ABSTRACT
Hong Kong cinema has always been bound up with the historical development of a crisis-ridden city. In the past decade, Hong Kong has experienced the rise and fall of civil society, from its rapid growth during massive civic movements to its disappearance following the Beijing government’s subsequent tightening of its grip over Hong Kong. Apart from some independent films that are now banned in Hong Kong and other large-scale co-productions with China that have lost touch with the city and its people, there is a facet of Hong Kong cinema consisting of medium- and low-budget films financed and produced locally for Hong Kongers, which this article calls “Hong Kong Localist New Wave,” providing rich texts for understanding Hong Kong cinema or even Hong Kong in general. A survey of this wave of Hong Kong cinema finds certain motifs shared by many of the titles in this analytical category: zero-to-hero stories in sports; portrayals of marginalized people, including ethnic minorities, the grassroots, and the disabled; topographic and nostalgic representations that document Hong Kong in geographical and historical dimensions; and separation and reconciliation of familial relationships. These motifs may be read symptomatically to examine how they echo Hong Kong’s emergent structure of feeling under the city’s rapidly changing socio-political conditions. Such changes also lead to a new tide of exodus from Hong Kong, and the “Hong Kong Localist New Wave” may help build an imagined community across geographic boundaries for Hong Kongers at home and in diaspora.
Keywords: Hong Kong Cinema, Anti-ELAB Movement, localist new wave, structure of feeling, symptomatic reading
Films are products of the times as much as they are telling of it. The history of Hong Kong cinema and its various “new waves” is therefore always bound up with that of the city, in particular, the many historical crises that it has faced. Scholars like Esther Cheung and Chu Yiu-wai have reviewed the literature in Hong Kong cinema studies and argued how the analytical category of “crisis cinema,” and its relations and tensions with “transnational cinema” and “national cinema,” illuminate our understanding of Hong Kong films.[1]
Following the Hong Kong New Wave in the late 1970s to early 1980s, when the colonial city was facing drastic transitions, there was another wave of Hong Kong cinema that scholars analyzed as related to the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997. It was at that point that Hong Kong cinema became a subject in vogue in academia. Around 2010, a series of local productions emerged amidst Hong Kong filmmakers’ northward expeditions to co-produce films with Chinese studios, and Hong Kong cinema was often proclaimed as dead.
These films form what scholars such as Mirana Szeto and Chen Yun-chung call the “SAR New Wave,” referring to Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region of China.[2] The latest wave of Hong Kong cinema that critics call the “Fresh New Wave”[3] or “After Wave”[4] reached its peak in 2022, when Hong Kong theaters were re-opened after the pandemic. The media name this unprecedented popularity of Hong Kong cinema in 2022 as the “Little Warm Spring” of Hong Kong cinema.[5] All these waves are in one way or another connected to the crises that Hong Kong was or is experiencing.
Therefore, it is essential to briefly review the recent socio-political development of Hong Kong as a crisis-ridden city before examining films in this latest wave of Hong Kong cinema, which I would call “Hong Kong Localist New Wave”—how they are positioned in Hong Kong cinema, what stories they narrate, whom do they strike a chord with, and why they are important.
I. Crisis Cinema and Hong Kong as a Crisis-ridden City
Ever since Hong Kong was handed over by Britain to China, who promised that Hong Kong would be governed under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle to maintain its capitalistic way of living for at least fifty years, the struggle between the “Two Systems” has never really ceased.[6] In the conflict outburst in 2014, known as the Umbrella Movement, when the Beijing government proposed pre-screening candidates standing for election for the city’s leader, Hong Kongers occupied the busiest business districts for seventy-nine days in demand for a true universal suffrage. The movement failed its objectives in the end, but led to an even bigger movement in June 2019 when the Hong Kong government introduced a bill to transfer fugitives to other countries and to China. The bill caused widespread criticism because it would allow China to arrest dissidents and erode the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. Massive protests took place, with the largest protest having over two million participants. Demonstrations continued almost every weekend in 2019.
