Hong Kong Cinema as a Dialect Cinema?

Abstract

Kong's commercial film industry has had ups and downs in its nearly ninety-year history,1 yet it endures and continues to churn out movies by the thousands urbane and profane, commercial and alternative. However, the recession it has experienced since the late 1990s has hit hard. Hong Kong cinema had always been transnational: winning popularity and influence in Southeast Asia; borrowing filmmakers, technology, and natural scenery from Japan and other neighboring countries; circulating into Anglophone markets via action genres; and raising its international image by participating in international film festivals.2 Hong Kong cinema might be described as transnational, but the national is not applicable to this cinema in any direct sense. Its success in the twentieth century was marked by the cultural and economic irrelevance of Chinese mainland cinema; and, ironically, its recent downturn is in part a result of the rise of mainland commercial cinema. Indeed, the film industry's difficulties since the 1 990s can be characterized by Hong Kong cinema's painstaking attempts to come to terms with China. After a decade of experimentation by filmmakers, two options appear to be viable: making big-budget Putonghua coproductions for the Chinese nation3 or making regional films for Cantonese speakers in southern China and the rest of the world (an estimated global audience of almost 100 million). The nationalist option is prevalent at the moment: not only are most Hong Kong films now made in large part for the People's Republic of China (PRC) market, but studios, filmmakers, crews, and talent are increasingly based in Beijing. Many of the actual operations are also conducted on the mainland owing to lower costs and cultural proximity to the potential audience. This strategy portends the possible demise of Hong Kong cinema as