomenon, comprising hundreds, or even thousands, of film festivals being held regularly in almost every corner of the world.12 In recent years, more and more film festivals have started to be held partially online, especially since the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic; some festivals are conducted entirely online.13 Appreciated from a distance as a group of film-related events, the festivals appear to work together as a sort of conveyor belt or treadmill (hence, the term ‘circuit’),14 which facilitates the worldwide dissemination of usually newly released films on an ongoing basis (mostly annually), irrespective of the problems, disjointedness and interruptions actually found along the circuit.15 As film scholar Dina Iordanova noted in 2009: ‘most festivals are not in the business of film distribution, either mainstream or alternative. They are in the business of showing films’.16 Iordanova’s observation was indeed true in the context in which the film-showing section of the festivals was under exploration. However, if we also consider their other areas developed in more recent years, we can find that most festivals have included industry-facing units, such as film market components. Film markets may also be identified as these festivals’ sister events. They often run parallel to the film exhibition parts during, or very close in time to, the main festival periods. For instance, the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlin IFF) has the European Film Market (EFM) running at around the same time as its film-screening section but with a shorter duration. The EFM was launched as a component of the Berlin IFF in 1978.17 It was renamed the EFM in 1988. It is now one of the biggest film markets in the world. The Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) is closely associated with the Hong Kong International Film and TV Market (FILMART), which prides itself on being ‘Asia’s leading content marketplace’.18 The HKIFF is hosted by its mother company, the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society; the FILMART is organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. They are sister events, held under the Entertainment Expo Hong Kong since 2005.19 Film markets are where business negotiations, networking and exchange of ideas between film business executives, buyers, sales agents, filmmakers, financiers, etc., take place. They are not usually open to the public. The presence of these film markets (as well as other film industry-facing sections) to a great extent helps determine the size of

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their associated film festivals and the volume of foot traffic of festivalgoers, thereby also influencing the festivals’ overall attractiveness to their stakeholders. From the perspectives of film festival organizers, stakeholders include not only the festivalgoers who watch films at the festivals but also film business executives who conduct film business at the festivals’ affiliated film markets, as well as film journalists and critics (who may engage in promoting the festivals), local government officials, commercial sponsors, donors, etc.20 Other industry-facing units that major film festivals would have in their repertoires would include, among others, film financing and pitching forums, film co-production platforms, emerging film talent boot camps, and film funds awards. As noted by Iordanova in a more recent study, recent evolvement of the global film festival sector has rendered that ‘the film festival is no longer mainly an exhibition operation […] but becomes a participant in many other aspects of the creative cycle—such as production financing, networking, and distribution—and thus turns into a key player in the film industry, as well as society at large’.21 Alternativeness as Marginalization Although film festivals are now considered a major part of the global film industries, they are not always regarded as the latter’s mainstream components. In fact, no matter how prominent and commercially prone they are in the international circuit, festivals have been traditionally considered and discussed as an alternative to the well-established, tightly knit, and essentially globalized Hollywood film circulation network, which includes film distribution and exhibition. These discourses place the Hollywood system in a hegemonic mainstream position, and regard film festivals through the lens of their alternativeness, thus acknowledging their marginalization visà-vis the globalized Hollywood system. For example, Bill Nichols, one of the first-generation film scholars who studied film festivals, highlighted, in 1994, the alternativeness of the international film festival circuit. He believed that the circuit was where film festivalgoers (the Western ones) made ‘discoveries’ of film cultures other than their own, presumably from his Anglo-American stance.22 The discovered film culture that he highlighted was new Iranian cinema. Hollywood, in this instance, was deemed by Nichols as the ‘norm’ against which he reckoned the alternativeness of the international film festival circuit. Attending film festivals, to Nichols, would be an experience that did ‘not reaffirm or collapse readily into the

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prevailing codes of hegemonic Hollywood cinema’.23 Nichols’s perception of film festivals in 1994, which was extended from his experience of attending the Toronto International Film Festival where he saw the Iranian films under his study, was shared by influential film historian and theorist Thomas Elsaesser writing about film festivals in 2005. In Elsaesser’s opinion: […] the festival circuits hold the keys to all forms of cinema not bound into the global Hollywood network. But one can go further: the festival circuit is also a crucial interface with Hollywood itself, because taken together, the festivals constitute (like Hollywood) a global platform, but one which (unlike Hollywood) is at one and the same time a ‘marketplace’ (though perhaps more like bazaar than a stock exchange), a cultural showcase (comparable to music or theatre festivals), a ‘competitive venue’ (like the Olympic Games), and a world body (an ad-hoc United Nations, a parliament of national cinemas, or cinematic NGO’s, considering some of the various festivals’ political agendas). […] It explains why this originally European phenomenon has globalized itself, and in the process has created not only a self-sustaining, highly self-referential world for the art cinema, the independent cinema and the documentary film, but a sort of ‘alternative’ to the Hollywood studio system in its post-Fordist phase.24 (my emphasis in italics)

While Nichols wrote from a festivalgoer/spectator’s viewpoint, Elsaesser gave an overview of what film festivals meant to the global film industries. Both, nonetheless, highlighted the international film festival circuit as being an alternative option for films that would not make it into the Hollywood system. Extended from their ideas, the omnipresence of the Hollywood system was what had marginalized the international film festival circuit, fixing it in an ‘alternative’ position in the global film circulation network. Both Nichols and Elsaesser, however, did not add nuance to the alternativeness of the circuit, and did not discuss whether there was just one circuit or there were many different sub-circuits, parallel circuits, quasicircuits, etc., supplementary to the main one. Some of these non-main circuits have been identified in academic studies more recently.25 The alternative situation along the circuit is also far from simple. Films that can only be shown within the film festival environment and can never really obtain general theatrical release are conventionally called ‘festival

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films’. This is in fact a derogatory label. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, for example, uses this label to refer to films that are ‘destined to be seen by professionals, specialists, or cultists but not by the general public because some of these professionals decide it won’t or can’t be sufficiently profitable to warrant distribution’.26 Marginalization may also occur in terms of how film journalists comment on festival films: for various reasons, different films may get different publicity opportunities. By way of illustration, film scholar Julian Stringer writes about Sight & Sound critics missing the screening of a Japanese film at the Venice International Film Festival in 1957.27 The film was subsequently never introduced to the readers when the magazine was trying to present the newly discovered Japanese cinema. In this instance, the missing film was doubly marginalized—first, by participating in one of the biggest festivals of the ‘alternative’ circuit; and second, by being omitted in the relevant publicity (in the West). Furthermore, what is not discussed in these scholarly studies is the co-dependence, or even interdependence, between the international film festival circuit, the Hollywood system and some other possible types of globalized film circulation networks. Alternativeness as Empowerment The more recent development of the global film festival sector gives evidence that allows us to dispute the ‘alternativeness’ of the international film festival circuit and/or individual film festivals, showing instead its empowerment and capability to shape the global film business, while also lending the issues of alternativeness greater complexity. Academic studies have followed suit in making sense of relevant phenomena and issues. For instance, several volumes of the field-defining Film Festival Yearbook series are concerned with the importance of festivals for global film cultures, while informing the topic with various angles of geopolitical and politic-economic considerations regarding different parts of the world.28 Another example comes from media scholar Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong’s monograph on film festivals, which starts the discussion with an emphasis on the festivals being ‘glittering showcases for films and people’ and the fact that ‘[f]ilm festivals deal with business, from production to distribution’.29 Many of these newer academic studies are based on empirical evidence as to what has been going on in the global film festival landscape. In fact, abundant individual cases display what stakeholders of film festivals

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have continuously reinterpreted and reaped from the alternativeness of the global film festival sector, including opportunities for financial benefits, extra and free publicity, and other positive outcomes. Instead of representing marginalization, alternativeness thus helps empower those relevant film festival stakeholders who play their cards right. I find the following three recent examples particularly interesting and, indeed, quite representative in their separate but similar situations. The first example is related to Hollywood films. A widely known phenomenon is that many Hollywood filmmakers have worked with major film festivals, using them as premiere or pre-theatrical release screening platforms for their new films—understandably, for publicity purposes.30 Alternativeness in these cases is related not to marginalization, but to exclusiveness and glamour. Steven Spielberg’s case thus makes sense here. He premiered his Hollywood feature film The BFG (USA, 2016) in the ‘Out of Competition’ section at the Cannes Film Festival on 4 May 2016, just before the film’s global theatrical release, much of which was completed by 1 July 2016.31 The second example represents those highly popular, independent films. In being launched at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin IFF, before travelling along the international film festival circuit for more than a year, the independent feature film Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, Brazil/France/Italy/USA, 2017), which has a gay-related theme and was made on a small budget of only US$3.4 million (£2.9 million), became a major box-office success worldwide during its mainstream theatrical release.32 It garnered box-office takings of US$43.1 million (£36.2 million) worldwide.33 The film’s distributor was Sony Pictures Classics, which, before the film’s Sundance premiere, signed a distribution deal with the filmmakers to handle part of the film’s worldwide distribution.34 The third instance, also from Cannes, was the festival’s granting a one-off ‘confidential’ screening for the world premiere (16 July 2022) of the banned Hong Kong political documentary Revolutions of Our Times (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2021), accompanied with a last-minute announcement by the festival.35 Although banned in Hong Kong in the post-National Security Law era,36 the film has since travelled to different countries via different film festivals, and on privately organized grassroots screening and online platforms. In March 2022, the controversial film enjoyed box-office success at its theatrical release in Taiwan, the first territory where the film was given a general public