This Anti-Extradition Law (Amendment) Bill Movement, or in short, the Anti-ELAB Movement, ended abruptly with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in Hong Kong in early 2020, but its impact was far-fetched, overhauling the Beijing government’s policy towards this former British colony. On July 1, 2020, the Chinese central government imposed a National Security Law (NSL) that criminalized any acts and speeches that could be considered a threat to Beijing’s reign over Hong Kong. Since then, over 230 people have been arrested, including opposition leaders, journalists who published opposing views, and netizens who posted objectionable messages on social media.[7] Hong Kong’s civil society has disappeared with its freedom of expression, and films have been much more strictly censored ever since.
II. Hong Kong Cinema’s Three “Parallel Universes”
For almost two decades, Hong Kong cinema has been rather dichotomized into high-budget co-productions with China for the Chinese market versus medium- to low-budget films financed mostly locally and targeted at the Hong Kong audience.[8] With a tightened film censorship policy, a third category of Hong Kong cinema arises—Hong Kong films that are (expected to be) banned in Hong Kong, creating three rather distinct realms of Hong Kong cinema, almost like three “parallel universes.” Such taxonomy is not solely dictated by, but highly correlated to, their sources of funding, most notably whether money from China is involved.
II. (i) Independent Films Banned in Hong Kong
The first title that fell victim to tightened film censorship in Hong Kong was Inside the Red Brick Wall (2020), documenting Hong Kong’s police’s seizure of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The film was approved for public screening prior to the NSL, but alterations were required when the film was resubmitted for approval afterwards. A few months later, a cinema intending to show this film suddenly canceled the screening without naming the source of pressure.[9] After the amendment of Hong Kong’s film censorship law in 2021, following the NSL, many films intended for film festivals were banned, had their approvals procrastinated, or with excisions required by the authority not agreeable to the filmmakers. Some filmmakers, knowing the slim chance of their films being approved, only show their works overseas or on the internet, without bothering to go through the censorship procedures which is essential for any public screenings in Hong Kong. Revolutions of Our Times (2021, directed by Kiwi Chow) was premiered at Cannes in France and won the Best Documentary at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan; May You Stay Forever Young (2021, directed by Rex Ren, Lam Sum) was nominated for Best New Director and Best Editing at the Golden Horse; Drifting Petals (2021, directed by Clara Law) won the Best Director Award at the Golden Horse; and Blue Island (2022, directed by Chan Tze-woon) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Golden Horse Awards and won many other prizes. Only titles winning or nominated at major awards are mentioned here, and there are indeed many more films by Hong Kong filmmakers that cannot be shown to the Hong Kong audience because of protest scenes or other explicit or latent references that the authority finds or would find objectionable. These independent productions are not made for commercial release or circulation in Hong Kong, but form an important aspect of Hong Kong cinema. They approach Hong Kong as a cinematic subject directly and tell Hong Kong stories that would otherwise be lost.
II. (ii) China-Hong Kong Co-produced Blockbusters
The rise of China-Hong Kong co-productions resulted from the decline of the Hong Kong film industry after the mid-1990s, China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, and the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003 that allowed Hong Kong films to enter China.[10] Lured by the vast and underdeveloped Chinese market, experienced filmmakers all ventured northward to China from the southern city of Hong Kong. Co-productions with China receive far more resources, in terms of both production funds and filming facilities, than films made locally in Hong Kong. Many such co-productions are in the epic or gun-fight genres that require huge budgets. However, these co-produced films must contain adequate “Chinese elements” and feature a certain ratio of mainland Chinese cast. Moreover, they are subject to the Chinese government’s film censorship, which has been tighter than that in Hong Kong.[11]
Scholars and critics have pointed out how the co-production model results in “the loss of Hong Kong style,”[12] the absence of “Cantonese film legacies and local Hong Kong stories,”[13] and hence “confusion of cultural identity”[14] and “local cultural disconnect.”[15] Filmmakers have to pay the “price of mainlandization.”[16] Other scholars have critiqued such comments for, among other things, the essentialist views on a singular Hong Kong identity.[17] However, I would argue that it is precisely the emergence of a new structure of feeling and hence the evolution of Hong Kong identity that these co-productions have failed to capture. Note that Hong Kong films involving Chinese investment do not automatically fall into this category. Films made in, for and about, Hong Kong which may involve Chinese money but are mostly funded solely locally, are the focus of this paper.
