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.
Poster of the film A Guilty Conscience, the highest-grossing Hong Kong film of all time. Source: Edko Films.
Even though opponents are not significant or even non-existent in some performance- and sports-related films, the spirit of determination, perseverance, and/or resilience are still present to capture an emergent structure of feeling in Hong Kong in the waxing and waning of civil society demanding Hong Kong’s self-governance. The filmmakers might not have been intentional, but these films, including The Way We Dance (2013, directed by Adam Wong), Distinction (2019, directed by Jevons Au), Lion Rock (2019, directed by Nick Leung), I Still Remember (2021, directed by Ho Lik-hang), Zero to Hero (2021, directed by Jimmy Wan), Band Four (2023, directed by Mo Lai), when put together, echo with the times. Whether it is a street dance challenge, a musical performance, or marathons or sprints, the protagonists must overcome obstacles and persevere to accomplish their goals, and new subjectivities emerge in the course of events. Distinction follows students with mental disabilities as they stage a musical, Lion Rock focuses on a former athlete with paraplegia, while Zero to Hero is a biopic of Hong Kong’s paralympic athlete. Disabilities might also be read symptomatically in Hong Kong cinema, especially after 2019, as will be discussed in the next section.
III. (ii) Marginalized Characters: Physically Disabled, Mentally Disordered, and Socially Discarded
Marginalized characters can be metaphors for Hong Kong itself, which is facing a strong central Beijing government. These include persons with physical and mental issues and those in the lower strata of society. When civil society is dysfunctional in post-NSL Hong Kong, instead of activism appropriating cinema for their cause, like Gallants and One Second Champion, cinema may already be regarded as a covert form of activism, however mild, concerning the marginalized. Cinematic characters suffering from different forms of physical and mental problems have been on the rise in the past decade, such as autism in Tomorrow is Another Day (2018, directed by Chan Tai-lee), paraplegia in Still Human (2019, Chan Siu-kuen) and Lion Rock, intellectual disabilities in Distinction, cerebral palsy in Zero to Hero, and blindness in Sunshine of My Life (2022, directed by Judy Chu), etc. Hearing impairment of the little boy in One Second Champion is, of course, on the list, yet the father’s supernatural power, as mentioned above, can also be taken as a “reversed disability.” These films may be about the transformation of disabled characters or able-bodied characters with whom they interact closely. In the end, all these films are unanimously positive that the disabled conditions have been overcome for the characters to achieve some form of self-actualization. When many Hong Kongers feel handicapped in their fight for democracy and freedom and incapacitated in face of the government’s despotic measures since 2019, they can relate to the characters’ setbacks and successes with their own frustrations and quest for hope in stories that highlight disabilities.
A symptomatic reading of cinematic texts can extend from physical disabilities to mental illness, such as bipolar disorder in Mad World (2016, directed by Wong Chun) and schizophrenia in Beyond the Dream (2020, directed by Kiwi Chow). Scholars have associated clinical schizophrenia in Hong Kong cinema with a cultural schizophrenia characteristic of Hong Kong identity,[27] and depictions of mental disorders in the aforementioned films are calling for a close reading to shed light on the understanding of a Hong Kong torn between “Two Systems” and under repression.
Apart from the physically impaired and mentally ill, the number of other marginalized characters, including sexual, ethnic, and economic minorities has also been on the rise in the recent decade, particularly in post-NSL Hong Kong. Scholars have analyzed the “small explosion” of queer cinema in Hong Kong during the change of sovereignty in 1997, and pointed out how sexual and cultural identities in Hong Kong cinema are closely related. [28] There were almost no queer-themed films without an exotic lens and were targeted for commercial release for two decades until the recent Localist New Wave.[29] Tracey (2018, directed by Jun Li) and Suk Suk (2019, directed by Ray Yeung) focuses on queer characters who are on the margins of an already marginalized LGBT community—transsexuals and elderly gays. Conditions of marginalization, not to mention the intensity of being doubled in these films, are intricately related to Hong Kongers’ collective emotions of feeling oppressed. Women sometimes face oppression in the patriarchal society of Hong Kong, which is not different from that of sexual minorities. My Prince Edward (2019, directed by Norris Wong) explores the transformation of female subjectivity through the protagonist’s upcoming real marriage and a fake one in the past. Juxtaposing her story with that of Tracey and Suk Suk may inform how gender and sexual identities are intertwined with changing Hong Kong cultural identities.
