Some young directors have been involved in both the production of independent and commercial films, such as Jevons Au Man-kit (Ten Years, 2015 and Trivisa, 2016) and Chow Kwun-wai (A Complicated Story, 2013 and Ten Years, 2015). My interviewees, including an independent (Interview 16) and a commercial film director (Interview 34), have expressed similar ideas of pursing creative freedom as their major motive for filmmaking. Additionally, the politically-charged independent film Ten Years (2015) turned into a sensation after its release, and it moved into the mainstream of local filmmaking, opening the door for other local productions to exhibit an increased level of political consciousness.
The difficulties of separating independent filmmakers from commercial filmmakers both before and after Hong Kong cinema’s entering a period of decline, have created actual hurdles in comparing filmmakers of different generations. Here I follow Ortner’s (2012) [open references in new window] discussion about dividing mainstream Hollywood films from independent ones. She states that there are two issues in the demarcation of the groups. First, the definitions of Hollywood film and independent film are not fixed. The fact that Hollywood films often have complicated characters and serious subject matter, combined with the existence of independent films that receive funding from major studios and have happy endings does challenge the notion of a drawing a line distinctly between them. But in terms of quantity, high-budget, entertaining, and formulaic films have always constituted the majority of Hollywood’s total output. Similarly, low-budget films with serious themes and subject matters have long represented a greater percentage of the production of independent film. I argue a similar phenomenon is present in Hong Kong cinema. From this perspective, commercial filmmaking has always outnumbered independent filmmaking in terms of the number of practitioners, range of production, and influence. Lee acknowledges that, despite the sea change brought by the development of the Hong Kong and Mainland film industries, “independent film scene seems to have remained, as it were, a minority interest and a marginal presence amidst these changes” (2013:4). However, I do not mean to undercut the cultural contribution of certain independent films and particularly how they help to shape cultural identity.
The second issue, as Ortner (2012) observes, is that there is a spectrum of what can be seen as an independent film. As she claims, the spectrum has two ends, one is more “Hollywood,” while the other is more avant-garde and experimental. This is precisely the case in Hong Kong cinema. For example, The Runaway Pistol (2002, dir. Wah-Chuen Lam), produced with the help of film celebrities, could be seen near the commercial film end, while the documentary Rice Distribution (dir. Tammy Cheung, 2002) might be closer to the other end. Film independence being a scalar concept, the question of where to draw a dividing line between independent and mainstream film remains open to interpretation. For the purpose of contrast, Ortner (2012) has to write as if there were a clear line between independent films and Hollywood films. And for the propose of this study, I have to escape from the mission of filtering out the independent films from the commercial ones, given all the actual difficulties we discussed above.
Instead, I see Hong Kong cinema before and after its decline in the 90s as two totalities, and each features clearly defined characteristics prevalent in most film practitioners. In the 1980s and early 1990s, most of film practitioners were working in mainstream filmmaking, thus leading to a notable focus on commercial success. After 2000, a greater degree of politicization has been exhibited among younger film practitioners, who are seen as the most politically aware generation in history, and who are driving the development of Hong Kong cinema in the absence of the established generation. From this perspective, we start the comparison of the two clusters by examining the two cinematic trends: those of the Hong Kong New Wave and the Hong Kong SAR New Wave cinemas.
Two generations of cinematic New Waves
In its 110-year history, Hong Kong cinema has had a massive influence on world film culture and the global film industry. Since the arrival of talkies in the early 1930s, Cantonese films and Mandarin films took turns dominating the Hong Kong market. As the local dialect, Cantonese was the major language used in films here before the Second World War. Nevertheless, with the influx of mainland immigrants after the war, Mandarin films gained popularity on the island city from the mid-1940s until the mid-1970s, when Cantonese films made a comeback. Bucking the domination of big studios, which produced popular Mandarin martial art films, a large number of young and creative talents came back to Hong Kong in the late 1970s after studying abroad and made ground-breaking Cantonese films that initiated what became known as the “Hong Kong New Wave.” Starting around 1984, some productions gained international attention, which brought the movement into a phase seen by some as the “Second New Wave.” The New Wave was spurred by the unprecedented worldwide commercial success of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and early 1990s. These filmmakers were working in a Golden Age, situated in the context of a buoyant economy in Hong Kong. After Colonial Hong Kong became the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China) and the industry sunk into a slump around the mid-1990s, coproducing with mainland Chinese studios gradually emerged as a remedy for the ailing industry, and became a significant factor in the 2000s and 2010s. Young entrants to the filmdom have thus faced realities drastically different from those of their predecessors, and created what has become known as the “Hong Kong SAR New Wave.” From a historical point of view, the generational differences of the established and the young filmmakers overlap with these two major cinematic tides.