II. (iii) Small-to-Medium Budget Local Commercial Productions
From the “SAR New Wave” in the early 2010s to the “Fresh New Wave” or “After Wave” in the recent years, small-to-medium-scale local productions continued to form an important facet of Hong Kong cinema as they echo with an emergent structure of feeling in Hong Kong and, at the same time, get circulated among Hong Kong audiences to mediate such structure of feeling. I refer to this wave of Hong Kong cinema as “Hong Kong Localist New Wave” to stress the localness therein, although it largely overlaps with what other film critics call “Fresh New Wave” and “After Wave” and finds its lineage in “SAR New Wave.” Many of these films are made by first-time directors, though some of them might have been in the industry for a long time in other positions. They attained unprecedented popularity in 2022 and early 2023,[18] but some of the trends in terms of content can be traced back to earlier days, as will be discussed later in this article.
The rise of “Hong Kong Localist New Wave” can partly be attributed to factors in production models, particularly financing, and consumption circumstances. The analysis in these areas is beyond the scope of this paper, which focuses on the contextualization of content rather than the modes of production and consumption. However, a brief understanding of the financing of these films is needed to explain the fragility of the existence of this type of content. Many of these films have received public funding, such as from the government’s Film Development Fund under the “First Feature Film Initiative” and “Film Production Financing Scheme.”[19] With Beijing’s stricter control over Hong Kong’s freedom of expression, it is expected that public bodies will be more cautious in funding film projects. Large studios remain hesitant to invest in small-to-medium locally focused films, leaving only independent or non-Hong Kong-based companies to finance these productions, such as Golden Scene Company Limited, which started as a distributor, and mm2 Entertainment Hong Kong Limited, whose parent company is based in Singapore.
III. What is in the “Hong Kong Localist New Wave” Films?
Among all three “parallel universes,” the “Hong Kong Localist New Wave” provides the richest texts for understanding Hong Kong cinema, or even Hong Kong in general, because films falling in this category, though some of which may not have attained high artistic levels, feature sentiments that echo the collective emotions experienced by Hong Kongers amidst the city’s struggle between the “Two Systems.” Such affective elements that are emerging, before they can be rationalized, form a “structure of feeling” that defines “a social experience which is still in process” and are “especially relevant to works of art,” as theorized by Raymond Williams.[20] A thorough understanding of the Localist New Wave, or in the first place which films should be defined as such, indeed calls for a close reading and textual analysis of a large number of Hong Kong cinematic works produced in the past decade, the length of which goes beyond what one single essay would allow. Yet this paper still hopes to survey recent Hong Kong films that, in the author’s eyes, belong to this category and examine how some recurring motifs might echo with an emergent structure of feeling in Hong Kong, in an attempt to point to further research directions.
A collage of posters of the most popular “Hong Kong Localist New Wave” films. Source: posters from respective distributors. Collage made by the author.