Equally marginalized are ethnic minorities, including foreign domestic helpers, such as the female lead in Still Human, and South Asians, both of whom face racism in Hong Kong. The South Asian gangster in Hand Rolled Cigarette (2021, directed by Chan Kin-long) and the Pakistani refugee kid in The Sunny Side of the Street (2023, directed by Lau Kok-rui) each develops an unlikely but close bond with a Chinese man, who, in some sense, is also marginalized—a former soldier of the British Forces Overseas Hong Kong and a taxi driver who immigrated from China decades ago and was estranged from his son. Still Human best exemplifies such cross-ethnic relationships between marginal characters: a Chinese man with paraplegia helping a Filipino domestic helper to pursue her dream. These films, if examined from this perspective, suggest the possibility of connecting with other marginalized people in dealing with oppression, and they give Hong Kongers a glimpse of hope despite their own marginal conditions. Likewise, bonding between two economically marginalized characters in The Narrow Road (2022, directed by Lam Sum) achieves a similar effect.
The elderly, who no longer contribute to Hong Kong’s economic success, are often forgotten in society. An unlikely but close bond is also formed between three retired assassins, who are now taking lowly jobs, and a young girl in the light comedy Time (2021, directed by Ricky Ko). In the film In Broad Daylight (2023, directed by Lawrence Kan), the relationships between old people and disabled persons in a care home and an investigative journalist provide richer ground for textual analysis. The plot highlights how investigative journalism exposes the institutionalized mistreatment of the care home’s residents, as well as the ethical issues in the impact and course of investigation, ironically at a time when Hong Kong’s suppression of civil society is institutionalized and press freedom is diminishing. Justice getting done is also at the core of the film, though not always to the benefit of the victims, in a manner similar to A Guilty Conscience.
The homeless, another economically marginalized group, takes centerstage in two films in the Localist New Wave, namely, I’m Livin’ It (2020, directed by Danny Wong) and Drifting (2021, directed by Jun Li). Being homeless, like being marginalized, points to a feeling of being precarious that is felt by many in the mutating city of Hong Kong. Although each homeless character has a place that they can call “home,” that is, the McDonald’s where the characters in I’m Livin It spend every night and the wooden shelter under the overpass in Drifting, these “homes” are more ephemeral and fragile than protective. While many Hong Kongers have developed a stronger sense of at-home-ness with the growth of the civil society that fosters a distinct Hong Kong identity, the many conditions that define their “home”—such as freedom of expression, rule of law, and segregation from China in governance—are quickly disappearing. With this apprehension over the loss of “home” in mind, the recent black comedy Over My Dead Body (2023, directed by Ho Cheuk-tin) actually tells the same story about anxiety over losing one’s home but from the other side of the token. This bring us to a discussion in the next section on how films attempt to hold on to a city that is quickly disappearing.
III. (iii) Nostalgia and Topophilia: Articulating Hong Kong’s Historical and Geographical Dimensions
Walter Benjamin insightfully points out that the impetus to articulate the past “means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.”[30] Films that ambitiously attempt to articulate Hong Kong’s past, or nostalgically lament over what is lost in Hong Kong at present, correspond to anxieties over disappearance. Philip Yung’s When the Wind Blows (2023) is an ambitious attempt to follow two police officers from before the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong in the 1930s to their fleeing from Hong Kong to escape arrest for taking enormous bribes in the 1970s. While it is debatable whether the film should be counted among the Hong Kong Localist New Wave because of the huge production scale with China money and thus a different aesthetic, the ambition of articulating Hong Kong history is rare in China-Hong Kong co-productions.[31] Another high-grossing film that articulates Hong Kong history is the biopic Anita (2021, directed by Longman Leung), chronicling the life of the late Hong Kong megastar Anita Mui. The film interweaves her ups and downs with those of Hong Kong, and with the help of computer graphics reconstructs some of Hong Kong’s iconic scenes from the 1980s, including neon signs along major roads in the city. Neon signs, a unique Hong Kong urbanscape symbolizing the city’s prosperity, takes centerstage in the 2023 movie A Light Never Goes Out (directed by Anatasia Tsang). The film is about loss—loss of husband for the female protagonist and the loss of the neon-making craft for the trade, but many dialogues remind the audience of what is lost in Hong Kong too. In this regard, the obsession to collect disappearing old objects in Hong Kong by one of the main characters in Table for Six (2022, directed by Sunny Chan) is also not coincidental. Nostalgia originates from anxiety over a sense of loss during crisis moments.
