Victor Fan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474440424
- eISBN:
- 9781474476614
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440424.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions made under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA). CEPA facilitated the collaboration between Mainland Chinese investors and Hong ...
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This chapter examines Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions made under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA). CEPA facilitated the collaboration between Mainland Chinese investors and Hong Kong filmmakers to produce films that are supposed to cater to audiences in both regions. This triggered a renewed effort to individuate, subjectivise, and autonomise Hong Kong’s sociopolitical voice and position in these co-productions, which requires an active rewriting and re-understanding of extraterritoriality in the aftermath of the 1997 handover as a form of posthistoricity: (1) as a continual performance of a civic society that had already failed under global neoliberalism; (2) as an invocation of a new assembly of biopolitical lives that are eager to form a new civic society.
This chapter first explicates the sociopolitical conditions and affects in Hong Kong after 1997. It then expounds how CEPA emerged out of a complex process of industrial transformation under neoliberalism between the 1990s and the early 2000s and how scholars evaluate the first ten years of Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions after CEPA. With such a background in mind, it scrutinises how Hong Kong filmmakers confront the crisis of authorship under CEPA in three registers––industrial, creative, and sociopolitical––with close attention to Johnnie To as a case study.Less
This chapter examines Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions made under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA). CEPA facilitated the collaboration between Mainland Chinese investors and Hong Kong filmmakers to produce films that are supposed to cater to audiences in both regions. This triggered a renewed effort to individuate, subjectivise, and autonomise Hong Kong’s sociopolitical voice and position in these co-productions, which requires an active rewriting and re-understanding of extraterritoriality in the aftermath of the 1997 handover as a form of posthistoricity: (1) as a continual performance of a civic society that had already failed under global neoliberalism; (2) as an invocation of a new assembly of biopolitical lives that are eager to form a new civic society.
This chapter first explicates the sociopolitical conditions and affects in Hong Kong after 1997. It then expounds how CEPA emerged out of a complex process of industrial transformation under neoliberalism between the 1990s and the early 2000s and how scholars evaluate the first ten years of Hong Kong-Mainland co-productions after CEPA. With such a background in mind, it scrutinises how Hong Kong filmmakers confront the crisis of authorship under CEPA in three registers––industrial, creative, and sociopolitical––with close attention to Johnnie To as a case study.
Joshua Lund
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780252043178
- eISBN:
- 9780252052057
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043178.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Werner Herzog is the first book-length study of Werner Herzog’s American (in the hemispheric sense) work. It is also the first sustained, book-length study on the question of the political in ...
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Werner Herzog is the first book-length study of Werner Herzog’s American (in the hemispheric sense) work. It is also the first sustained, book-length study on the question of the political in Herzog’s work. Finally, as part of a series on contemporary directors, it introduces Herzog’s films through the arc of his long career, about 60 films (and counting) over nearly 60 years. The approach is materialist and postcolonial, with systematic attention paid to the historical impulses surrounding the films, both in terms of their history of representation (the stories that the films tell) and their history of production. Special attention is paid to how Herzog upsets our conventional expectations concerning categories such as capital, race, social class, and gender, and to what end. The specific aesthetic grammar of Herzog is essential, especially insofar as it confronts the viewer with political questions of world-historical significance. Although the book deals with dozens of films from across five decades (roughly 1968-2016), its heart is the 1970s and 1980s, and each chapter revolves around a single masterpiece: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972), Stroszek (1977), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987). Through these films, Herzog challenges the viewer to rethink the foundational traumas of our liberal capitalist modernity, including discovery and conquest; migration and exploitation; resource extraction; and slavery. The book represents both an introduction to Herzog’s work at large, and a new argument about the significance of his films.Less
Werner Herzog is the first book-length study of Werner Herzog’s American (in the hemispheric sense) work. It is also the first sustained, book-length study on the question of the political in Herzog’s work. Finally, as part of a series on contemporary directors, it introduces Herzog’s films through the arc of his long career, about 60 films (and counting) over nearly 60 years. The approach is materialist and postcolonial, with systematic attention paid to the historical impulses surrounding the films, both in terms of their history of representation (the stories that the films tell) and their history of production. Special attention is paid to how Herzog upsets our conventional expectations concerning categories such as capital, race, social class, and gender, and to what end. The specific aesthetic grammar of Herzog is essential, especially insofar as it confronts the viewer with political questions of world-historical significance. Although the book deals with dozens of films from across five decades (roughly 1968-2016), its heart is the 1970s and 1980s, and each chapter revolves around a single masterpiece: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972), Stroszek (1977), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and Cobra Verde (1987). Through these films, Herzog challenges the viewer to rethink the foundational traumas of our liberal capitalist modernity, including discovery and conquest; migration and exploitation; resource extraction; and slavery. The book represents both an introduction to Herzog’s work at large, and a new argument about the significance of his films.