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release, and won the Best Documentary Award there on 27 November 2021 at the 58th Golden Horse Awards ceremony.37 All these examples show that the international film festival circuit is far from just a platform for the world circulation of non-mainstream films, alternative to the Hollywood system. While The BFG and Call Me by Your Name utilized the circuit as a launching pad for mainstream theatrical releases, Revolutions of Our Times took advantage of Cannes’s political agenda of helping politically persecuted filmmakers from various parts of the world to reach their worldwide audiences.38 The (perceived) alternativeness of the international film festival circuit thus became a source—financial and reputational—of enablement for these films and their filmmakers. Their cases also immediately cast doubt on the once ‘alternative’ world distribution and exhibition platforms offered by film festivals. For The BFG and Call Me by Your Name, the international film festival circuit worked hand in hand with the Hollywood system to build fame and box-office records. Revolutions of Our Times, on the other hand, managed to transcend the confines of the circuit, even though the film was fraught with box-office uncertainties as well as political risks for its distributors and exhibitors. It would be a ‘festival film’ in Rosenbaum’s sense. Moreover, being such does not automatically mean that the film would be stuck forever in the international film festival circuit. Film scholar Russ Hunter notes in a recent study that, from the perspective of festival insiders, quality festival films are those whose continuity of supply would determine the sustainability of individual major film festivals.39 Their presence at major, A-list film festivals is then a good sign of the festivals’ sustainability. In the specific case of genre film festivals (those focusing on horror, sci-fi and fantasy film genres), the films circulating there are likely to have onward distribution and exhibition in different formats (e.g., DVD) and on different platforms, beyond mainstream theatrical release that many of these films do not seek.40

The Post-2014 Hong Kong Political Documentaries and Their Circulation Film festivals are one of those non-mainstream film circulation platforms where mainstream and non-mainstream films find their worldwide audiences, and interested audiences find their favourite films. However, it is also a well-known fact that fierce competition happens between films for entry into festivals, especially the biggest and most famous A-list ones.

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Many films do not stand a chance of being shown to their target audiences at any film festivals at all. Some may rely on more alternative channels of distribution and exhibition, e.g., unsystematic, elusive grassroots and locally based community screenings; school and university campus screenings; individual-to-individual circulation among members of the same diasporas, and so on. In the case of many Hong Kong new indies made in the second half of the 2010s, especially documentaries about and/or inspired by major sociopolitical incidents in the city, the chances they had of being shown to the public are very difficult to gauge. A main reason for this is that there is no official record of how many such films were made (and are still in the making). Given the subsequent dramatic changes on the political scene in Hong Kong since 2019, crew members of Hong Kong political documentaries have had to bear insurmountable political and financial difficulties in producing, distributing and exhibiting such films.41 In this section, I first take a brief look at the rise of these political documentaries and their possible lineage. I then investigate the circulation (including distribution and exhibition) for three of these documentaries. Their filmmakers’ willingness to readjust flexibly and continuously the circulation methods for the films enabled the films to become truly international, albeit often involuntarily, when they could not be shown easily to their homegrown audience in Hong Kong. The Rise of Post-2014 Hong Kong Political Documentaries Since approximately 2014, there has been a sudden increase in the number of Hong Kong documentaries drawing international attention.42 Many of them are politically oriented, emphasizing the sociopolitical issues of the city. They belong to a tradition of Hong Kong documentary filmmaking, which according to film scholar Ian Aitken, is ‘under-researched and often forgotten film-making’.43 The author traces such filmmaking practice back to the 1890s, which makes documentary an older film form in Hong Kong than its commercial narrative counterpart (the first narrative film is believed to be Stealing a Roast Duck [Liang Shao-bo, Hong Kong, 1909]). The earliest Hong Kong documentaries were shot in 1898 by a studio photographer, James H. White, who worked for Edison Company, an American enterprise.44 Since then, the documentaries made in Hong Kong for general theatrical release have taken on different forms, and included films not made for profit alone. Hong Kong documentaries made from the end of World War II to

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around the early 1970s could be grouped in different categories.45 They ranged from colonial films serving the governance purposes of the British colonial government, or ostensibly ‘picturesque’ documentaries made by pro-Chinese Communist companies, to those about local film stars and celebrities, the effect of which was to consolidate Hong Kong Chinese culture. The diminishing number of Hong Kong-related documentaries from the 1970s to roughly the early 1990s coincided with the blossoming of the commercial segment of the Hong Kong film industry, which was saturated with fiction films. The documentaries made at that time and enjoying local theatrical release were mostly produced for financial profit. Among them were films catering to the local audience’s taste for exoticism, e.g., The Supernormal (Lo Ting-kit, Hong Kong, 1992). A few co-produced documentaries (e.g., Shocking Asia [Rolf Olsen, Hong Kong/West Germany, 1974]), made with voice-over in Hong Kong Cantonese for local release, introduced exotic practices from other parts of the world. Simultaneously, local commercial TV stations (Television Broadcasts Limited [TVB] and Asia Television Limited [ATV]) and the public broadcaster (Radio Television Hong Kong [RTHK]) began turning out documentaries as part of their current affairs programmes. Many television documentaries were only about thirty minutes to one hour long, which allowed the TV stations to fit them into their programme schedules. Some of these television documentaries were made ad hoc; others were parts of established series, including a few that are still being produced and broadcast regularly. For example, the longrunning documentary series Hong Kong Connection (RTHK), devoted to current affairs with high news value, has been running since March 1978.46 In terms of how they treated news materials, the television documentaries dealing with the latest current affairs aimed to inform their audience through reporting in greater depth than regular news broadcasts could attain. Arguably, they served as major forerunners of the political documentaries made in Hong Kong in the 2010s. However, much like the ongoing debates about how to define independent cinema and what counts as its elements, political documentaries also generate different opinions among documentarians, scholars and critics, as to what this specific genre may include. At one end of the spectrum, communication scholars Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee open their edited volume on the political documentaries that helped shape the 2004 US presidential campaign with a statement of their views on the

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nature of documentaries. They believe that, ‘Documentaries have always held the power to influence public opinion, and historians and critics of documentary have always emphasized its social and political functions’.47 The political documentaries that the two editors are concerned with are those that carry partisan and sociopolitical messages. These films have specific political stances, agendas and missions; they rarely cover viewpoints from the opposing camps.48 Many such political documentaries were independently made.49 At the other end of the spectrum, the online entertainment news outlet IndieWire covers a forum on political documentaries made at around the same time in the USA. Pamela Yates, winner of an Academy Award for documentary filmmaking, is quoted in this report as saying that, ‘When I’m describing political documentaries, I’m talking about films that are engaged with the politics or policies of a government or institution or groups in a society. The films are often critical, always questioning, sometimes explaining, often bringing a hidden reality to the fore’.50 These two opinions, the former being specific and the latter coming from a more general angle, express some of the main elements of what political documentaries in the contemporary era tend to entail. However, these views are by no means definitive. Applying these opinions to the cases in Hong Kong, I see that many of these qualities in US political documentaries can be found among documentaries made in the city, especially those from the second half of the 2010s. I would therefore regard these Hong Kong-related documentaries as ‘Hong Kong political documentaries’. Many of these locally oriented political documentaries were inspired by a series of major sociopolitical events occurring in Hong Kong since the late 2000s, the two major ones being the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in 2019.51 Although some of those engaged in shooting political documentaries were established filmmakers, notably, Evans Chan (Raise the Umbrellas [Hong Kong, 2016]), and Kong Kingchu and Kwok Tak-chun (Almost a Revolution [Hong Kong, 2015]), many were debut documentarians coming from the young generation of Hongkongers (in their twenties and thirties). They were also active participants in the respective sociopolitical movements. Incidentally, it is intriguing that some of these documentaries do not carry the names of individual filmmakers, but are noted as made by groups of filmmakers who conceal their identities under collective names, e.g., the directors of Inside the Red Brick Wall (Hong Kong, 2020) and Taking Back the Legislature

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(Hong Kong, 2020) are credited as ‘Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers’. These two films portray episodes of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement and related protests in 2019. They include a large amount of footage presenting the protesters’ viewpoints. The collective names are most likely used to avoid possible political persecution by the authorities in the post-National Security Law period. Unlike their fictional counterparts made in the same period and inspired by these two sociopolitical movements (see Chapter 4), most of the widely known post-2014 Hong Kong political documentaries convey very clear anti-establishment and pro-democracy stances. These standpoints come through in the ways filmmakers select and edit in their films the materials originating from many hours of raw footage, some of which is in a first-person perspective. Naturally, the aesthetic qualities of the films vary considerably. The productions and post-productions of these documentaries took advantage of the latest digital technologies, which allowed professional and amateur documentarians alike to make their films cheaply. This was especially important for filmmakers working with tiny budgets. But unlike their 2004 US counterparts, in some cases it took these Hong Kong filmmakers several years to complete their films, due to insufficient budgets and/or the long time it took them to collect and edit useful materials and hundreds of hours of raw footage before the films’ final cut. Although the Hong Kong political documentaries made in this period come in various lengths and range from shorts to feature-length films, the best-known ones, enjoying better public release opportunities, are usually of feature length. They rarely run for less than ninety minutes and are typically more than two hours long. For instance,52 Almost a Revolution runs for 174 minutes, Raise the Umbrellas for 119 minutes, and Yellowing (Chan Tze-woon, Hong Kong, 2016) for 129 minutes. Lost in the Fumes (Nora Lam, Hong Kong, 2017) is ninety-seven minutes long, and Umbrella Diaries: The First Umbrella (James Leong, Hong Kong, 2018), 120 minutes. Writing on Hong Kong political documentaries made for, and related to, the Umbrella Movement, cultural theorist Pang Laikwan appreciates their value as important historical records of the unfolding events, however diverse, incomplete and unorganized the initial filming efforts may have been.53 Pang Laikwan notices that not all of these films express opposition to the hegemony.54 Many were shot for the purposes of recording, not forgetting and not being forgotten, containing the