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| The migration of mainland film talent to Hong Kong after the Second World War, particularly from Shanghai, brought about the popularity of Mandarin films. Due to their higher budgets and more lavish production, Mandarin films marginalized Cantonese films to second-tier status. In Mandarin production, Huángméidiào, which derives from Chinese opera, is a widely welcomed musical genre; its record-breaking hit, The Love Eterne (1963), remains a classic of the genre. | Owing to Mandarin productions and Cantonese television, Cantonese cinema was at such a disadvantage that no Cantonese films were even made in 1972. The House of 72 Tenants was the only Cantonese film made in 1973; it enabled a comeback for Cantonese cinema by depicting modern Hong Kong life and average Hong Kong people. Later, the Hui Brothers’ comedies further revitalized Cantonese cinema by producing down-to-earth movies for the local audience. |
In Hong Kong New Wave Cinema: 1978-2000 (2008), Professor Cheuk Pak Tong gave an accurate and comprehensive introduction to this momentous cinematic tide:
“In the short span of eight years from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, the Hong Kong film industry spawned a group of young directors aged about thirty. This brand-new force consisted of about thirty people, including Ann Hui, Yim Ho, Tsui Hark, Allen Fong, Patrick Tam, Clifford Choi, Dennis Yu and others. Most of them had received film training overseas, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom; then, at various points in time, joined several local television broadcasting institutions……. After gaining practical experience in film-making for several years in the television industry, many of them left and entered the film industry.”
“The infusion of so much indigenous new blood in the field of film was unprecedented in the 80-year history of Hong Kong cinema. Passionate about film and art, these new directors gradually got a feel for current social developments. They were familiar with what the audience liked and could make films with unique ideas, interesting themes, forceful images and unusual styles. Their works were widely accepted by the mass audience and also gained recognition from the news media and critics. This group of young directors, with their irrepressible attitude, was like a huge wave passing through a Hong Kong film industry that was then at a low tide, opening up a new terrain. People thus dubbed them ‘The New Wave’ of Hong Kong cinema.” (Cheuk, 2008: 7)
In the mid-1980s, the second wave emerged when directors such as Wong Kai-wai, Clara Law, Stanley Kwan, Mabel Cheung, Alex Law and many others, took their works to the major international film festivals and garnered critical acclaim as well as an international fanbase. As Marchetti summarises, if the first wave brought the world to Hong Kong through the return of directors who attended film schools abroad and subsequently sent them “home” to China to make Hong Kong/Mainland co-productions after the restrictions were loosened in China ([Boat People, 1982, dir. Ann Hui; [Homecoming], 1984, dir. Yim Ho, etc.], then the following second wave took Hong Kong to the world via the international presence of Hong Kong directors and their works, including those made in the United States, Australia, Argentina and more ([Illegal Immigrant], 1985, dir. Mabel Cheung; [A Floating Life], 1996, dir. Clara Law; [Happy Together], 1997, dir. Wong Kai-wai) (Marchetti 2012). To discuss the generation who created the New Wave, reviewing the history of the 1960s and 1970s is of great value.
