MCLC: cinematic context for HK's turmoil

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cinematic context for HK’s turmoil
Source: NYT (10/7/14): http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/a-cinematic-context-for-hong-kongs-turmoil/
A Cinematic Context for Hong Kong’s Turmoil
By EDWARD WONG
A protest site in the Mong Kok district on Saturday.  Recent events have struck a chord with fans of Hong Kong cinema.Credit Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Image
The Hong Kong film industry is one of the most prominent in the world, often compared with Hollywood and Bollywood. Its products, from Bruce Lee kung fu movies to Wong Kar-wai’s meditations on memory, are embraced by audiences around the globe, but they also reflect local sensibilities and aim to, in their own ways, comment on the social changes felt each day by Hong Kong’s people. And those working in the industry are often engaged in the political life of the city.
The pro-democracy Umbrella Revolution, as the protesters call it, has been no exception. One of Hong Kong’s most famous actors, Chow Yun-fat, was among the first to speak out in support of the protesters, condemning the use of tear gas by the police against students, according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter, which cited Hong Kong news reports.
“I’ve met the residents, the students — they are very brave and it’s touching to see that they’re fighting for what they want,” Mr. Chow said. “The students are reasonable. If the government can come up with a solution that the citizens or students are satisfied with, I believe the crisis will end.” Other well-known actors who have voiced support for the students include Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Anthony Wong.
As events continued to unfold in recent days, Shelly Kraicer, a critic, scholar of Chinese film and festival programmer, compiled a list for Sinosphere of Hong Kong films that he says provide context for the Umbrella Revolution (or Occupy Central, as it is sometimes called), its goals of political and social change and its demand that Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing allow Hong Kong to hold fully democratic elections. The list and his commentary follow:
Hong Kong’s film industry, commercial and broad-based as it is, has always provided a mirror of the territory’s political anxieties, and a record of its complex history. Below I’ve sketched out, thematically, a guide to the Hong Kong movies that are essential for understanding the Occupy Central movement today, the wellsprings of its anxieties, its historical antecedents and its motivating principles.
Hong Kong’s cop and gangster thrillers have always provided a theater and a laboratory for a political cinema of turmoil, anxiety and pessimism. The director Johnnie To leads the way, but Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and John Woo contribute their own dark visions.
Johnnie To’s “Election” 黑社會 (2005), “Election 2″ 黑社會以和為貴 (2006) — Hong Kong triad elections under mainland supervision/interference. Allegory-hunters don’t need to work too hard with this one.
Johnnie To’s 2005 film, “Election”: organized crime and political intrigue.Credit Tartan Films
Mr. To’s “Life Without Principle” 奪命金 (2011) — More political/financial than gangster, this shows Hong Kong ruled by money (a society under the rule of capital-defined law). As the gap between rich and poor increases, plutocrat tycoons gain and regular people lose, or fantasize escapes.
Ringo Lam’s “City on Fire” 龍虎風雲 (1987) is one of a number of films provoked by the 1984 Chinese-British Joint Declaration. An example of a Hong Kong movie industry specialty: the cinema of anarchy-anxiety, expressing the population’s darkest fears about China’s control of the territory. Other key examples include Tsui Hark’s “Dangerous Encounters: First Kind” 第一類型危險 (1980); Ann Hui’s “Boat People” 投奔怒海 (1982); Peter Mak and Mr. Hark’s “Wicked City” 妖獸都市 (1992); Mr. To and Ching Siu-tung’s “Executioners” 現代豪俠傳 (1993); Patrick Yau and Mr. To’s “Expect the Unexpected” 非常突然 (1998).
Anthony Chan’s “A Fishy Story” 不脫襪的人 (1989) and John Woo’s “A Bullet in the Head” 喋血街頭 (1990) respond to the shock and horror that the June 4, 1989, massacre in Tiananmen Square inspired in Hong Kong with historical allegories (the 1967 Communist riots in Hong Kong and the Vietnam War).
But all is not dark and anxious. Hong Kong movies have plenty of countervailing optimism.
Ms. Hui’s “Ordinary Heroes” 千言萬語 (1999) displays a Hong Kong brand of social activism and idealism: Ms. Hui looks to humane civil society as a guarantee of social justice for Hong Kong under mainland rule.
Ms. Hui again: “A Simple Life” 桃姐 (2011). Ms. Hui is the inevitable Hong Kong filmmaker, who has thought most deeply in film about Hong Kong people and their values. “A Simple Life” and her other miniature masterpiece, “The Way We Are” 天水圍的日與夜 (2008), show how private lives act as a refuge and wellspring for moral behavior: the closest Hong Kong comes to realistic utopian thinking.
Fruit Chan’s more boisterous take on the modern-day construction of Hong Kong identity, “Made in Hong Kong” 香港製造 (1997), remains one of Hong Kong’s best indies.
History and politics: Jackie Chan (who used to be on the side of the Hong Kong people, before his remodeling as a “Chinese patriot”) sets out Hong Kongers’ anticolonial energy and creativity in his historical comedy “Project A” Ａ計划 (1983).
Engaged films that lay out post-handover politics and economics rather more explicitly include Herman Yau’s “From the Queen to the Chief Executive” 等候董建華發落 (2001) and Tang Shuxuan’s “China Behind” 再見中國 (1974). These are overtly engaged political allegories from political filmmakers, taking China-Hong Kong as their theme.
More recently, Anson Mak’s “On the Edge of a Floating City, We Sing” 在浮城的角落唱首歌 (2012) and Mo Lai Yan-chi’s “N+N” (2012) are, respectively, a documentary and a docu-feature hybrid by young female directors, one critical, one hopeful, portraying Hong Kongers’ individual acts of resistance/survival against the nexus of Chinese-cum-local-tycoon rule.
Underlying issues: Hong Kong cinema has always featured dramas of underclass resistance and survival in the face of capital exploitation, starting from Lee Tit’s “In the Face of Demolition” 危樓春曉 (1953) and continuing with Jacob Cheung’s “Cageman” 籠民 (1992), a riveting look at Hong Kong’s underclass, men living in cage-like hovels. Fruit Chan’s “Little Cheung” 細路祥 (1999) is the essential modern update, whose impoverished Mong Kok child heroes claim Hong Kong for their own, on the eve of the 1997 handover.
Hong Kong-China tensions are omnipresent in Hong Kong cinema, sometimes dramatized, sometimes played out as comedy and farce. Fruit Chan’s “Durian Durian” 榴蓮飄飄 (2000) is a masterpiece profoundly examining how “one country, two systems” inscribes itself on the body of a young Chinese sex worker moving between Hong Kong and China’s northeast.
Hong Kong also produces comedies that try to tame the tensions with genre trimmings, including Alfred Cheung’s “Her Fatal Ways” 表姐你好野 (1990) and Pang Ho-cheung’s “Love in the Buff” 春嬌與志明 (2012).
Whatever the genre, Hong Kong cinema reflects the turmoil and energy of Hong Kong, its darkest fears and its sources of strength and optimism in the face of the greatest challenge to its identity and way of life.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on October 8, 2014
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