Clara Law Cheuk-yiu's Transcultural Cinema

Abstract

Clara Law (Law Cheuk-yiu) has amassed a substantial body of work as a writer and/or director, with upward of twenty feature credits between 1985 and 2015. Starting with her early Hong Kong–based films addressing sexuality, The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (Pan Jin Lian zhi qian shi jin sheng, 1989) and Temptation of a Monk (1993), Law embraced transnational cinema through invitations and awards from major international film festivals, as well as participating in Erotique (1994), a compilation film with multinational contributors. Her work insistently interrogates the interconnections among concepts of Asia, transcultural migrations, and filmmaking practice through narratives that exceed “Chineseness” both in terms of culture and ethnicity, and in terms of expectations for Asian women directors. Reconfigurations of sexual and cultural identity, and geopolitical correspondences and differentiations, consistently recur in her filmic narratives, as characters encounter new personal, cultural, racial and ethnic formations in the wake of geopolitical transmigrations.