A full day symposium devoted to critical thinking about Hong Kong Cinema over the past decade, presented in association with the Hong Kong economic Trade office and University of Salford. This day event, open to all, explores the varied responses to films produced in Hong Kong during this transitional period including relations with the mainland and contemporary stardom.
Syposium Schedule (full detail in Symposium Programme)
11.00am – 1.15pm
- The Transformation of Hong Kong Film Culture: Diversification and the Mainland Turn – Chris Berry.
- Dying for Hong Kong: Film Stars and Performance – Leung Wing-Fai.
- The Pivotal Decade: Hong Kong Art 1997- 2007.
Lunch Break
2.30 – 5.00pm
- Age of Independents: New Hong Kong Film and Video – Teresa Kwong.
- The Hong Kong Film Awards 1997–2006: Comparisons and Characteristics – Julian Stringer.
7.00pm
- HKETO Made in Hong Kong reception.
11.00am – 1.15pm
- The Transformation of Hong Kong Film Culture: Diversification and the Mainland Turn – Chris Berry
Fifteen years ago, Hong Kong was the film capital of the Chinese diaspora. Its industry produced hundreds of films a year, and sent them out to Chinatown cinemas across the world. Since then, production of feature films has plummeted and the overseas market has largely disappeared. However, rather than a tale of doom and gloom, maybe we should see this as a process of transformation. During the same period, Hong Kong cinema has gone from having a one-track mind focus on feature films to becoming a diversified culture with more short films, documentaries and independent features than ever before. And, as it has lost the overseas market, it has turned towards the mainland, which Hong Kong film culture insiders see as the future of the industry.
Chris Berry is Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmiths College.
His publications include Cinema and the National: China on Screen (Columbia University Press and Hong Kong University Press, 2006, co-editor); and Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003, editor).
- Dying for Hong Kong: Film Stars and Performance – Leung Wing-Fai
When mega-stars Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui died in 2003 (Cheung committed suicide on 1 April; Mui died of cancer in December), the discourses in Hong Kong focused on the death of popular culture and lamented the passing of a generation of ‘true’ performers. Film stars who emerged from the 1980s embodied a time in the history of Hong Kong cinema that was commercially successful, creative and prolific. The death of Cheung and Mui coincided with the crisis of Hong Kong’s film culture, the decline of local media and the city’s economic power in the Asia-Pacific rim region. This talk will examine how Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui are discursively (re)constructed as legends, fulfilling the nostalgia for authentic stardom.
Leung Wing-Fai is a writer specialising in East Asian cinemas. She is completing a doctoral thesis on film stardom in Hong Kong at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is co-editing (with Leon Hunt) East Asian Cinemas: Transnational Connections on Film (I.B. Tauris, 2007).
- The Pivotal Decade: Hong Kong Art 1997-2007
Curator Ying Kwok will give an introduction to the Chinese Arts Centre and their current exhibition exploring artists’ responses to the last ten years.
Lunch Break
2.30 – 5.00pm
- Age of Independents: New Hong Kong Film and Video – Teresa Kwong
An account of the development of independent cinema in Hong Kong over the last decade. This talk will look at key figures such as Fruit Chan alongside other less well known filmmakers. There will also be an exploration of how Hong Kong itself is represented in independent cinema.
Teresa Kwong is an arts promoter, curator and producer for film and media arts based in Hong Kong. She is currently Director of Hong Kong Independent Short Film & Video Awards (ifva) at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Teresa is committed to nurture and promote the next generation of local talents in creative media and has recently started to produce short films with up-and-coming filmmakers.
- The Hong Kong Film Awards 1997–2006: Comparisons and Characteristics – Julian Stringer.
This talk investigates the importance of the Hong Kong Film Awards in defining, celebrating, and promoting the local cinema industry post-1997. In arguing that the HKIFA presents a version of how the industry would like to be perceived, Stringer will analyse patterns among the HKIFA’s award-giving activities so as to discover the kinds of films that the industry apparently values. In this way, it becomes possible to see how notions of ‘quality’ Asian cinema are being constructed in Hong Kong today.
Julian Stringer is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Nottingham. He has written widely on East Asian cinema, and is the author of the forthcoming books Blazing Passions: Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema (Wallflower Press, 2008) and Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (Hong Kong University Press, 2008).
Closing debate chaired by Andy Willis, University of Salford
7.00pm
- HKETO Made in Hong Kong reception
The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office proudly invite all symposium guests, attendees and other VIPs to a special reception to celebrate the season, Made in Hong Kong: A Decade of New Cinema.