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personal reflections of the filmmakers participating in these sociopolitical movements.55 Some were not intended for any specific target audience. Apart from being important, grassroots historical audio-visual records, some of the post-2014 political documentaries worked like alternative, investigative journalistic reports, which present different angles in the same films. They contextualize the issues in question by combining mainstream news footage with additional dimensions of the sociopolitical events. Some filmmakers would, for instance, incorporate clips of indepth personal interviews they conducted with politicians and activists, or footage from anonymous grassroots sources, analyses by professional commentators, etc. Acting as alternative journalistic reports, these films thus tried to counterbalance the messages conveyed by the authorities and pro-establishment camps through mainstream, pro-establishment, progovernment TV/radio/print/online news broadcasts and reports. After a series of government crackdowns on local, Chinese-language, prodemocracy mass media outlets under the ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ (passed on 30 June 2020),56 many Hong Kong political documentaries have effectively provided visuals and voices that are stifled in the mainstream media, and/or are deemed subversive and dissident by the authorities. But unlike traditional journalistic reports, which are expected to display a high degree of impartiality, these political documentaries explicitly present in the films the political stances of filmmakers, as mentioned above.57 Still, it is one thing for filmmakers to record history in their films, but quite another to create films as purely personal collectibles, not intended to be shown publicly. Films that remain unscreened to any audience would not be able to perform their historical and journalistic missions, by engaging with others (in the present and the future) in making sense of these sociopolitical events, and of the contexts and people’s participation in those events.58 Hence, it is imperative to study how these documentaries have been circulated. For this purpose, I conduct three case studies: Lessons in Dissent (2014), Yellowing (2016) and Vanished Archives (2017). None of these films is on the official records that the Create Hong Kong of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government publishes through its official website, even though all three documentaries fulfil the criteria (endorsed by the local government) of a ‘Hong Kong movie’ (see Chapter 2). The first two cases, in particular, were publicly shown in the city’s commercial venues and generated a lot of public attention both locally and overseas. Their absence

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from official records would likely raise many questions regarding the support provided by the HKSAR government for local filmmakers and filmmaking. Case 1: Lessons in Dissent (2014) Although Lessons in Dissent presents a local sociopolitical event that occurred before the Umbrella Movement, its public release in 2014 somehow coincided with Hongkongers’ ongoing frustration with their political future, and their deep concern about whether they would eventually be allowed to choose their own government leader by universal suffrage. News about the film was widely reported by local newspapers, especially among the Chinese-language pro-democracy ones. Such publicity largely contributed to its local theatrical release, enabling the film to attract a huge local audience and, subsequently, many more international audiences. This political documentary thus set an example (before Ten Years in 2015), indicating that mainstream distribution and exhibition networks were not the only route Hong Kong new indies could use to reach their target audiences. With a Cantonese Chinese film title (未夠秤) meaning ‘underage’, and using Cantonese as the main language in the film, Lessons in Dissent was not directed by Hongkongers of Chinese ancestry. It was the debut feature-length documentary of British filmmaker Matthew Torne, who had lived and studied in Hong Kong. The film was co-produced by Torne and Grace Wong. It features two Hong Kong teenaged activists, Joshua Wong (aged 15) and Ma Wan-ke (aka Ma Jai; aged 17). The filmmaker has been reported in the mass media as struggling with the film’s financing: apart from self-funding, the film was financed by various private sources, to an unknown total amount.59 It took Torne over eighteen months to shoot the film. Divided into seven sections by intertitles labelling each of the sections a ‘lesson’, the film introduces the background and daily lives of the two boys, and charts the sociopolitical activities in which they took part over the course of the filming. It culminates in the activists’ involvement in the anti-National Education campaign in Hong Kong in 2012. This grassroots sociopolitical campaign eventually led to the local government’s indefinite postponement of introducing the ‘Moral and National Education’ into the local school curriculum. But more importantly, the

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sociopolitical event in question paved the way for other similar displays of civil disobedience and activism in 2010s Hong Kong. According to Lessons in Dissent ’s official website, which has a section detailing its screenings, Torne chose to premiere his film at the HKIFF on 29 March 2014.60 Securing screenings at the HKIFF was a safe way for many non-mainstream Hong Kong films to reach their target audience, in case the films were not financially attractive enough to be facilitated public release by local mainstream distribution and exhibition networks. Torne later revealed that, with the help of Edko Films, a major film distributor in Hong Kong, Lessons in Dissent was able to secure local theatrical release later that year.61 Such release involved mainly two local commercial cinemas. The first one showing the film publicly was the Metroplex in the Kowloon Peninsula of Hong Kong, where the screening period was from 5 April 2014 to 31 May 2014. The second one was MCL Kornhill on Hong Kong Island of Hong Kong; the film’s public screening there was from 7 June 2014 to 22 June 2014. Thus, this documentary film succeeded in being exhibited, with tickets for public sale, in Hong Kong’s commercial exhibition network for a significant stretch of time. It is extremely rare for any documentary to occupy such an extended theatrical release period in the city, where cinemagoers prefer fiction dramas to non-fiction documentaries. However, even though the film’s subject matter was about Hong Kong, with Hongkongers as the main protagonists, and even when it had local commercial theatrical release, Lessons in Dissent is mysteriously missing on the local government’s records of Hong Kong films that were released in 2014.62 The film enjoyed another ten public screenings at the non-profit Hong Kong Arts Centre in the summer of 2014, before it was presented at one-off screenings at different privately organized special film events, university campuses, museums and film festivals in various countries and territories, including Australia, Austria, Canada, France, India, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, the UK and the USA. During the last quarter of 2014, when the film was being shown outside Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement broke out in the city. The timeliness of this sociopolitical event was regarded as a drive for the continuous interest in Lessons in Dissent among its international audiences.63 The last public screening, as recorded on the film’s official website, was in Vancouver, B.C. Canada, in October 2015. Later, Edko Films also helped market and distribute the film’s DVD format. The film has also been available as

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video-on-demand content through online service providers, e.g., Amazon Prime and Vimeo on-demand.64 Case 2: Yellowing (2016) Another post-2014 Hong Kong political documentary, Yellowing , was less lucky in finding commercial theatres in the city for its local public screening.65 However, as one of the main documentaries that bore audiovisual witness to episodes from the Umbrella Movement from the filmmaker’s first-person angle, Yellowing effectively transcended the confines of the geopolitical boundaries of Hong Kong and achieved a strong presence at film festivals in different countries. This kind of circulation has helped the film and its messages to remain afloat internationally. Yellowing was the first feature-length documentary directed and coproduced by new Hong Kong filmmaker, Chan Tze-woon. The film was made on an extremely small budget of HK$50,000 (£5,400 or US$6,400).66 It was jointly produced by Chan Tze-woon and Peter Yam. Ying E Chi acted as the film’s distributor for its theatrical and DVD release. Being an active participant himself in the Umbrella Movement, the director met with, and later followed with his camera, several ordinary fellow protestors. In the film, the progress of the seventy-nine-day Umbrella Movement is recorded across twenty sections, featuring the feeling and experience of these several protestors in this sociopolitical campaign as a kind of audio-visual diary (hence, the Chinese film title [亂 世備忘 / 乱世备忘], which literally means ‘memo of the troubled times’). Pang Laikwan comments: ‘[T]his feature-length documentary is as much a tribute to the Umbrella Movement as it is a self-reflection of the filmmaker’s own participation in it’.67 Chan Tze-woon had to work on 1,000 hours of raw footage before concluding the final cut version of the film.68 Yellowing premiered on 31 January 2016 at the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival.69 Initially, Hong Kong’s commercial theatres refused, for unknown reasons, to screen the film publicly.70 After staging more than twenty ‘guerrilla’ screenings at various rented venues, the film eventually secured several public screening slots in late August to early September in 2016 at the government-run Hong Kong Film Archive, with ticket sales open to the public.71 A commercial theatre, L Cinema on Hong Kong Island, finally agreed to screen the film in several time slots in November and December in 2016. Beyond local screenings, Yellowing was very welcome in the film festival world. It was shown at

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several major film festivals on different continents in 2016–17, such as the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (GHFFA) (Taiwan, 2016), the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (JIDFF) (the Czech Republic, 2016; for the film’s European premiere),72 the Vancouver International Film Festival (Vancouver IFF) (Canada, 2016), and the Singapore Chinese Film Festival (Singapore, 2017). Moreover, Yellowing was nominated for significant awards at four film festivals held in 2016, including the Best Documentary Award at the GHFFA, the Best World Documentary Award at the JIDFF, the South Award at the South Taiwan Film Festival, and the Chinese Documentary Award at the Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival.73 It won the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan in 2017.74 Despite these commercial and festival screenings (and with its participation at the 2016 Vancouver IFF sponsored by the government-run Film Development Fund in Hong Kong),75 Yellowing , like Lessons in Dissent , is bafflingly missing on the local government’s records of released Hong Kong films in 2016.76 Case 3: Vanished Archives (2017) Of the three case studies here, Vanished Archives is probably the least familiar outside Hong Kong, but its existence is known among the ethnic Chinese segment of Hong Kong emigrants now based in other countries and territories. One of the main reasons for this is that publicity for the film is mainly written in traditional Chinese on its official website and official Facebook page, which are its two major marketing channels.77 There are no entries for Vanished Archives in important English-language online film information databases, such as IMDb.com. Non-Chinese writers/readers may not be aware of the film’s existence, let alone its importance as a historical and political documentary. Hence, even when it has used non-mainstream distribution and exhibition methods of reaching target audiences, similar to those used by the above two films, Vanished Archives has inevitably created an exclusive arena of its own (see my concerns about similar exclusiveness of the Sinophone world in Chapter 5). Unlike the directors of the other two films, who were debut filmmakers of feature-length documentaries and new to the Hong Kong film industry (and entertainment industries more generally), Connie Lo, the

