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This chapter explores dissemination in the context of Hong Kong cinema and in particular it looks at two films made back-to-back by award-winning independent director Fruit Chan, Little Cheung, and Durian Durian. Little Cheung as the final installment of Chan's “Handover Trilogy” is of interest for its disseminatory take on Hong Kong as Chan highlights both the hidden heterogeneity of the territory with his attention to marginalized ethnic groups such as the Filipinas and South Asians amid the dominant Cantonese-speaking locals and the homogeneity that nonetheless holds these diverse communities together. Little Cheung balances centripetal and centrifugal forces at work within Hong Kong, revealing differences and divisions but also using the tropes of money and friendship to act as bridges between fragmented groups. Chan's next film after Little Cheung and Durian Durian, though the beginning of a different trilogy, can be usefully seen as developing the ideas of fragmentary nationhood explored in its predecessor.

This chapter analyzes cross-border prostitution as hauntingly portrayed in Fruit Chan's film, Durian Durian. It argues that the film questions hegemonic fantasies of “Chinese-ness” by putting into circulation a set of haunting counter-hegemonic images of the female migrant that exposes flexible accumulation and the consumer fantasies it has generated in mainland China. The main protagonist, Xiao Yan, also personifies an incisive critique of the myth of the Chinese diasporic entrepreneur since the migrant sex worker is intimately linked to the opening up of the mainland to economic globalization. More strikingly, the migrant sex worker embodies many of the traits and characteristics of the savvy and flexible migrant entrepreneur that are celebrated as virtues and ideals both in Hong Kong and in the People's Republic of China, at the level of the state and society.

This chapter examines the form and content of Hong Kong urban cinema. It analyzes the current theories of representation in Hong Kong cinema and argues that “disappearance” is a theory concerned with the filmic representation of reality rather than the disappearance of Hong Kong in the literal sense. It also argues that Hong Kong ecocinema not only approximates the real Hong Kong more closely by debunking its misrepresentations, it also appropriates cinema as a tool to hold ourselves accountable for our society and environment. It analyzes several relevant films by Fruit Chan such as Durian Durian (2000), Hollywood Hong Kong (2001), and Public Toilet (2002) as examples of Hong Kong cinema moving toward a Hong Kong ecocinema.

This chapter examines the problematic nature of urban space and its confusing transformations. It follows in some detail affective spaces and spatial affects in a number of recent films, set in cities like Hong Kong and other Chinese cities where space is being rapidly transformed. It discusses four examples of “cinema at the city's edge”: Fruit Chan's Durian, Durian (2000), Zhang Yuan's Crazy English (1999), Wong Kar-wai's 2046 (2004), and Alan Mak and Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs, Part I (2002).

This chapter explores Chan's realist mode in the traditions of Chinese-language cinemas. There are many modes of realism and Chan's case illustrates this concept clearly. His concern for underprivileged people and social injustice brings him close to this realist tradition. His so-called “Handover Trilogy” and his later films such as Durian Durian and Hollywood Hong Kong embody certain basic traits: the story of ordinary people, the theme of marginality, on-location shooting, jerky hand-held camerawork, frequent use of objective point of view camera, and the casting of non-professional actors. All these characteristics have led critics to conclude that he belongs safely to the tradition of social realism and that the Hong Kong through his lens is a “real” one.

This chapter discusses the account of Amir Muhammad, one of the new generation of filmmakers in Malaysia who have come to prominence in the last ten years, and whose cultural production has been variously defined as “indie,” “new wave,” or “alternative,” operating largely outside of state-sponsored and commercial production and distribution systems. Most of Amir's films are documentary in nature, and they are often shorter than a conventional feature film. Some of them focus on a historical event or a personage in Malaysia. For instance, The Big Durian deals with an incident in which a soldier ran amok in Kuala Lumpur on October 18, 1987 and The Last Communist narrates the life of Chin Peng, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Malaya.