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| Mabel Cheung’s films have a notable theme of migration issues, particularly depicting Hong Kongers and overseas Chinese before the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Her “Migration Trilogy,” which comprises Illegal Immigrant (1985), An Autumn's Tale (1987), and Eight Taels of Gold (1989), marked a peak in her filming career; all these films were made in collaboration with her husband, Alex Law. | As a renowned director couple in Hong Kong, Alex Law and Mabel Cheung oftentimes take turns to be each other’s director, producer, or writer. Their long-term collaboration has produced numerous classics of Hong Kong cinema, including the abovementioned “Migration Trilogy” and the Echoes of the Rainbow (2010), which is widely considered to have brought some freshness to the gloomy local films produced under the shadow of big-budgeted Mainland/Hong Kong co-productions. |
Primarily born in the late 1940s to 1950s, the directors of the New Wave were born into the post-war baby boom and came of age in the 60s to 70s. The 1960s witnessed a worldwide turbulence that featured youth-led rebellions. In the British Colony of Hong Kong, the economy was growing steadily, with a GDP per capita of 400 USD that equivalent to those of Greece, Peru or South Africa (Dorn, 1998). Half of the population was under 25 years old due to the baby boom (Manion, 2004). The political situation was uneasy in this decade though, affected by anxieties about the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China and the accumulation of social grievances on the island. Several riots erupted and spurred the government to take measurements to ameliorate the prevalence of poor housing conditions, as well as improve public education and welfare.
In 1966, riots were sparked by the government’s decision to increase the fare of Star Ferry, an important mode of transportation for poor people, by 25 percent. A year later, even larger riots broke out between the Communists and their sympathisers, and the colonial government. Starting as a labour dispute, the riots soon grew into massive strikes and demonstrations that challenged British colonial rule. The leftist struggle gained the support of Beijing, thus rumours that the People’s Republic was going to take control of the colony began to spread. Rioters became more violent and resorted to terrorist tactics. The attempted overthrow of the colonial government was unsuccessful but planted seeds of fear of mainland China and the Communist regime among Hong Kong people. After the riots, investigations revealed that the alienation of the young generation, along with the terrible living conditions and blatant social inequality, were the underlying causes of the turmoil.
This post-war generation, as Fu (2000) outlines, “was estranged by the oppression of the dominant values and declared war against the established order,” and it “claimed to fight for the subalterns (women, minorities, and laborers), striving to build a new world of equality and unfettered liberty” (Fu, 2000:71). In Hong Kong, this generational conflict became acute in the 60s. Young people, unlike their refugee parents, criticised the colonial management, demanded an increased role in its politics, and claimed the city as their home. To their elders, they were “spoiled, restless, and dangerously westernised, turning their backs on traditional codes of behaviour (especially filial piety and discipline) and thereby posing a menace to the social order” (Fu, 2000:71). This is reminiscent of what the baby boomers have to say about the current generation of young Hong Kongers. As a British colony, Hong Kong citizens were known to be characteristically law-abiding and complacent (Lee, 2013). Accusing their baby boomer children of being “dangerously westernised,” the elder generation was dismayed with their children’s defiance of the colonial government, which was considered a “western” behaviour. The economy soared in Hong Kong during the 1970s, yet social issues such as income inequality, inflation, and low quality of life standards worsened during this boom. Young filmmakers at that era absorbed inspirations from the underbelly of society, social and political activism, and public conversations about local identity, creating the ground-breaking New Wave cinema movement and leading to the golden decades of Hong Kong cinema (Fu, 2000; Bordwell, 2011;Law, 2001). They, and the current young generations, bear a striking resemblance to each other. They are both disobedient, self-expressive, and concerned with the socially disadvantaged.
The ‘Hong Kong SAR New Wave’, as its name suggests, indicates a certain level of continuity with the baby boomer New Wave in the 1970s. Szeto & Chen (2012) have first used this term in scholarly discussion in 2012 to refer to a generation of Hong Kong directors who are:
“either (1) new directors coming of age and garnering serious local critical attention after Hong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region of China (HKSAR); or (2) directors who have joined the industry earlier and may have substantial experience, but have only gained serious local critical attention and/or acclaim after 1997; but most importantly, (3) they are directors who are consciously and critically aware of themselves as working from a local condition very different from the pre-1997 Hong Kong, who takes on local issues with much greater Sinophone intra-local and inter-local awareness, and whose world-view depart from the chauvinist and xenophobic petitgrandiose Hong Kongism typical of pre-1997 Hong Kong colonial inferiority complex” (Szeto, 2006) (Szeto & Chen, 2012:122).