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director of Vanished Archives , is a veteran in the Hong Kong entertainment industries. She had worked for twenty years in the news and current affairs divisions of TVB, ATV and RTHK in Hong Kong, and Fairchild Television in Canada, before making the film. Later, about four years before the release of Vanished Archives , she founded the Studio of Public Humanities Limited, focused on recording history. Vanished Archives was a production of that studio. This documentary aims to reconstruct the missing records of the 1967 Hong Kong Riots: the film director found that official records of the riots in public archives in Hong Kong had disappeared.78 Only twenty-one seconds of relevant footage was found in the government-run Hong Kong Public Records. Information on the film’s budget and distributor is not readily available. There is, however, a good amount of information about the production team’s painstaking efforts on the film’s official website and official Facebook page, as well as in the film description on its DVD case. According to this information, it took the production team four years to collect and compile all the necessary materials from different historical archives (including retrieving de-classified archival materials from the UK), and from in-depth personal interviews, old newspaper reports, etc. Vanished Archives has the serious look and feel of a very long current affairs television programme, complete with voice-overs provided by a group of professionals (two of whom are veteran TV news anchor persons in Hong Kong).79 Vanished Archives was presumably distributed by Lo and her team at the Studio of Public Humanities Limited. Ongoing publicity, an important task of film distribution, has been provided mostly via the film’s official website and official Facebook page, where there is information available about the film’s circulation, activity updates and reviews. In addition, the promotion of Vanished Archives around the time of the film’s release benefited from the director’s essay contributions about the film and relevant historical events to the now defunct online Hong Kong Chinese-language newspaper Citizen News (the newspaper’s website and old news reports are still accessible at the time of writing).80 The additional constituents in these essays are complementary to the historical materials in the film. Instead of going for theatrical release in local commercial cinemas and participating in major local film festivals, Lo opted for less important (in film business terms) film festivals to present the documentary to the public. For example, the film premiered on 8 March 2017 at

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the I‧CARE Film Festival based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It enjoyed an international premiere at Taipei Film Festival in July 2017.81 Lo made use of other alternative exhibition outlets for the film’s local and international circulation, most of which targeted the ethnic Chinese community in Hong Kong and the ethnic Chinese segment of the Hong Kong diaspora based elsewhere. These included privately organized screenings at community centres and university campuses. To facilitate the screenings, Lo and her team organized a crowdfunding campaign from mid-March to mid-May in 2017, in order to raise funds for related activities, such as hiring venues. According to the available updates on the film’s publicity platforms, Vanished Archives was shown on more than sixty occasions during the first two months after the crowdfunding exercise.82 Additionally, via its website, the documentary is still open (at the time of writing) to donations and enquiries by external parties interested in organizing their own screenings of the film. Outside Hong Kong, the documentary has had community and university campus screenings in Canada, Taiwan, the USA, etc. The film is now also available in DVD format and on online platforms, e.g., iTunes.83

Concluding Remarks In this chapter I have investigated the patterns of local and international distribution and exhibition of Hong Kong new indies made in the 2010s. For this purpose, I have presented three case studies of political documentaries. These cases displayed the same kind of flexibility, courage and willingness to tread new paths of circulation that commercial blockbusters would not use. The films under study here demonstrated to their contemporaries that, as long as they carried important messages, they did not need mainstream(ized) distribution and exhibition networks to survive; for even alternative and grassroots screenings represented valuable opportunities for their engagement with local and international audiences. Although these films were circulated via alternative routes rather involuntarily, the documentaries under study here set up pioneering examples for Hong Kong cinema’s continuing sustainability in the future, especially in difficult times.

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Notes 1. Ten Years — Inside and Outside (in traditional Chinese), Ten Years ’s DVD Book (Hong Kong: Ten Years Studio, 2016), 5. 2. Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, Hong Kong Films Industry Data, 2015 (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, 2016), 19. 3. Tom Grundy, ‘Dystopian Box Office Hit Ten Years Wins “Best Film” at 2016 HK Film Awards, as News of Win is Censored in China’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp.com/2016/04/03/dystopian-box-office-hitten-years-wins-best-movie-at-2016-hong-kong-film-awards. 4. Nan-Hie In, ‘Q&A: “Ten Years” Filmmakers on Their Surprise Hit and Controversy’, Forbes, 28 April 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nanhiein/2016/04/28/ten-yearsfilmmakers-on-their-surprise-hit-and-controversy-qa; Ilaria Maria Sala, ‘Ten Years—The Terrifying Vision of Hong Kong That Beijing Wants Obscured’, The Guardian, 11 March 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/11/ ten-years-the-terrifying-vision-of-hong-kong-that-beijing-wants-obscured. 5. Karen Fang, ‘Cinema Censorship and Media Citizenship in the Hong Kong Film Ten Years ’, Surveillance & Society 16, no. 2 (2018): 149–51; Joanne Lee-Young, ‘Ten Years, a Film that Took Hong Kong by Storm’, Vancouver Sun, 7 October 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/local-arts/ ten-years-a-film-that-took-hong-kong-by-storm. 6. Kinling Lo and Agencies, ‘Backlash after “Emotional Win” for Ten Years’, The Standard, 5 April 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news/section/11/167 917/Backlash-after-‘emotional-win’-for-Ten-Years. 7. Ruby Cheung, ‘Ten Years : An Unexpected Watershed of TwentyFirst-Century Hong Kong Film Industry’, Frames Cinema Journal 15 (June 2019), https://framescinemajournal.com/article/ten-years-an-une xpected-watershed-of-twenty-first-century-hong-kong-film-industry. 8. Angus Finney, with Eugenio Triana, The International Film Business: A Market Guide beyond Hollywood, 2nd ed. (Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 111– 16. See also: ‘Film Distribution and Cinema Operators’, the UK Cinema Association’s official website, https://www.cinemauk.org.uk (accessed 19 December 2022). 9. Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne, ‘Introduction’, in Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies with College Gate Press, 2009), 1.

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10. Elsewhere I write about the alternativeness of the international film festival circuit in the context of a case study of Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, Brazil/France/Italy/USA, 2017). My examination here complements that discussion of relevant issues. See: Ruby Cheung, ‘Call Me by Your Name and Film Festivals’, in Call Me by Your Name: Perspectives on the Film, ed. Edward Lamberti and Michael Williams (Bristol: Intellect, forthcoming). 11. Marijke de Valck, Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 14–15. 12. Iordanova and Rhyne, ‘Introduction’, 1–2. 13. Tricia Jenkins, ‘Introduction’, in International Film Festivals: Contemporary Cultures and History beyond Venice and Cannes, ed. Tricia Jenkins (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018), 2. 14. Dina Iordanova, ‘The Film Festival Circuit’, in Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies with College Gate Press, 2009), 24, 32–35. 15. Iordanova, ‘The Film Festival Circuit’, 28–32. 16. Iordanova, ‘The Film Festival Circuit’, 25. 17. Source: ‘EFM, 1988–2018’, European Film Market’s official website https://www.efm-berlinale.de/en/about-efm/biographies. (English), html#! (accessed 19 December 2022). 18. Louis Chan and Charlotte Man, ‘Film Entertainment Industry in Hong Kong’, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 6 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/ MzExMjc4NDIz. 19. Ruby Cheung, ‘Corporatising a Film Festival: Hong Kong’, in Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies with College Gate Press, 2009), 103–4; Ruby Cheung, ‘“We Believe in ‘Film as Art’” An Interview with Li Cheuk-to, Artistic Director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF)’, in Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia, ed. Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2011), 201–3. 20. Ragan Rhyne, ‘Film Festival Circuits and Stakeholders’, in Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies with College Gate Press, 2009), 9–22; Alex Fischer, Sustainable Projections: Concepts in Film Festival Management (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2013), 5. 21. Dina Iordanova, ‘The Film Festival as an Industry Node’, Media Industries Journal 1, no. 3 (2015): 7. 22. Bill Nichols, ‘Discovering Form, Inferring Meaning: New Cinemas and the Film Festival Circuit’, Film Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1994): 16. 23. Nichols, ‘Discovering Form’, 18.

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24. Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 88. 25. Iordanova, ‘The Film Festival Circuit’, 28–32; Ruby Cheung, ‘East Asian Film Festivals: Film Markets’, in Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia, ed. Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2011), 54. 26. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See (Chicago: A Cappella, 2002), 161. 27. Julian Stringer, ‘Japan, 1951–1970: National Cinema as Cultural Currency’, in Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia, ed. Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2011), 66–67. 28. For example, Dina Iordanova with Ruby Cheung, eds., Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2010); Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung, eds., Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia (St Andrews: St Andrews Film Studies, 2011). 29. Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong, Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 1. 30. De Valck, Film Festivals, 15. 31. Source: ‘The BFG’, Cannes Film Festival’s official website (English), https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/festival/films/the-bfg (accessed 19 December 2022). See also: Tim Grierson, ‘“The BFG”: Cannes Review’, Screen Daily, 14 May 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www. screendaily.com/reviews/the-bfg-cannes-review/5103901.article. 32. Tom Grater, ‘Luca Guadagnino on the 10-year Journey behind “Call Me by Your Name”’, Screen Daily, 31 December 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/features/luca-guadag nino-on-the-10-year-journey-behind-call-me-by-your-name/5125216.art icle. 33. Sources: ‘Call Me by Your Name (2017)’, Box Office Mojo, https:// www.boxofficemojo.com (accessed 19 December 2022); ‘Release Info’ of Call Me by Your Name’s entry on IMDb.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 34. Ashley Lee, ‘Why Luca Guadagnino Didn’t Include Gay Actors or Explicit Sex Scenes in “Call Me by Your Name” (Q&A)’, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 February 2017, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www. hollywoodreporter.com/news/call-me-by-your-name-why-luca-guadag nino-left-gay-actors-explicit-sex-scenes-q-a-973256. See also: ‘Company Credits’ of Call Me by Your Name’s entry on IMDb.com (accessed 19 December 2022).

