Esther M. K. Cheung
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099777
- eISBN:
- 9789882206953
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099777.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book focuses on Fruit Chan's film Made in Hong Kong (1997), a typical story of disaffected youth and the morbid trips they take. In the history of world cinema, the disaffected youth is a ...
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This book focuses on Fruit Chan's film Made in Hong Kong (1997), a typical story of disaffected youth and the morbid trips they take. In the history of world cinema, the disaffected youth is a well-recognized trope used to illustrate symptoms of the problems of contemporary cities. Like other similar films, Made in Hong Kong is an indictment of a society where youth express their urban angst and disillusionment. While the “cruel tragedies of youth” are fundamental to any big city, they always embody local specificities. The youngsters' death trips allegorize the concluding chapter of British colonial history in Hong Kong. It is this allegorical reference to the 1997 handover that places the film in the category of “New Hong Kong Cinema.”Less
This book focuses on Fruit Chan's film Made in Hong Kong (1997), a typical story of disaffected youth and the morbid trips they take. In the history of world cinema, the disaffected youth is a well-recognized trope used to illustrate symptoms of the problems of contemporary cities. Like other similar films, Made in Hong Kong is an indictment of a society where youth express their urban angst and disillusionment. While the “cruel tragedies of youth” are fundamental to any big city, they always embody local specificities. The youngsters' death trips allegorize the concluding chapter of British colonial history in Hong Kong. It is this allegorical reference to the 1997 handover that places the film in the category of “New Hong Kong Cinema.”
Esther M. K. Cheung
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789888028566
- eISBN:
- 9789882206991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888028566.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter attempts to examine the ethical relationship between self and other by way of focusing on the theme of estrangement in the New Hong Kong Cinema. In his study of the voice-over in cinema, ...
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This chapter attempts to examine the ethical relationship between self and other by way of focusing on the theme of estrangement in the New Hong Kong Cinema. In his study of the voice-over in cinema, Michel Chion creates a category of “acousmatic voices” or in French the acousmêtre. The acousmêtre refers to the image-voice relation in which one does not see the person one hears. Chion observes that sound film began with visualized sound but very soon it tried to experiment with acousmatic sound—voices without images, or voices divorced from images. These are not the voices of the disembodied, detached voice-over like that of documentary films because they have no personal stake in the film. This area of research has filled a lacuna in the study of cinema because the voice has often been considered as an inseparable and natural part of the image and thus it has seldom been examined as an independent category.Less
This chapter attempts to examine the ethical relationship between self and other by way of focusing on the theme of estrangement in the New Hong Kong Cinema. In his study of the voice-over in cinema, Michel Chion creates a category of “acousmatic voices” or in French the acousmêtre. The acousmêtre refers to the image-voice relation in which one does not see the person one hears. Chion observes that sound film began with visualized sound but very soon it tried to experiment with acousmatic sound—voices without images, or voices divorced from images. These are not the voices of the disembodied, detached voice-over like that of documentary films because they have no personal stake in the film. This area of research has filled a lacuna in the study of cinema because the voice has often been considered as an inseparable and natural part of the image and thus it has seldom been examined as an independent category.
Gina Marchetti
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098015
- eISBN:
- 9789882206601
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098015.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Infernal Affairs trilogy provides the illusion of an epic sweep (from 1991–2003) that covers the issues of government legitimacy, global capitalist expansion, individual alienation, and the ...
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The Infernal Affairs trilogy provides the illusion of an epic sweep (from 1991–2003) that covers the issues of government legitimacy, global capitalist expansion, individual alienation, and the implosion of a system that blurs “legitimate” political authority with an underground “illegitimate” economic reality. As part of the New Hong Kong Cinema Series, this short book attempts to highlight the significance of Infernal Affairs within the context of contemporary Hong Kong cinema as well as within global film culture by examining all three films in the trilogy. This analysis of Infernal Affairs concludes with a look at the trilogy's self-reflexive allusions to the mass media and the current state of Hong Kong film culture within a global context. In particular, the Infernal Affairs and the New Wave are discussed.Less
The Infernal Affairs trilogy provides the illusion of an epic sweep (from 1991–2003) that covers the issues of government legitimacy, global capitalist expansion, individual alienation, and the implosion of a system that blurs “legitimate” political authority with an underground “illegitimate” economic reality. As part of the New Hong Kong Cinema Series, this short book attempts to highlight the significance of Infernal Affairs within the context of contemporary Hong Kong cinema as well as within global film culture by examining all three films in the trilogy. This analysis of Infernal Affairs concludes with a look at the trilogy's self-reflexive allusions to the mass media and the current state of Hong Kong film culture within a global context. In particular, the Infernal Affairs and the New Wave are discussed.
Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625369
- eISBN:
- 9780748671151
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625369.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter asks, with specific reference to Hong Kong, whether a national cinema can be produced in the absence of a nation-state. Comparisons with Palestinian cinema, which is disconnected from an ...
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This chapter asks, with specific reference to Hong Kong, whether a national cinema can be produced in the absence of a nation-state. Comparisons with Palestinian cinema, which is disconnected from an independent nation state, help to shed light on the specificities of the New Hong Kong Cinema and its relation to the phenomenon of national cinema. Films by Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui, Fruit Chan, Alan Mak and Andrew Lau are shown to reflect thoughtfully on Hong Kong's re-inscription into China following the Handover in 1997.Less
This chapter asks, with specific reference to Hong Kong, whether a national cinema can be produced in the absence of a nation-state. Comparisons with Palestinian cinema, which is disconnected from an independent nation state, help to shed light on the specificities of the New Hong Kong Cinema and its relation to the phenomenon of national cinema. Films by Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui, Fruit Chan, Alan Mak and Andrew Lau are shown to reflect thoughtfully on Hong Kong's re-inscription into China following the Handover in 1997.
Kenneth E. Hall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099562
- eISBN:
- 9789882207097
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099562.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Has the creative period of the New Hong Kong Cinema now come to an end? However this question is answered, there is a need to evaluate the achievements of Hong Kong Cinema. This book distinguishes ...
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Has the creative period of the New Hong Kong Cinema now come to an end? However this question is answered, there is a need to evaluate the achievements of Hong Kong Cinema. This book distinguishes itself from the other books on the subject by focusing in-depth on individual Hong Kong films, which together make the New Hong Kong Cinema. Though underappreciated in contemporary film criticism, Bullet in the Head is a landmark in John Woo's career as a film director.Less
Has the creative period of the New Hong Kong Cinema now come to an end? However this question is answered, there is a need to evaluate the achievements of Hong Kong Cinema. This book distinguishes itself from the other books on the subject by focusing in-depth on individual Hong Kong films, which together make the New Hong Kong Cinema. Though underappreciated in contemporary film criticism, Bullet in the Head is a landmark in John Woo's career as a film director.
Tan See Kam
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888208852
- eISBN:
- 9789888313518
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208852.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Tsui Hark’s Hong Kong New Wave film Peking Opera Blues (1986) is set in a China marked by contestations between Republican democrats and monarchist revivalists (circa 1913). Through various acts of ...
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Tsui Hark’s Hong Kong New Wave film Peking Opera Blues (1986) is set in a China marked by contestations between Republican democrats and monarchist revivalists (circa 1913). Through various acts of reading film in different (though intertextually connected) ways along a formalist-historical-postmodernist continuum this book offers various reading strategies which reveal the film’s richness in terms of textual contours, textual affects, and ideological influences. Five acts of reading are explored which variously and collectively deconstruct the film’s playful intertextual and hypertextual configurations. Tsui Hark’s filmmaking career is summarized, and a polysemous analysis of the film’s story and form; its historical background; a companion film Shanghai Blues; Peking opera; Canto-pop and Mandarin songs; mandarin ducks and butterfly fiction; and the “three-women” film in Chinese-language cinema, are all explored within the general context of Hong Kong New Wave filmmaking and the issues of Chinese identity, culture, power in the contemporary politics of Hong Kong as they pertain to the Sinophone realms of articulations. Overall, the book asks a central question for film studies: does the film as a cultural and social artifact merely tell stories about the past or does it seek to reclaim lost territory in metafictional ways, with significant resonance for reading contemporary situations?Less
Tsui Hark’s Hong Kong New Wave film Peking Opera Blues (1986) is set in a China marked by contestations between Republican democrats and monarchist revivalists (circa 1913). Through various acts of reading film in different (though intertextually connected) ways along a formalist-historical-postmodernist continuum this book offers various reading strategies which reveal the film’s richness in terms of textual contours, textual affects, and ideological influences. Five acts of reading are explored which variously and collectively deconstruct the film’s playful intertextual and hypertextual configurations. Tsui Hark’s filmmaking career is summarized, and a polysemous analysis of the film’s story and form; its historical background; a companion film Shanghai Blues; Peking opera; Canto-pop and Mandarin songs; mandarin ducks and butterfly fiction; and the “three-women” film in Chinese-language cinema, are all explored within the general context of Hong Kong New Wave filmmaking and the issues of Chinese identity, culture, power in the contemporary politics of Hong Kong as they pertain to the Sinophone realms of articulations. Overall, the book asks a central question for film studies: does the film as a cultural and social artifact merely tell stories about the past or does it seek to reclaim lost territory in metafictional ways, with significant resonance for reading contemporary situations?
