Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland and Self. By Yingchi Chu. [London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. xxi+184 pp. £55.00. ISBN 0-7007-1746-3.]

Extract

The recent success of Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat, Jet Li, Wong Kar-wai, and John Woo in reaching a global audience, along with the enormous changes in Hong Kong since the early 1990s, has attracted a lot of critical attention to Hong Kong cinema around the world. Beginning with Stephen Teo's Hong Kong Cinema (1997) and David Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong (2000), scholarship on the cinema of Hong Kong – whether from the perspective of cultural identity, global culture, film history, or film art – has greatly expanded. Australian scholar Yingchi Chu's book, Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland and Self, contributes to this growing trend.

Hong Kong Cinema is a brief but ambitious book. In less than 150 pages, it tries to map out the entire history of the cinema, from the 1910s to developments after the 1997 takeover. The book draws on a provocative conceptual framework to provide a sweeping overview of Hong Kong cinema and offers some fascinating observations on the industry. However, the book needs further revisions to bring out its rich potential.