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35. Melanie Goodfellow, ‘Cannes Unveils “Surprise” Hong Kong Doc “Revolution of Our Times”’, Screen Daily, 15 July 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/news/cannes-unveils-sur prise-hong-kong-doc-revolution-of-our-times/5161647.article; Patrick Brzeski, ‘Cannes’ Bombshell Hong Kong Protest Doc Director Speaks out on Covering Pro-democracy Demonstrations, Risking Imprisonment’, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 July 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/directorshock-cannes-doc-revolution-of-our-times-talks-risking-imprisonment-totell-story-of-hong-kong-protests-1234986453. 36. See Chapter 1, note 120. 37. Liz Shackleton, ‘“The Falls”, “Revolution of Our Times” Take Top Prizes at Golden Horse Awards’, Screen Daily, 29 November 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/news/thefalls-revolution-of-our-times-take-top-prizes-at-golden-horse-awards/516 5545.article; Silvia Wong, ‘Controversial Hong Kong Doc “Revolution of Our Times” Opens Strong in Taiwan’, Screen Daily, 9 March 2022, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.screendaily.com/news/contro versial-hong-kong-doc-revolution-of-our-times-opens-strong-in-taiwan/ 5168452.article. 38. Patrick Brzeski and Alex Ritman, ‘Cannes Screens Bombshell Hong Kong Protest Doc as Late Addition to Official Program’, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 July 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hol lywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/cannes-2021-kong-protest-doc umentary-1234981760. 39. Russ Hunter, ‘Genre Film Festivals and Rethinking the Definition of “The Festival Film”’, in International Film Festivals: Contemporary Cultures and History beyond Venice and Cannes, ed. Tricia Jenkins (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018), 93. 40. Hunter, ‘Genre Film Festivals’, 95, 101–2. 41. Rachel Wong, ‘Hong Kong Gov’t Orders Film Distributor to Include Official Warnings in Documentaries about Protests’, Hong Kong Free Press, 23 September 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongko ngfp.com/2020/09/22/hong-kong-govt-orders-film-distributor-to-inc lude-official-warnings-in-documentaries-about-protests; Vivienne Chow and Patrick Frater, ‘Pro-democracy Film “Red Brick Wall” Pulled from Hong Kong Release’, Variety, 15 March 2021, accessed 19 December https://variety.com/2021/film/asia/pro-democracy-film-red2022, brick-wall-pulled-hong-kong-cinema-1234930715; Brzeski, ‘Cannes’ Bombshell Hong Kong Protest Doc Director’. See also: Kristof Van Den Troost, ‘Interview with Vincent Chui: Hong Kong Independent Filmmaker and Artistic Director of Ying E Chi’, Offscreen 25, issue 2–3

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(March 2021), https://offscreen.com/view/Interview_with_Vincent_ Chui. M. A., ‘Lessons in Dissent’, The Economist, 4 July 2014, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.economist.com/analects/2014/07/04/ lessons-in-dissent; Vivienne Chow, ‘Hong Kong’s Documentary Film Production is on the Increase’, Variety, 1 November 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/yellowing-120 3017893-1203017893. Ian Aitken, ‘Introduction’, in Hong Kong Documentary Film, co-written by Ian Aitken and Michael Ingham (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 2. Ian Aitken and Michael Ingham, Hong Kong Documentary Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 16–17. Aitken and Ingham, Hong Kong Documentary Film, 46–101. Aitken and Ingham, Hong Kong Documentary Film, 144–62. Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee, ‘New Political Documentary: Rhetoric, Propaganda, and the Civic Prospect’, in The Rhetoric of the New Political Documentary, ed. Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 2. Benson and Snee, ‘New Political Documentary’, 6, 11. Benson and Snee, ‘New Political Documentary’, 10, 19–20. Sandra Ogle, ‘D-word.com Weighs in on the Political Documentary’, IndieWire, 16 August 2004, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.indiewire.com/2004/08/d-word-com-weighs-in-onthe-political-documentary-78725. ‘Timeline Related to HKIndie FF / Hong Kong Independent Film’, in On Earth We Stand: Hong Kong Independent Film Festival, 2008–2017 , ed. Enoch Tam Yee-lok and Cheung Tit-leung (Hong Kong: Typerseter Publishing Company, 2017), 312–27. The information sources of the running time of these films are the films’ entries on IMDb.com (accessed 19 December 2022), except for Almost a Revolution that does not have an entry on IMDb.com. See this film’s information on the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival’s official website (English), https://www.yidff.jp/2015/cat041/15c061-e. html (accessed 19 December 2022). Pang Laikwan, The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong during and after the Umbrella (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020), 115–16. Pang L., The Appearing Demos, 118. Pang L., The Appearing Demos, 124–25, 127. Rhoda Kwan and Emma Graham-Harrison, ‘Hong Kong Media Outlet Stand News to Close after Police Raid’, The Guardian, 29 December

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2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2021/dec/29/hong-kong-police-arrest-six-journalists-from-ind ependent-media-outlet-stand-news; Edmond Ng and James Pomfret, ‘Hong Kong Pro-democracy Stand News Closes after Police Raids Condemned by U.N., Germany’, Reuters, 29 December 2021, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/ hong-kong-police-arrest-6-current-or-former-staff-online-media-outlet2021-12-28. See also Chapter 1, note 120. Norman Zafra, ‘The Nexus of Political Documentary and Alternative Journalism: Addressing the Social World’, Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa 26, no. 2 (2020): 165. Pang L., The Appearing Demos, 118. Yik Man-kin, ‘An Interview with Lessons in Dissent ’s Director, Matthew Torne’ (in traditional Chinese), inmediahk.net, 19 April 2014, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.inmediahk.net/社運/「不反抗，你就 輸」——專訪 《未夠秤》 導演-matthew-torne. Source: ‘Screenings’, Lessons in Dissent ’s official website, http://lessonsin dissentmovie.com (accessed 19 December 2022). Wong Fei-bei, ‘Interview with Matthew Torne’ (in traditional Chinese), Passion Times, 30 September 2018, accessed 19 December 2022, https:// www.passiontimes.hk/article/09-30-2018/48398. Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, Hong Kong Films Industry Data, 2014 (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, 2015). Clarence Tsui, ‘“Lessons in Dissent” (“Mei Gau Ching”): Mumbai Review’, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 October 2014, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politicsnews/lessons-dissent-mei-gau-ching-740577. Source: Lessons in Dissent ’s official Facebook page, https://www.fac ebook.com/lessonsindissentmovie (accessed 19 December 2022). Eric Cheung, ‘Screened Out? Film Charting Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement Struggles to be Seen’, The Guardian, 26 September 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2016/sep/26/yellowing-film-hong-kong-umbrella-movement-strugglesto-be-seen-cinema. Edith Chung, Johanna Chan and Selena Chan, ‘Screen Revival: Independent Filmmakers are the New Standard-Bearers for Hong Kong Cinema’, Hong Kong Free Press, 31 March 2020, accessed 19 December 2022, https://hongkongfp.com/2018/03/24/screen-revivalindependent-filmmakers-new-standard-bearers-hong-kong-cinema. Pang L., The Appearing Demos, 125.

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68. Source: ‘Yellowing’, International Film Festival Rotterdam’s official website (English), https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2020/films/yellowing (accessed 19 December 2022). 69. Sources: 2016 Hong Kong Independent Film Festival’s official website, http://www.hkindieff.hk/2016 (accessed 19 December 2022); ‘Release Info’ of Yellowing ’s entry on IMDb.com (accessed 19 December 2022); Yellowing ’s official Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/yellow inghk (accessed 19 December 2022). 70. E. Cheung, ‘Screened Out?’. 71. Vivienne Chow, ‘Guerrilla Tactics as Hong Kong Documentary “Yellowing” Denied Theatrical Release’, Variety, 2 September 2016, accessed 19 December 2022, https://variety.com/2016/film/asia/guerilla-screen ings-hong-kong-yellowing-release-1201850957. 72. Source: ‘2016’ under ‘About Us’, the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival’s official website (English), https://www.ji-hlava.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 73. Source: ‘Awards’ of Yellowing ’s entry on IMDb.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 74. Source: ‘YIDFF, 2017’ under ‘Past Festivals’, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival’s official website (English), https://www.yid ff.jp (accessed 19 December 2022). 75. Source: ‘Sponsorship for “Yellowing” to Participate in the “Vancouver International Film Festival, 2016” (Non-competition Section)’ under ‘Other Film-Related Projects’ of ‘Approved Projects’, the Hong Kong Film Development Council’s official website (English), https://www.fdc. gov.hk (accessed 19 December 2022). 76. Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, Hong Kong Films Industry Data, 2016 (in traditional Chinese) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, no date). 77. Sources: Vanished Archives ’s official website (traditional Chinese), http://vanishedarchives.org (accessed 19 December 2022); Vanished Archives ’s official Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/vanisheda rchives (accessed 19 December 2022). 78. Source: Vanished Archives ’s film description (in English and traditional Chinese) on its DVD case. 79. Source: Vanished Archives ’s film description (in English and traditional Chinese) on its DVD case. 80. Source: Citizen News ’s official website (traditional Chinese), https:// www.hkcnews.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 81. Connie Lo, ‘Vanished Archives ’s International Premiere at Taipei Film Festival’ (in traditional Chinese), Citizen News, 29 June 2017, accessed

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19 December 2022, https://www.hkcnews.com/article/4961/消失的 檔案-台北電影節-4961/ 《消失的檔案》 台北電影節「國際首映」. See also: Taipei Film Festival 29 June–15 July 2017 Programme under ‘Archive’, Taipei Film Festival’s official website (English), https://www.taipeiff.taipei (accessed 19 December 2022). 82. Sources: Vanished Archives ’s official Facebook page, https://www.fac ebook.com/vanishedarchives (accessed 19 December 2022); Vanished Archives ’s official website (traditional Chinese), https://vanishedarchives. org/support-us-fringebacker (accessed 19 December 2022). 83. Sources: Vanished Archives ’s official Facebook page, https://www.fac ebook.com/vanishedarchives (accessed 19 December 2022); the film’s information on iTunes, https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/vanishedarchives/id1419972520 (accessed 19 December 2022).

