Hong Kong Cinema as a Dialect Cinema?

Hong Kong's commercial film industry has had ups and downs in its nearly ninety-year history,¹ yet it endures and continues to churn out movies by the thousands—urbane and profane, commercial and alternative. However, the recession it has experienced since the late 1990s has hit hard. Hong Kong cinema had always been transnational: winning popularity and influence in Southeast Asia; borrowing filmmakers, technology, and natural scenery from Japan and other neighboring countries; circulating into Anglophone markets via action genres; and raising its international image by participating in international film festivals.² Hong Kong cinema might be described as transnational, but the "national" is not applicable to this cinema in any direct sense. Its success in the twentieth century was marked by the cultural and economic "irrelevance" of Chinese mainland cinema; and, ironically, its recent downturn is in part a result of the rise of mainland commercial cinema. Indeed, the film industry's difficulties since the 1990s can be characterized by Hong Kong cinema's painstaking attempts to come to terms with China.

After a decade of experimentation by filmmakers, two options appear to be viable: making big-budget Putonghua coproductions for the Chinese nation³ or making regional films for Cantonese speakers in southern China and the rest of the world (an estimated global audience of almost 100 million). The "nationalist" option is prevalent at the moment: not only are most Hong Kong films now made in large part for the People's Republic of China (PRC) market, but studios, filmmakers, crews, and talent are increasingly based in Beijing. Many of the actual operations are also conducted on the mainland owing to lower costs and cultural proximity to the potential audience. This strategy portends the possible demise of Hong Kong cinema as a cultural industry; as talent and operations are drained from the area, the "domestic" market is increasingly marginalized. Identification with Hong Kong on the part of actors and key creative personnel might still be valued in China, but should the nationalist model prevail, this is likely to be the last generation of film talent to retain this distinctive identity.

As for the "regionalist" option, it has been made possible by the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA). CEPA V (implemented in 2008) removes quota restrictions on the distribution and screening of Cantonese versions of Hong Kong films in Guangdong Province.⁴ The new policy, whose implementation has been extremely slow and whose effects remain unclear, allows Hong Kong films to qualify as local products in Guangdong, therefore bypassing many of the political and cultural restrictions that accompany cross-border coproductions. Carving out a new Cantonese market in southern China also means the expansion of the domestic audience for Hong Kong movies from the city's 7 million citizens to the 86.42 million residents of Guangdong Province. Although not all residents of Guangdong are native Cantonese speakers, they are culturally close to Hong Kongers and have been receptive to Hong Kong popular culture for the last three decades. This is particularly the case in Guangzhou, a major Chinese city that has retained a strong and distinct local identity. Many Hong Kong filmmakers are more confident about making movies for southern China than for the vast Chinese nation. Much attention has already been paid to the transborder coproduction trend; in this short essay I argue that this second option might imply a new cultural identity for this regional cinema.

Those filmmakers and studios committed to Hong Kong-based Cantonese productions (such as Johnnie To and his studio, Milkyway Image) particularly welcome CEPA, as it allows them to continue to devote themselves to the genres and themes with which they have achieved notable success.⁵ Even Sundream Motion Pictures, the Hong Kong i-Cable subsidiary film studio that has invested heavily in transborder coproductions, has decided to focus on making more films for local tastes in 2009. As the director of Sundream, Xu Xiaoming, asserts, viewers in the Guangdong region account for one-third of national box office receipts, and they are attracted by Hong Kong-based Cantonese products.⁶ With...