Identity dismissed: Hong Kong leftist cinema of the 1950s

Abstract

There has been a reconstitution of a ‘local’ identity in opposition to leftist politics in articulating recent pro-democratic activist movements in Hong Kong. In light of this context, this article examines this historical formation through the lens of using Hong Kong leftist cinema of the 1950s, especially productions from the Union Film Studio, as a case study. Through focusing on some key examples from the Hong Kong Cantonese leftist cinema of the 1950s, this paper traces the historical construction of a politicized ethical consciousness in Hong Kong poignant throughout the 1950s but became increasingly marginalized from the mid-1960s on. It argues that the class and gender analysis that post-war filmmakers made of colonial capitalism needs to be re-read in relation to a form of Chinese anti-imperial patriotism heavily marked by traumatized historical feelings from feudal, colonial and wartime experiences, driven by an emotional need for an idealized community through identifying with the underclass and the dispossessed. It proposes a reconsideration of Hong Kong’s cultural and film histories through mapping the development of this politicized film discourse which has inherited the rich tradition of Shanghai leftist cinema while fueled with an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist ethic to effectively respond to the post-war Chinese refugee-dominated society. This article problematizes the often taken-for-granted meanings and values of a Hong Kong ‘local’ identity defined as opposed to those of Mainland China, serving to perpetuate the Cold War binarism, and argues that the successful neoliberalization of Hong Kong from the 1970s on is a result of the collaborative efforts among the PRC ‘extreme left’ during the Cultural Revolution, globalized Cold War forces, KMT cultural-political demands from Taiwan, and British colonial polices, not without irony.