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: A New Start or an Endgame?

The writing of this book has spanned in time across the global outbreak and the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now late 2022 as I finish writing it. People in most countries have gradually started to live normally again, even though the pandemic is still around and has become part of our daily lives. Borders between countries have gradually been reopened, allowing the free movement of people again. Against this backdrop, there have been wars, tensions between nation states, government changes, deaths of very important international personalities, as well as heightened global concerns about issues of equality/diversity/inclusion, climate change, energy crisis … and, of course, many changes taking place in the global film industries. Hong Kong, a tiny city geographically rooted in the southeast of China, but of great geopolitical and economic importance on the world stage, has not been able to avoid the influences of these international changes. This metropolitan city has been through dramatic political-economic and sociocultural vicissitudes over only the past few years. What seemed to be a minor segment of a local film industry, in the case of Hong Kong’s new indie cinema of the 2010s, has unexpectedly played a huge role in reflecting, and reflecting on, what the city and its citizens had experienced. My interest in this research project first arose sometime in the mid2010s, with informal conversations with academic peers who had various ideas as to what independent cinema, and especially that based in Hong © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4_7

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Kong, entailed and represented. On the basis of my ongoing interests in the global film industries in my research and teaching, I firmly believe that what we witnessed in Hong Kong’s new indie filmmaking and its innovative ways of doing things in distribution and exhibition deserves much greater attention than it currently receives in the field of film studies in general and film industry studies in particular. I embarked on my tasks in this project with several research questions, listed in the Introduction to this book. These questions have helped me pursue the project in a manageable fashion; as I mention in the Introduction, independent cinema is simply undefinable because it means different things to different people, entities, institutions and even governments. Nevertheless, film independence in Hong Kong in the 2010s could still be aligned with what happened and is happening at different times and places. What I find particularly amazing is how such film independence helped filmmakers and their independent films to uphold an unyielding attitude towards Hong Kong cinema’s widely expected fate. Their persistence did not come out of thin air but represented the latest manifestation of the heritage of Hong Kong film culture, which started in the late nineteenth century when the first film—non-fiction—was made in this British colonial outpost. My theoretical underpinning was built upon the tradition of the political economy of film, having additional references to other critical approaches related to film studies. All this has informed me in contextualizing Hong Kong’s new indie cinema in much wider politicaleconomic and film industrial contexts, which include references to other contemporary independent cinemas and earlier versions of Hong Kong’s own independent filmmaking. Historical and sociocultural concerns have added another dimension to my anatomization of this indie cinema’s outstanding significance to the continuing sustainability of the Hong Kong film industry, which, for its part, has operated alongside the ongoing developments of other local, subregional, national, regional and international film industries. I have discussed how Hong Kong’s new indie cinema could be regarded as an indirect result of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s sporadic film policy programmes when much of their attention was targeted at consolidating the perceived mainstream segment of the local film sector. The government’s intervention in this local film industry was helped further by its collaboration with local mainstream film industry bodies, and by established practices of the mainstream film distribution and exhibition

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networks in Hong Kong. Indie cinematic practices, on the other hand, were not planned in a top-down manner. They came from indie filmmakers’ own initiatives, under constraints of time and finances in making films, on top of their limited industrial experience. Such disadvantages proved to be major driving forces for the Hong Kong indie filmmakers in the 2010s, turning them and their films into a new cinematic prototype group for contemporary and future generations of filmmakers locally and internationally. I have explored multidirectional, intergenerational interactions of creative labour in the Hong Kong film industry, especially what indie filmmakers could gain via various types of collective filmmaking in 2010s Hong Kong. Their specific interests in local subject matter, as I have explained, did not simply stem from their less advantageous positions in the local film industry, which oftentimes included their small- to mediumsized film budgets that did not allow them to explore themes beyond their immediate surroundings. There were in fact many other concerns underlying these interests, most notably, Hongkongers’ continuing identity negotiations fuelled by their diasporic mentalities as well as Hongkongers’ tendency to be (trans)local. These concerns flowed into hope for a better Hong Kong and a healthier Hong Kong film industry in the future, rather than despair. I have investigated one of the defining elements of Hong Kong new indies—the use of Cantonese language in films in ways that embraced the sociocultural and political specificities of these films. Yet, I was also cautious about the effects and politics of mutual exclusiveness possibly arising from such use of language in films. I have traced the local and international distribution and exhibition of Hong Kong new indies via the experience of post-2014 Hong Kong political documentaries. By using flexible and alternative ways of circulation, these films became truly international. They could be seen by many local and international audiences. What their success stories represented did not end with the 2010s, for they have set themselves as role models for the Hong Kong indie films made in the early 2020s. Some most recent Hong Kong indies have done excellently at the local box office, e.g., Beyond the Dream (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2019) (see Chapter 2). Some, presenting controversial topics, e.g., Revolutions of Our Times (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2021), have aroused enormous interest among their international audiences (see Chapter 6). Some were also important film award winners/nominees, e.g., Hand Rolled Cigarette

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(Chan Kin-long, Hong Kong, 2020) winning the Best New Director Award, and Time (Ko Tsz-pun, Hong Kong, 2021) winning the Best Actor Award at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards presentation ceremony in 2022.1 These films were made by debut, or very new, Hong Kong indie filmmakers. They have inherited the legacy of 2010s Hong Kong new indies, while continuing fearlessly to tread new paths under very difficult political-economic and sociocultural circumstances. I start this book by recounting my personal, first-hand experience of an avid cinemagoer growing up in Hong Kong during the last golden period of the local film industry. I would like to end my exploration for this book by recalling a brief exchange between a veteran film festival insider (who had worked at senior positions in the international film festival sector for several decades) and myself at an international forum on film festivals in June 2019.2 Both of us were very excited about what we had seen in purely Hong Kong cinema made by indie filmmakers in the 2010s, which represented something unprecedented. This exchange revealed that Hong Kong new indies were indeed in the international limelight and will long remain there. Far from signifying that the Hong Kong film industry was moving towards its end, its new indie cinema has thrown a strong beam of light showing a new direction for the Hong Kong film industry as a whole. This is my firm belief.

Notes 1. Source: ‘List of Nominee and Award Winner’, Hong Kong Film Awards’ official website, http://www.hkfaa.com (accessed 19 December 2022). 2. Forum information: ‘2019 International Film Festival Forum’, Xiamen University, Xiamen, the People’s Republic of China, 28 June 2019.

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Filmography

The information of films is presented in the following order: English Title (Traditional Chinese Title/Simplified Chinese Title) (Director’s Name, Place[s] of Origin, Film’s First Release Year) [Note: Films shown with an asterisk do not have official titles written in Chinese scripts.] 29+1 (Kearen Pang, Hong Kong, 2017)* 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (3D肉蒲團之極樂寶鑑/3D肉蒲团之极乐宝鉴) (Christopher Suen, Hong Kong, 2011) 6th March (三月六日/三月六日) (Wong Chun, Hong Kong, 2013) A Better Tomorrow (英雄本色/英雄本色) (John Woo, Hong Kong, 1986) All about Love (得閒炒飯/得閒炒饭) (Ann Hui, Hong Kong, 2010) Almost a Revolution (幾乎是, 革命/几乎是, 革命) (Kong King-chu/Kwok Takchun, Hong Kong, 2015) Audition (Miike Takashi, Japan/South Korea, 1999)* Beyond the Dream (幻愛/幻爱) (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai], Hong Kong, 2019) Boat People (投奔怒海/投奔怒海) (Ann Hui, Hong Kong, 1982) Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (流浪北京/流浪北京) (Wu Wenguang, China, 1990) Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, Brazil/France/Italy/USA, 2017)* Center Stage (阮玲玉/阮玲玉) (Stanley Kwan, Hong Kong, 1991) Crosscurrent (長江圖/长江图) (Yang Chao, China, 2016) Days of Being Wild (阿飛正傳/阿飞正传) (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, 1990) Desert Dream (Zhang Lü, France/South Korea, 2007)* Distinction (非同凡響/非同凡响) (Jevons Au, Hong Kong, 2018) © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4

239

240

FILMOGRAPHY

Don’t Forget I Love You (不要忘記我愛你/不要忘记我爱你) (Barbara Wong, China, 2022) Dot 2 Dot (點對點/点对点) (Amos Why, Hong Kong, 2014) Durian Durian (榴槤飄飄/榴槤飘飘) (Fruit Chan, China/France/Hong Kong, 2000) Election (黑社會/黑社会) (Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 2005) Election 2 (aka Triad Election) (黑社會: 以和爲貴/黑社会: 以和为贵) (Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 2006) Eleven (11歲/11岁) (Zhang Lü, China, 2001) Flowing Stories (河上變村/河上变村) (Jessey Tsang, Hong Kong, 2014) Fu Bo (福伯/福伯) (Wong Ching-po, Hong Kong, 2003) G Affairs (G殺/G杀) (Lee Cheuk-pan, Hong Kong, 2018) Gallants (打擂台/打擂台) (Clement Cheng/Derek Kwok, Hong Kong, 2010) Girls (閨蜜/闺蜜) (Barbara Wong, China/Hong Kong, 2014) Golden Gate Girls (金門銀光夢/金门银光梦) (S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2013) Hand Rolled Cigarette (手捲煙/手卷烟) (Chan Kin-long, Hong Kong, 2020) Havana Divas (古巴花旦/古巴花旦) (S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2018) Hollywood Hong Kong (香港有個荷里活/香港有个荷里活) (Fruit Chan, France/Hong Kong/Japan/UK, 2001) Ichi the Killer (Miike Takashi, Japan, 2001)* Inside the Red Brick Wall (理大圍城/理大围城) (Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, Hong Kong, 2020) Jiang Hu (江湖/江湖) (Wong Ching-po, Hong Kong, 2004) Kaili Blues (路邊野餐/路边野餐) (Bi Gan, China, 2015) Last Exit to Kai Tak (分域大道/分域大道) (Matthew Torne, Hong Kong/UK/USA, 2018) Lee Rock (五億探長雷洛傳: 雷老虎/五亿探长雷洛传: 雷老虎) (Lawrence AhMon, Hong Kong, 1991) Lee Rock II (五億探長雷洛傳II: 父子情仇/五亿探长雷洛传II: 父子情仇) (Lawrence Ah-Mon, Hong Kong, 1991) Lee Rock III (五億探長雷洛傳III: 大結局/五亿探长雷洛传III: 大结局) (Lawrence Ah-Mon, Hong Kong, 1992) Lessons in Dissent (未夠秤/未夠秤) (Matthew Torne, Hong Kong/UK, 2014) Lost Course (迷航/迷航) (Jill Li, Hong Kong, 2019) Lost in the Fumes (地厚天高/地厚天高) (Nora Lam, Hong Kong, 2017) Mad World (一念無明/一念无明) (Wong Chun, Hong Kong, 2016) Made in Hong Kong (香港製造/香港製造) (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong, 1997) Men on the Dragon (逆流大叔/逆流大叔) (Sunny Chan, Hong Kong, 2018) Mr. Vampire (殭屍先生/僵尸先生) (Ricky Lau, Hong Kong, 1985) My Name Is Fame (我要成名/我要成名) (Lawrence Ah-Mon, Hong Kong, 2006) My Prince Edward (金都/金都) (Norris Wong, Hong Kong, 2019)