Back Home (2023, directed by Nate Ki) provides another interesting approach to articulating local history. The film infuses Hong Kong’s old folklore practices that are fading away, dilapidated spaces of old public housing estates, and forgotten urban legends that evoke collective memories. In a style akin to that of the horror genre in Hong Kong cinema’s heyday, the plot involves characters cutting off their tongues to enjoy a peaceful life and the protagonist pretending not to see ghosts. All these references make the film a discernible metaphor for post-NSL Hong Kong, where freedom of speech is cut off and people have to keep silent about injustices they see.
The impetus to hold on to a disappearing city applies not only to the historical dimension but also to the geographical dimension. Articulating one’s sense of belonging to a place is also a defense mechanism against a disappearing city. Esther Cheung analyzes how the “SAR New Wave” can be referred to as “new topographical films” that entail a strong sense of topophilia or affective relation to a place.[32] After a decade, this topographical tendency is even stronger in the Hong Kong Localist New Wave, when Hong Kong is facing larger threats. Films by Amos Wong are probably the most topographic in Hong Kong cinema. His directorial feature debut, Dot 2 Dot (2014), connects different localities in urban Hong Kong through a connect-the-dots game, and the protagonists show strong affections for the places. His third film, Far Far Away (2021), is a rural version of Dot 2 Dot, following a young man’s romances with five girls living in and loving five different rural localities that are much less frequented by Hong Kongers. His most recent work, Everyphone Everywhere, similarly takes the audience to different localities in Hong Kong. His films, including the second one, Napping Kid (2018), all contain explicit or implicit references to various civic movements in Hong Kong society.
Different localities each have a strong presence and distinct character in other Hong Kong Localist New Wave films. For example, the homeless protagonist in Drifting has a strong sense of belonging to his shelter under an overpass in Sham Shui Po, a district where the grassroots live because of the lower rental prices. Likewise, this district, together with To Kwa Wan, which is also filled with old tenement buildings, are the living spaces for the two grassroots protagonists in The Narrow Road. Even in the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong’s urban areas, marginalized spaces are where marginalized people dwell, such as the famous Chungking Mansion in Tsim Sha Tsui, where the bonding between the two protagonists develops in Hand Rolled Cigarette. In the very center of Hong Kong, Prince Edward is the name of the station and later the district where the female protagonist in My Prince Edward lives and works. The Chinese title of this film is equally toponymical but more specific: it is named after the Golden Plaza, a shopping mall famous for its products and services for weddings.
Apart from places in the central urban areas, “new towns,” which are satellite towns that developed from rural areas a few decades ago, are depicted in films. Features unique to these new towns, such as the Sha Yin Bridge in Sha Tin (Weeds on Fire), the Light Rail Transit System in Tuen Mun (Beyond the Dream), and the street market in Tai Po (One Second Champion), help the audience recognize the different localities. Chan Ka-ming has pointed out that “junior directors” in this Localist New Wave are showing “a stronger connection to their local communities” and evoke audiences’ “eagerness to recognize Hong Kong and the communal areas.”[33] Specific recognizable rural localities seldom appear in Hong Kong cinema—except perhaps in Amos Wong’s Far Far Away—but Lost Love (2023, directed by Ka Sing-fung), a film focusing on foster parenthood, provides many clues that the protagonists’ village house is in Kam Tin. None of these urban and rural localities build up the grand narratives of Hong Kong. Unlike the skyscrapers in the CBDs or the skylines on the two sides of Victoria Harbour, these localities are where Hong Kongers are living in. In a rapidly disappearing Hong Kong, physically due to developmentalism, and metaphysically if speaking of the vanishing civil society, articulating the city on the historical and geographical dimensions is indeed what helps to connect Hong Kongers in and as a community.
