Abstract

What is the “Hong Kong” cathected through film, both past and present? The central project shared by parallel visions of Hong Kong––former and contemporary, narrative fiction and nonfiction documentary, commercial and independent––is that of how to encounter and (re)vivify the past through cinema. But how is it possible to move toward the past, especially the recent past, without a nostalgia tinged by sentimentality or an inherent longing for a fantasy of the past? Chan Tze-woon’s Blue Island offers up a unique challenge to Hong Kong cinema, contesting the former tropes of the sentimental and all its nostalgic reckonings with the past. In theorizing towards a new Hong Kong cinema, this article examines the legacy of its golden age against emerging counterpublics––fugitive, exilic and postnational––that profoundly reshape Hong Kong cinema today within and beyond the local.

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