FILMOGRAPHY

241

My Voice, My Life (爭氣/争气) (Ruby Yang, Hong Kong, 2014) No. 1 Chung Ying Street (中英街1號/中英街1号) (Derek Chiu, Hong Kong, 2018) Port of Call (踏血尋梅/踏血寻梅) (Philip Yung, Hong Kong, 2015) Raise the Umbrellas (撐傘/撑伞) (Evans Chan, Hong Kong, 2016) Reunification (家庭團聚/家庭团聚) (Alvin Tsang, Hong Kong/USA, 2015) Revenge: A Love Story (復仇者之死/复仇者之死) (Wong Ching-po, Hong Kong, 2010) Revolutions of Our Times (時代革命/时代革命) (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwunwai], Hong Kong, 2021) Rigor Mortis (殭屍/僵尸) (Juno Mak, Hong Kong, 2013) Sara (雛妓/雏妓) (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2015) Scenery (Zhang Lü, South Korea, 2013)* She Remembers, He Forgets (哪一天我們會飛/哪一天我们会飞) (Adam Wong, Hong Kong, 2015) Shocking Asia (古靈精怪東南亞/古灵精怪东南亚) (Rolf Olsen, Hong Kong/West Germany, 1974) Somewhere beyond the Mist (藍天白雲/蓝天白云) (Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong, 2017) Sons of the Neon Night (風林火山/风林火山) (Juno Mak, China/Hong Kong; not yet released at the time of writing) Spacked Out (無人駕駛/无人驾驶) (Lawrence Ah-Mon, Hong Kong, 2000) Stealing a Roast Duck (偷燒鴨/偷烧鸭) (Liang Shao-bo, Hong Kong, 1909) Still Human (淪落人/沦落人) (Oliver Chan, Hong Kong, 2018) Storm under the Sun (紅日風暴/红日风暴) (Peng Xiaolian/S. Louisa Wei, Hong Kong, 2007) Taking Back the Legislature (佔領立法會/占领立法会) (Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, Hong Kong, 2020) Tales from the Dark 1 (李碧華鬼魅系列: 迷離夜/李碧华鬼魅系列: 迷离夜) (Fruit Chan/Lee Chi-ngai/Simon Yam, Hong Kong, 2013) Tales from the Dark 2 (李碧華鬼魅系列: 奇幻夜/李碧华鬼魅系列: 奇幻夜) (Lawrence Ah-Mon/Gordon Chan/Teddy Robin, Hong Kong, 2013) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Steve Barron, Hong Kong/USA, 1990)* Ten Years (十年/十年) (Jevons Au/Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai]/Kwok Zune/Ng Ka-leung/Wong Fei-pang, Hong Kong, 2015): 1. Extras (浮瓜/浮瓜) (Kwok Zune) 2. Season of the End (冬蟬/冬蝉) (Wong Fei-pang) 3. Dialect (方言/方言) (Jevons Au) 4. Self-Immolator (自焚者/自焚者) (Kiwi Chow [aka Chow Kwun-wai]) 5. Local Egg (本地蛋/本地蛋) (Ng Ka-leung) The BFG (Steven Spielberg, USA, 2016)* The Empty Hands (空手道/空手道) (Chapman To, Hong Kong, 2017)

242

FILMOGRAPHY

The Mad Phoenix (南海十三郎/南海十三郎) (Clifton Ko, Hong Kong, 1997) The Midnight After (那夜凌晨, 我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅van/那夜凌晨, 我坐 上了旺角开往大埔的红van) (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong, 2014) The Mobfathers (選老頂/选老顶) (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2016) The Moment (此情此刻/此情此刻) (Wong Kwok-fai, Hong Kong, 2016) The Stolen Years (被偷走的那五年/被偷走的那五年) (Barbara Wong, China/Taiwan, 2013) The Supernormal (大迷信/大迷信) (Lo Ting-kit, Hong Kong, 1992) The Taste of Youth (少年滋味/少年滋味) (Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong, 2016) The Way We Dance (狂舞派/狂舞派) (Adam Wong, Hong Kong, 2013) Thirty Years of Adonis (三十儿立/三十儿立) (Scud, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 2017) Three (三更/三更) (Peter Chan/Kim Jee-won/Nonzee Nimibutr, Hong Kong/South Korea/Thailand, 2002) Three Husbands (三夫/三夫) (Fruit Chan, Hong Kong, 2018) Three… Extremes (三更 2/三更 2) (Fruit Chan/Miike Takashi/Park Chan-wook, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea, 2004) Time (殺出個黃昏/杀出个黄昏) (Ko Tsz-pun, Hong Kong, 2021) Tomorrow Is Another Day (黃金花/黃金花) (Chan Tai-lee, Hong Kong, 2017) Tracey (翠絲/翠丝) (Jun Li, Hong Kong, 2018) Trivisa (樹大招風/树大招风) (Jevons Au/Frank Hui/Vicky Wong, China/Hong Kong, 2016) True Women for Sale (性工作者2: 我不賣身. 我賣子宮/性工作者2: 我不卖身. 我 卖子宫) (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2008) Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat (六樓后座/六楼后座) (Barbara Wong, Hong Kong, 2003) Twilight’s Kiss (aka Suk Suk) (叔. 叔/叔. 叔) (Ray Yeung, Hong Kong, 2019) Umbrella Diaries: The First Umbrella (傘上: 遍地開花/伞上: 遍地开花) (James Leong, Hong Kong, 2018) Vanished Archives (消失的檔案/消失的档案) (Connie Lo [aka Lo Yan-wai], Hong Kong, 2017) Vulgaria (低俗喜劇/低俗喜剧) (Edmond Pang [aka Pang Ho-cheung], Hong Kong, 2012) Weeds on Fire (點五步/点五步) (Steve Chan [aka Chan Chi-fat], Hong Kong, 2016) Whispers and Moans (性工作者十日談/性工作者十日谈) (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2007) With Prisoners (同囚/同囚) (Wong Kwok-kuen, Hong Kong, 2017) Women’s Private Parts (女人那話兒/女人那话儿) (Barbara Wong, Hong Kong, 2000) Wu Kong (悟空傳/悟空传) (Derek Kwok, China, 2017) Yellowing (亂世備忘/乱世备忘) (Chan Tze-woon, Hong Kong, 2016)

Index

A Abbas, Ackbar, 1, 34, 126, 131, 145, 146 accented cinema, 33, 149, 157, 158, 162. See also Naficy, Hamid alternativeness, 34, 181–83, 185–89, 202 Ang, Ien, 125, 144, 176 C Chan, Fruit, 2, 3, 6, 25, 69, 96, 104, 108, 109, 135, 136, 138 Chen, Yun-chung, 33, 41, 49, 76, 90, 112, 130, 146 China, 9, 13–16, 19, 23, 24, 33, 35, 45–47, 50, 51, 54, 56, 61, 67, 72, 74, 89, 90, 92, 94, 96, 100–3, 105, 116, 121, 123–26, 128, 130, 135, 136, 151–55, 158, 160, 162–64, 168, 172, 175, 209. See also language; Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA)

mainland Chinese film industry, 89 People’s Republic of China (PRC), the, 7, 9, 13–15, 31, 35, 37, 79, 122, 124, 129, 143, 147, 151, 152, 154–56, 160, 161, 163–65, 168, 172, 175, 180, 212 China–Hong Kong film co-productions, 21, 49, 50, 56, 59, 97, 147. See also Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) Chinese Chineseness, 124, 127, 162–64 Hong Kong Chinese, 123, 124, 148, 154, 160, 161, 191 mainland Chinese, 13–15, 19, 24, 26, 43, 46, 47, 49–51, 54, 56, 74, 97, 101, 103, 120, 124, 135, 136, 138, 141, 151–53, 155–57, 160, 165, 168 Chu, Yiu-Wai, 24, 41, 49, 50, 55, 56, 64, 76, 77, 80, 112, 116

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Cheung, Hong Kong’s New Indie Cinema, East Asian Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25767-4

243

244

INDEX

cinema of transitions, 158. See also New Hong Kong Cinema collective filmmaking, 32, 74, 87, 93, 95, 97, 99–101, 106, 107, 111, 141, 166, 179, 211 Create Hong Kong (CreateHK), 57, 58, 60–65, 67, 78–80, 101, 115, 194 Curtin, Michael, 32, 36, 50, 52, 53, 76, 77, 88, 89, 92, 93, 106, 112–14, 116, 117

D diaspora, 16, 30, 33, 122–25, 130, 131, 157, 158, 162, 164, 190 Chinese diaspora, 123, 124, 126, 128, 162, 164, 171 diaspora in situ, 124, 136, 164, 171 existential conditions, 16, 122, 123 Hong Kong diaspora, 171, 200 situational, diasporic consciousness, 123, 141

E East Asian regionalization, 51

F fiction films, 58, 59, 74, 97, 109, 133, 141, 191 film awards, 30, 211 Golden Horse Awards, 204. See also Taiwan Hong Kong Film Awards (HKFA), 85, 86, 101, 102, 107, 109, 111, 112, 116, 201, 212. See also Hong Kong film competitions, 9, 72, 91, 189 Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival (Fresh Wave ISFF), 27, 28, 103, 104, 114.