III. (iv) Lost in Families: Broken Relationships and Separated Members
Cultural identity comes from a sense of belonging to a community. When speaking about building communities on different scales, no matter the local communities that Chan Ka-ming has analyzed, or imagined communities that Benedict Anderson talks about in connection to nationhood, the family may be the smallest unit in community formation. The family, or more precisely, problems in familial and family-like relationships, have suddenly become a popular motif in Hong Kong cinema after 2022. Lost Love illustrates emotional attachment and the transitory nature of foster parenthood. Comparing foster motherhood in Lost Love and the widespread analogy during the handover period about Britain as the foster mother of Hong Kong, and China as the biological mother, a new perspective in discussing the dissolution or dysfunction of familial, or more specifically mother-child, relationships in Hong Kong cinema may be opened up. The mother-child relationship is also spotlighted in Mama’s Affair (2022, directed by Kearen Pang). The film follows a female showbiz manager’s relationship with her biological son, who feels distanced by his mother, and with a new singer she is grooming. In the end, all relationships are reconciled, but the young singer leaves his mother-like manager for career development overseas, while the son changes his mind to pursue tertiary education in Hong Kong instead of the United Kingdom. Band Four also features the reconciliation of an estranged father-daughter relationship, and the close bonding between the protagonist and her foster son. The daughter’s early-onset dementia and her disappearing memories remind us of Hong Kongers’ impetus to hold on to a disappearing city. In addition, the film’s finale of a band performance on Lion Rock, given the symbolic meaning of this hill, explicitly spells out how the story is actually that of Hong Kong.
Such a reading of a family-themed film as a Hong Kong story may apply to Time Still Turns the Pages (2023, directed by Nick Cheuk). The film depicts how a father’s violent oppression leads to the elder son’s suicide and the younger son’s estrangement, as well as how the younger son is still haunted by the trauma even after growing up. Unlikely to be the filmmaker’s intention, one still gets tempted to associate the father with the oppressive forces that Hong Kongers are facing, and the trauma of state violence during the Anti-ELAB Movement that is still haunting many Hong Kongers to this day. With regard to how estrangement with the father in the coming-of-age still haunts the child(ren) after growing up, Fly Me to the Moon (directed by Sasha Chuk), to be commercially released in 2024, might be worth comparing with Time Still Turn the Pages.
In many of these family-focused Localist New Wave films, broken relationships may be amended, but most families (or pseudo-families) are separated physically in the end. In Table for Six, three brothers experience ups and downs with their respective girlfriends and among themselves. The elder brother insists that all should live under the same roof and regard it as “home,” but in the end, all agree to sell their industrial-turned-residential unit, and the two younger brothers move out to start their new lives. The oft-quoted soundbites from the film were “open the door, go out, go further” and “home is where the family is” are obvious references to comfort the many Hong Kongers who have left or are leaving Hong Kong for good to escape from China’s increasingly authoritarian rule. Likewise, the two young male characters’ leaving or staying in Mama’s Affair, or the emigration of the protagonist’s cousin who leaves his mother behind in Chilli Laugh Story (2022, directed by Coba Cheng) all recall Hong Kongers’ struggles in the recent exodus.
Though perhaps too simplistic in depicting familial bonding, Chilli Laugh Story is nonetheless rather telling of how Hong Kong families survived the pandemic. Hong Kong Family (2022, directed by Eric Tsang), on the contrary, unfolds the complicated relationships within a family, particularly the estrangement and reconciliation between the father and the son. It would be an overinterpretation to say that family is a metaphor of Hong Kongers’ connection to their hometown or their sovereign country, but they recall the complex that people might feel at a time when socio-political situations in their hometown are changing drastically after the Anti-ELAB Movement and when many are leaving it for good. The Chinese title and the ending of the film both refer to the winter solstice dinner, which Hong Kongers and other southern Chinese emphasize more than new year gatherings for family members. Despite some degree of reconciliation, a full family gathering for the winter solstice, like the dinner at the beginning of the film, never occurs again. A soundbite from the film says, “If there are just a handful of family members, then these handful of us will just sit down for dinner.” This concludes the film, and also serves, like the line from Table for Six, as a comfort to Hong Kongers whose families are separated by the emigration tide.
IV. Hong Kong Cinema in the Hong Kong Diaspora
Since the passing of the NSL, more Hong Kongers have decided to leave the city for good. The exodus appears on a scale similar to that preceding the 1997 handover, when people left the city in fear of being under communist Chinese rule. Since 2020, many Hong Kongers have moved to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, where new immigration pathways were opened specifically for Hong Kongers. For example, the United Kingdom, as Hong Kong’s former sovereign, opened a new route for its former subjects in 2021, and a total of 182,600 had applied as of the end of June 2023.[34]
Diasporic Hong Kongers have become audiences of Hong Kong cinema overseas, especially for films that are banned from public screenings in the very city that they depict. However, it is films in the Hong Kong Localist New Wave, created primarily for achieving commercial success but taken as vehicles of Hong Kong’s emergent structure of feeling, that can be shared by Hong Kongers both in their hometown and abroad.