As Chu (2015) observes, the two generations of New Wave directors were both able to “present the unpresentable.” The baby boomer New Wave filmmakers experimented with new genres and methods of shooting film, distinguishing themselves from the traditional film masters such as Li Hanxiang and Chang Che; while SAR New Wave directors have been attempting to present contents that cannot be presented in the current co-production model. In a nutshell, Chu called the common ground as “refusing the consolation of correct forms” (Chu, 2015:114).
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| Young director Adam Wong Sau Ping garnered public attention with his feature film The Way We Dance in 2013. After the screening, its tagline “How far are you willing to go for your dream?” went viral among young people in Hong Kong. They replace “your dream” with anything they are pursuing in life, even “protecting Hong Kong” during the protests in 2019. | Philip Yung Tsz-Kwong was inspired by a true story to make his feature film Port of Call (2015). In the film, the protagonist Wang Jiamei is a 16-year-old immigrant from mainland China who is driven by loneliness and material desires to do “compensated dating”, something very akin to being an escort, in Hong Kong. When she meets a lonely young man named Ting Sze Cong, with whom she has chatted online for a long time, she requests him to kill her during sex to end her pain, which he does, later dismembering her body to hide the evidence. |
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| Somewhere Beyond the Mist (2017) is another film that is adopted from a true story. The teenage protagonist Connie grows up in a dysfunctional family, with a mother who endures domestic violence and blindly worships male power, and a father who is violent and rude. Living in desperate circumstances, she and her boyfriend design a plan to kill her parents and eventually execute it. | Among films made by young directors, many feature protagonists as patients of physical or mental illnesses. Tomorrow is Another Day (2018) depicts a tough mother who musters the courage to carry on in life and take care of her autistic son after she leaves her husband who she finds cheating on her. |
However, the two cinematic waves are essentially different due to market circumstances. When the baby boomer New Wave generation had just graduated from films schools overseas, various television stations in Hong Kong were actively seeking professionals. The scant supply of talents and the huge demand for content left them enormous room for creativity. The film industry during the 1970s was in a process of rapid market expansion. What the current young SAR New Wave filmmakers are currently facing, however, is sharp shrinkage of both the domestic and overseas markets, and a tough employment environment. The signature genre of Hong Kong cinema, gangster films, “has been facing a deadlock,” As Chu points out (2015: 116), co-producing with mainland Chinese companies would make such blockbusters possible, but their politically controversial themes and bloody scenes have turned producers to other ideologically safe and market-proven genres for release on the mainland. Meanwhile, local production, unable to fund big-budget films, has turned to ones with subaltern and (semi-)art-house themes, which further alienate mainstream audiences.
Optimistic about the SAR New Wave, Szeto and Chen (2012) gave a rave review of the young generation, asserting that their
“films are not loud and cocky like films made by the previous generation. They are low-key, grounded, inclusive, collaborative, open, but also very determined, principled and persistent, even in adversity. They look cool, but they mean hot” (Szeto & Chen, 2012:131).
Asked whether the SAR New Wave could eventually revive Hong Kong cinema, as their baby boomer New Wave predecessors did in the 1970s, David, a renowned film producer expressed dismay, saying:
“What does the word “industry” mean anyway? It means a variety of products, a standardized industrial process, and consumers that the manufacturers should study. Producing one single genre of films could not bring prosperity to the whole industry. During the peak time, we had gangsters, comedies, horror films, period films, erotic films, and so on and so forth. Now there is one: pathetic art films. Obviously, it is not an industry anymore.” — Interview 43 (David, film producer/scriptwriter)
Szeto and Chen (2012) have used a broad brush-stroke to paint the picture of Hong Kong SAR New Wave, considering works from filmmakers of any age, so long as they came to the fore after 1997 and are aware that their industrial conditions are considerably different than they were during colonial Hong Kong epoch. I, on the other hand, primarily focus on young people who were born between the 1970s and early 1990s, and who rose to prominence after the year 2000. These emerging young filmmakers are as markedly different from their predecessors, including both the baby boomer New Wave directors and other previous established film practitioners, in terms of filmmaking ideas and practices. In the next few sections, the divergences will be examined one at a time and reasons for them will be analysed as well.