III (i) Determination to Win: Zero-to-Hero Sports Films and Their Variations
As a very established genre in world cinema, zero-to-hero sports films offer a convenient vehicle to express the shared sentiment of Hong Kong people grappling with the Beijing government’s forces of control. Films in this genre are usually, if not always, formulaic, with one or a team of good-for-nothing individuals learning a sport, and after vigorous transformation beating a series of opponents who are far more experienced, eventually having to face the strongest rival in the field. A connection of this genre to post-handover Hong Kong can be traced back to The Gallants (2010, directed by Derek Kwok and Clement Cheng) in the “SAR New Wave” which critics see as the watershed of the resurgence of “Hong Kongness” and the beginning of a new “Hong Kong subjectivity” in cinema, amidst the film industry’s mainlandization.[21]
Activists even valorized the cultural values of the film for their causes in preserving Hong Kong’s cultural heritages.[22] Derek Kwok went on to make the film Full Strike (2015) with a similar storyline, but replaced martial arts with volley ball. Other filmmakers have also made films in the same subgenre that feature different sports: baseball (Weeds on Fire, 2016, directed by Steve Chan), rowing (Men on the Dragon, 2018, directed by Sunny Chan), boxing (One Second Champion, 2021, directed by Chiu Sin-hang), and dodge ball (Life Must Go On, 2022, directed by Ying Chi-wen). Some of them include obvious references that invite the audience to associate the will to win over a strong opponent in sports competition with the determination to fight for democracy and freedom against China’s subjugation. Weeds on Fire brackets the film with scenes of occupation during the Umbrella Movement. The film also starts with an empty shot of the Lion Rock, which is a hill in Hong Kong that has become the symbol of Hong Kongers’ “determination and persistence… against the dominance, manipulation and threat of the Beijing authorities.”[23] Characters in Men on the Dragon also speak of the “Lion Rock Spirit” several times. The film Lion Rock (2019, directed by Nick Leung) actually focuses on how a paraplegic former athlete climbs up this symbolically loaded hill, although this sports film does not feature a competition, but instead a spirit of determination, perseverance, and/or resilience that this paper will come back to.
For films produced after 2019, with or without obvious references to the Anti-ELAB Movement, the Hong Kong audience still strikes a chord when they relate to the protagonists as metaphors of Hong Kong. Two boxing films might serve as examples. In One Second Champion, the protagonist possesses a supernatural power to foretell one second, which reminds the Hong Kong people of the saying “achieving the goal by one step faster than others,” often used in Hong Kong advertisements to represent a typical Hong Kong mentality.[24] A line from the film has even been appropriated as a slogan for those resisting China’s oppression of Hong Kong: “If we can’t escape it, let’s face it together.” Also on boxing, The Grand Grandmaster (2020, directed by Dayo Wong) offers an interesting twist in which the protagonist’s initial business-mindedness, fondness for shortcuts, and tendency to flee from troubles (quite the opposite to what is advocated in One Second Champion) fits into the stereotype of Hong Kong’s baby-boomer generation grappling with the emergent structure of feeling. At the end of the film, the protagonist is still not good at boxing or any form of fighting, unlike his counterparts in other sports films. However, he still develops a new subjectivity in the process of boxing training and interaction with his opponent-turned-lover.
A more recent addition to this genre, Life Must Go On, goes back to the typical zero-to-hero formula, but highlights the issue of fairness by having a referee being partial to the opponent. After 2021, the NSL prescribed that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive may handpick judges to hear NSL cases, and many doubt the impartiality of these designated NSL judges.[25] In the context of a failing judiciary, one would not only read the unfair dodge ball match symptomatically, but also compare the fictional law court in A Guilty Conscience (2023, directed by Jack Ng) with those in real life where fairness may not exist in NSL cases. In A Guilty Conscience, the lawyers representing the falsely accused victim finally win the court case after rounds of trials, just as the sports teams finally win after rounds of matches. When there is no fair trial in real-life NSL cases, one can only turn to fictional situations to see justice done. Hence, it may not be surprising that A Guilty Conscience breaks the Hong Kong box office’s historical record to achieve HK$ 121.8 million (US$ 15.6 million), despite the film’s overly melodramatic treatment.[26] Another courtroom movie, The Sparring Partner (2022, directed by Ho Cheuk-tin), which follows debates within a jury, was also surprisingly well received and grossed over HK$ 43.7 million (US$ 5.6 million). The practice of jury trials, which has been in place in Hong Kong since its colonial days, is eliminated for NSL cases. While sports films and courtroom movies are two distinct genres, they both involve two parties fighting, literally or analogically, for victory over strong opponents. And that victory is, to many Hong Kongers, very much yearned for but distant in reality.