A distinct Hong Kong identity is strengthened with the rise of Hong Kong’s civil society in the post-colonial era. Many civic movements, particularly the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the Anti-ELAB Movement in 2019, have united Hong Kongers to create an imagined community, in Benedict Anderson’s sense. With the repression of civil society within Hong Kong and the rising diasporic population overseas, the construction of a shared Hong Kong identity across geographic boundaries is calling for means outside the collective experience of civic movements. Anderson stresses the role of print media in constructing nationhood, [35] but the cinema, which is also a medium enabled by mechanical reproduction, may serve essentially the same function of mediating an imagined community. In this regard, what is the potential of these films in continuing to shape Hong Kongers’ national identity, given all the echoes between the motifs of Hong Kong Localist New Wave films and the emergent structure of feeling under the city’s changing socio-political conditions? If the Hong Kong Localist New Wave is under threat, as mentioned previously, will there be a new diasporic Hong Kong cinema that can take its place to sustain an imagined community for Hong Kongers?
Siu Heng is a veteran arts administrator and film program manager with over twenty years of experience, and is also a member of the Hong Kong Film Critics Society comprising professional film critics. He has worked as a writer, translator and editor on publications in the arts and creative industries. He graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature and Translation, and a Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies with a focus on Hong Kong cinema. He publishes widely in newspapers, magazines and academic journals on Hong Kong cultural and film studies.
[1] Esther M.K. Cheung and Chu Yiu-wai, “Introduction,” in Between Home and World: A Reader in Hong Kong Cinema, eds. Esther M.K. Cheung and Chu Yiu-wai (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press), xii-xv.
[2] Mirana M. Szeto and Yun-chung Chen, “Mainlandization or Sinophone Translocality? Challenges for Hong Kong SAR New Wave Cinema,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6, no. 2 (July 2012): 115-134. https://doi.org/10.1386/jcc.6.2.115_1
[3] Freddie Wong, “An Initial Exploration of Hong Kong’s ‘Fresh New Wave’ in Hong Kong Cinema,” Hong Kong Literature Bi-monthly, no. 88 (April 2017): 110-112.
[4] Bono Lee, “Hong Kong After Wave Cinema and Alterative Co-productions,” in Hong Kong Cinema 2020: Documenting A City Left Behind, ed. Elson Cheng and Chining Ng (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society), 261-268.
[5] For example, see Mike Kwan, “How does the narrow road see spring?” The Reporter, May 18, 2023, https://www.twreporter.org/a/hong-kong-cinema-reborn
[6] Various media, both in Hong Kong and internationally, provided accounts of Hong Kong’s civic movements in the quarter-century after the handing over of the city to China. For example, NBC News has provided a succinct report. Dylan Butts, Molpasorn Shoowong and Meredith Chen, “Hong Kong’s 25 Years under China: Protests, Politics and Tightening Laws,” NBC News, 1 July, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/rcna36284
[7] Figure as at February 2023 according Reuters. Jessie Pang, “Landmark Hong Kong National Security Trial Opens Two Years After Arrests,” Reuters, February 6, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/landmark-hong-kong-national-security-trial-starts-2-years-after-arrests-2023-02-05/
[8] Various news reports have discussed this dichotomy, see Anon., “New Era of Hong Kong Film Productions,” Bloomberg Businessweek / Chinese Version, no. 220, May 12, 2021, 34-41; Anon., “Localist Films and Co-productions. Only Two Ways Left for Hong Kong Cinema?” HK01, April 15, 2019, https://www.hk01.com/article/321462. For an academic discussion, see Szeto and Chan, “Mainlandization,” 121.
[9] For a brief account of the incident and analysis of changes in film censorship in post-2019 Hong Kong cinema, see Siu Heng, “Drastic Changes in Film Censorship Policy,” in Hong Kong Cinema 2020: Documenting A City Left Behind, ed. Elson Cheng and Chining Ng (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society), 30-37.