See also film festivals; To, Johnnie Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia (ifva), 26, 27, 28, 42. See also Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC) film festivals, 14, 15, 25, 27, 30, 31, 34, 97, 98, 133, 180–90, 196–200, 202, 212 Berlin International Film Festival (Berlin IFF), 184, 188 Busan International Film Festival (formerly, Pusan International Film Festival), 17 Cannes Film Festival, 183, 188, 203 Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival (Fresh Wave ISFF), 103. See also film competitions; To, Johnnie Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), 26, 27, 172, 184, 196, 202 international film festival circuit, 182, 186 Venice International Film Festival, 98, 187 film genres, 29, 57, 59, 95–97, 106, 182, 183, 189 comedy, 98 cop-and-gangster, 2 geung si/jiangshi, 97–100 horror, 96, 189 kung fu, 96 martial arts, 74 film industries, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 16, 18, 31, 52, 53, 63, 73, 89, 94, 152, 185, 210. See also film festivals; Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA)

INDEX

American independent film industry (American indie cinema), 6, 11, 13 cinema operators, 72, 182 cinemas and cinema networks (cinema chains), 1, 2, 21, 27, 71, 72, 121, 133, 180–82 creative labour, 11, 27, 32, 86–89, 92, 102, 211 film distribution and exhibition, 2, 20, 32, 34, 47, 48, 54, 66, 67, 73, 74, 101, 153, 181–83, 185, 210 film industry bodies, 32, 55, 66, 85, 94, 120, 147, 210 global film industries, 7, 51, 66, 89, 92, 182, 183, 186, 209, 210 Hollywood, 10–12, 17, 18, 52, 89, 95, 183 Hong Kong film industry, 1–3, 7, 8, 18–21, 23–26, 28–34, 45, 47–54, 56–60, 62–64, 66, 68–71, 73, 74, 86–88, 90, 94, 97, 100–4, 106, 111, 120, 122, 130, 134, 141, 147, 148, 150, 151, 168, 179, 180, 191, 198, 210–12 mainland Chinese film industry, 168 mainstream sector/segment, 2, 5, 6, 9, 11, 21, 25, 26, 49, 51, 54, 66, 67, 70, 73, 74, 87, 104, 132, 179, 210 minority sector/segment, 17, 48, 49, 54, 62, 70, 73 South Korean film industry, 17 film markets, 184, 185 European Film Market (EFM), 184, 202 Hong Kong International Film and TV Market (FILMART), 184

245

film policy, 32, 48, 52, 55, 66, 67, 92, 93, 148, 150, 157, 210. See also Create Hong Kong (CreateHK); Hong Kong Film Development Council (HKFDC); Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) film censorship, 19, 79, 94, 150, 152 First Feature Film Initiative (FFFI), 27, 57–59, 78, 91, 107–9, 117 Hong Kong Film Development Fund (HKFDF), 27, 57, 58

G geopolitics, 8–10, 30, 36 Golden Harvest, 21–23, 68, 72, 93 Golden Scene, 68, 69, 72, 180

H Hong Kong. See also Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR); Hongkongers British Crown Colony, 128 Hong Kong Chinese, 1, 123, 124, 148, 161. See also Chinese Hong Kong Film Awards (HKFA), 27, 85, 111, 112, 116, 180. See also film awards Hong Kong film industry, 180, 212. See also film industries Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), 24, 90, 152. See also China; film policy sovereignty transfer, 19, 102, 123, 124, 140, 147, 157 the place, 6, 9, 50, 87, 121, 122, 126, 127, 133, 139

246

INDEX

Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC), 26, 27, 68, 81, 169, 196. See also Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia (ifva) Hong Kong Film Development Council (HKFDC), 42, 57, 78, 117, 207 Hong Kong new indies, 8, 9, 20, 31–34, 95, 100, 106, 121, 122, 128, 132–37, 141, 149, 165, 168, 169, 171, 181, 190, 195, 200, 211, 212. See also independent cinemas Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), 24, 27–29, 31–33, 41–43, 48, 51–60, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77–80, 82, 83, 91, 92, 95, 101, 103, 107, 108, 119, 120, 128, 143, 145, 148, 151–53, 155–57, 167, 172, 173, 194, 195, 210. See also Hong Kong new indies chief executives, 54, 64, 66 film policy, 32, 53, 64, 67 government, 24, 27–29, 31–33, 41–43, 51–57, 59–62, 66, 67, 69–73, 75, 78, 80, 82, 91, 92, 101, 103, 107, 108, 119, 120, 128, 143, 145, 148, 151, 153, 155–57, 172, 173, 194, 195, 210 Hongkongers, 1, 3, 28, 29, 30, 33, 50, 87, 120–22, 126–33, 136–38, 140, 141, 151, 154–56, 158, 161, 164–67, 175, 179, 192, 195, 196, 211 I identity (and identities), 16, 28, 30, 33, 105, 121–25, 127, 130, 151, 156, 161, 162, 165, 167, 170, 192

diasporic, 16, 30, 125, 132 negotiations, 3, 33, 123, 127, 132, 138, 160, 211 independent cinemas, 3–6, 8–10, 12–15, 17–21, 30, 49, 72, 83, 106, 146, 191, 209, 210 American, 5, 6, 10–12 East Asian, 8, 15, 16 Hong Kong, 6, 28. See also Hong Kong new indies mainland Chinese, 9 South Korean, 17 L language, 1, 3, 9, 33, 110, 111, 121, 130, 138, 141–43, 148–62, 163–69, 171, 195, 211. See also Sinophone Cantonese, 1, 33, 110, 111, 127, 141, 142, 148–51, 153, 155, 156, 159, 160, 165–69, 195, 211 Hong Kong, 33, 34 Mandarin (aka Putonghua), 86, 96, 128, 141, 150, 153–55, 160, 163 People’s Republic of China (PRC), the, 33, 154 Republic of China, the, 155 language policy, 148–50, 153, 160 Hong Kong, 33, 34 People’s Republic of China (PRC), the, 160 Last Exit to Kai Tak, 149, 165, 169, 177 Lessons in Dissent , 140, 169, 181, 194–96, 198, 205, 206 localness, 127–31, 171 M Mad World, 27, 91, 106, 136

INDEX

Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), 24, 26, 29, 33, 41, 45, 49–51, 75, 76, 80, 90, 94, 132, 147–49, 151–53, 155–57, 160, 161, 167, 172, 173 mainlandization, 26, 49–51, 76, 90, 94, 132, 146, 148 mainstreamization, 147, 148 media capital, 50, 51, 52, 54, 106, 116. See also Curtin, Michael Milkyway Image, 103, 104, 116. See also To, Johnnie Moran, Albert, 32, 52, 77 Mosco, Vincent, 32, 88, 112

N Naficy, Hamid, 144, 158, 174. See also accented cinema New Hong Kong Cinema, 2, 30, 34, 35, 41, 75, 77, 78, 83, 114, 122, 123, 143, 144, 157, 158, 173, 174. See also cinema of transitions non-fiction films, 59, 133, 140, 141, 149, 168 documentaries, 133

P Pang, Laikwan, 77, 173, 174, 193, 197, 205, 206 polarization, 17, 29, 141, 147, 148 political economy, 7, 30, 32, 48, 87–89, 210 communication, 7, 32, 87, 88 film, 32 power relations, 8–12, 30, 71, 72, 87 precarity, 89, 90, 94, 95, 102, 111 precarious working conditions, 89

247

R Rigor Mortis , 88, 95, 97–100, 107, 115

S Sanson, Kevin, 32, 88, 89, 92, 112, 114 Shih, Shu-mei, 130, 143, 146, 161–65, 167, 173–76. See also Sinophone Sinicization, 26, 28, 51, 120, 121, 148, 149 Sinophone, 33, 130, 149, 157, 161–65, 167, 169–71, 173, 198. See also Shih, Shu-mei Still Human, 69, 88, 95, 98, 107–9, 117 Szeto, Mirana M., 33, 41, 49, 76, 90, 112, 114, 130–32, 146

T Taiwan, 74, 101, 126, 136, 154, 155, 172, 188, 196, 198, 200 Golden Horse Awards, 189. See also film awards Republic of China, the, 155 Ten Years , 14, 41, 46, 75, 76, 94, 100, 101, 103, 108, 115, 116, 127, 139, 141, 146, 149, 151, 165, 166, 179–81, 195, 201 To, Johnnie, 23, 27, 28, 42, 47, 75, 102–5, 115, 116, 139 Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival (Fresh Wave ISFF), 27. See also film competitions; film festivals Milkyway Image, 28, 102–4 translocality, 33, 130, 131, 134–36 Trivisa, 88, 95, 101–4, 107, 115

248

INDEX

V Vanished Archives , 79, 128, 145, 181, 194, 198–200, 207, 208 Vulgaria, 149, 165, 168, 171, 176 W Wasko, Janet, 7, 35, 36, 76, 112, 117

Y Yau, Herman, 69, 104, 107, 135, 139 Yellowing , 62, 79, 181, 193, 194, 197, 198, 207 Ying E Chi, 19, 26, 40, 68, 81, 197