[10] David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, 2nd Edition (Madison, WI: Irvington Way Institute Press, 2011), 186-202; Cheung Chi-shing, “Co-production: The Way of No Return for Hong Kong Cinema?”, HKinema 21 (January 2013): 4.
[11] Cheung, “Co-production,” 10-11.
[12] Chu Yiu-wai, “Toward a New Hong Kong Cinema: beyond Mainland–Hong Kong co-productions,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9, no. 2 (2015), 115, https://doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2014.994352
[13] Esther C.M. Yau, “Watchful Partners, Hidden Currents: Hong Kong Cinema Moving into the Mainland of China,” in A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, eds. Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, Esther Yau (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118883594.ch1
[14] Reeves Wong, “Geographical Culture, Cultural Coding, Genre Films: The Fundamental Problems about Post Hong Kong Movies and China-Hong Kong Co-productions,” in Hong Kong Cinema Review 2005 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 2006).
[15] Szeto and Chen, “Mainlandization,” 121.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Gary Bettinson, “Yesterday Once More: Hong Kong-China Coproduction and the Myth of Mainlandization,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 14, no. 1 (2020): 28, https://doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2020.1713436
[18] Hong Kong productions accounted for 21.14 percent of total box office (amounting to HK$ 246 million or US$ 31.6 million) in 2022, versus on average only 3-5 percent earlier. Figures from Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association, ed., Hong Kong Film Industry Data 2022 (Hong Kong: The Association, 2023), 9.
[19] See the website of the Film Development Council on its various funding schemes, https://www.fdc.gov.hk/en/applications.php
[20] Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 132.
[21] Most notably Shum Longtin, “The Birth of a New Hong Kong Cinema,” in Hong Kong Cinema Review 2010, ed. Shum Longtin (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 2006), 108-9. See also Esther M.K. Cheung, “The Urban Maze: Crisis and Topography in Hong Kong Cinema,” in A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, eds. Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, Esther C.M. Yau (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 62, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118883594.ch2
[22] Cheung, “Urban Maze,” 62.
[23] Wai-kwok Benson Wong, “Visual and Discourse Resistance on the ‘China Factor’: The Cultural Formation of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong,” in Citizenship, Identity and Social Movement in the New Hong Kong, eds. Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper (London: Routledge, 2017), 139-141. For the changing symbolism of the Lion Rock, see Lai Kwok-wai, “‘Lion Rock’: Historical Memory, Visuality, and National Allegory,” Twenty-first Century, no.161 (June 2017), 84-101.
[24] Matthew Cheng, “One Second Champion: One Step Ahead of Others, Still Not Achieving the Goal, Hong Kong Cinema 2020: Documenting A City Left Behind, eds. Elson Cheng and Chining Ng (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society), 124-126.
[25] See Lydia Wong, Thomas E. Kellogg and Eric Yanho Lai, Hong Kong’s National Security Law and the Right to a Fair Trial (Washington D.C.: Centre for Asian Law, Georgetown Law, 2021), https://shorturl.at/crw89
[26] Figures from the Motion Picture Industry Association.
[27] Marco Wan, “Dissent, Cultural Schizophrenia and Hong Kong Identity in David Lee’s Insanity,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 16, no. 2 (2017): 226-235, https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872117702450
[28] See Andrew Grossman, “The Rise of Homosexuality and the Dawn of Communism in Hong Kong Film 1993-1998,” Journal of Homosexuality 39, no. 3/4 (2008): 150-151, https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v39n03_06. See also Helen Hok-sze Leung, “Queerscape in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 9, no. 2 (2001): 423-447, https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-9-2-423
[29] The only exception is perhaps Ann Hui’s All About Love (2010), grossing HK$ 3.4 million (US$ 0.43 million). All other queer-themed movies are either independent productions with a very narrow circulation, or even those with commercial releases (such as Scud Cheng’s sensual gay films) only grossed less than HK$ 0.5 million.
[30] Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 255.
[31] Ann Hui’s Our Time Will Come (2017) and Love After Love (2020) might be exceptions.
[32] Cheung, “Urban Maze,” 53.
[33] Chan Ka-ming, “A Space Out of Unitary Nationalism: Revisiting Hong Kong Cinema,” Indian Journal of Asian Affairs 34, no. 1/2: (2021): 45, https://shorturl.at/ouRV6
[34] According to UK Government Home Office’s statistics on immigration, see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-june-2023/how-many-people-come-to-the-uk-each-year-including-visitors#british-national-overseas-bno-route
[35] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London and New York: Verso, 2006), 39-48.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London and New York: Verso, 2006.
Anon. “Localist Films and Co-productions. Only Two Ways Left for Hong Kong Cinema? (本土片與合拍片 港產片只餘兩條路？)” HK01, April 15, 2019, https://www.hk01.com/article/321462
Anon. “New Era of Hong Kong Film Productions (港產片新時代)”, Bloomberg Businessweek / Chinese Version (彭博商業周刊／中文版), no. 220, May 12, 2021, 34-41.
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Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, 2nd Edition. Madison, WI: Irvington Way Institute Press, 2011.
Butts, Dylan, Molpasorn Shoowong and Meredith Chen. “Hong Kong’s 25 Years under China: Protests, Politics and Tightening Laws”, NBC News, 1 July, 2022. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/rcna36284
Chan Ka-ming. “A Space Out of Unitary Nationalism: Revisiting Hong Kong Cinema.” Indian Journal of Asian Affairs 34, no. 1/2 (2021): 37-58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/e27091691
Cheng, Matthew (鄭政恆). “One Second Champion: One Step Ahead of Others, Still Not Achieving the Goal (《一秒拳王》：快人一步，理想未達到),” Hong Kong Cinema 2020: Documenting A City Left Behind (香港電影2020：紀實遺城). Edited by Elson Cheng and Chining Ng (鄭超、致寧). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 124-126.
Cheung Chi-shing (張志成). “Co-production: The Way of No Return for Hong Kong Cinema? (「合拍」：香港電影的不歸路？), HKinema, no. 21 (January 2013): 2-11.
Cheung, Esther M.K. “The Urban Maze: Crisis and Topography in Hong Kong Cinema.” In A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema. Edited by Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, Esther C.M. Yau. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015, 51-70. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118883594.ch2
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Chu, Yiu-wai. “Toward a New Hong Kong Cinema: Beyond Mainland-Hong Kong Co-productions.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9, no. 2, (2015): 111-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508061.2014.994352
Grossman, Andrew. “The Rise of Homosexuality and the Dawn of Communism in Hong Kong Film 1993-1998.” Journal of Homosexuality 39, no. 3/4, (2008) 149-186. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v39n03_06
Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association. Hong Kong Film Industry Data 2022. Hong Kong: The Association, 2023.
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Lai, Kwok-wai (黎國威). “‘Lion Rock’: Historical Memory, Visuality, and National Allegory” (「獅子山」：歷史記憶、視覺性與國族寓言). Twenty-first Century, no. 161 (June 2017): 84-101.
Lee, Bono (李照興). “Hong Kong After Wave Cinema and Alterative Co-productions” (香港後浪潮與異類合拍片). In Hong Kong Cinema 2020: Documenting A City Left Behind (香港電影2020：紀實遺城). Edited by Elson Cheng and Chining Ng (鄭超、致寧). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 261-268.
Leung, Helen Hok-sze. “Queerscape in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 9, no. 2 (2001): 423-447. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-9-2-423
Pang, Jessie. “Landmark Hong Kong National Security Trial Opens Two Years After Arrests.” Reuters, February 6, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/landmark-hong-kong-national-security-trial-starts-2-years-after-arrests-2023-02-05/
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Wan, Marco. “Dissent, Cultural Schizophrenia and Hong Kong Identity in David Lee’s Insanity.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 16, no. 2 (2017) 226-235. https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872117702450
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Wong, Freddie (黃國兆). “An Initial Exploration of Hong Kong’s ‘Fresh New Wave’ in Hong Kong Cinema (初探香港電影的「新鮮浪潮」).” Hong Kong Literature Bi-monthly (城市文藝), no.88 (April 2017): 110-112.
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Wong, Reeves (列孚). “Geographical Culture, Cultural Coding, Genre Films: The Fundamental Problems about Post Hong Kong Movies and China-Hong Kong Co-productions (地理文化．文化密碼．類型電影 ── 後港產片、香港與內地合拍片存在的根本問題).” Hong Kong Cinema Review 2005 (香港電影回顧2005). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 2006.
Wong, Wai-kwok Benson. “Visual and Discourse Resistance on the ‘China Factor’: The Cultural Formation of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong.” In Citizenship, Identity and Social Movement in the New Hong Kong. Edited by Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper. London: Routledge, 2017, 139-141. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315207971
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