New Hong Kong Cinema

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Latest release: March 1, 2010
Series
12
Books
Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time
Book 1·Jun 2003
0.0
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$20.00
Ashes of Time, by the internationally acclaimed director Wong Kar-wai, has been considered to be one of the most complex and self-reflexive of Hong Kong films. Loosely based on the stories by renowned martial arts novelist Jin Yong, Wong Kar-wai has created a very different kind of martial arts film, which invites close and sustained study.This book presents the nature and significance of Ashes of Time, and the reasons for its being regarded as a landmark in Hong Kong cinema. Placing the film in historical and cultural context, Dissanayake discusses its vision, imagery, visual style, and narrative structure. In particular, he focuses on the themes of mourning, confession, fantasy, and kung fu movies, which enable the reader to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the film.

Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together
Book 2·Jun 2003
5.0
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$20.00
Wong Kar-wai's controversial film, Happy Together, was released in Hong Kong just before the handover of power in 1997. The film shows two Chinese gay men in Buenos Aires and reflects on Hong Kong's past and future by probing masculinity, aggression, identity, and homosexuality. It also gives a reading of Latin America, perhaps as an allegory of Hong Kong as another post-colonial society.

Examining one single, memorable, and beautiful film, but placing it in the context of other films by Wong Kar-wai and other Hong Kong directors, this book illustrates the depth, as well as the spectacle and action, that characterizes Hong Kong cinema. Tambling investigates the possibility of seeing Happy Together in terms of 'national allegory', as Fredric Jameson suggests Third World texts should be seen. Alternatively, he emphasizes the fragmentary nature of the film by discussing both its images and its narrative in the light of Borges and Manuel Puig. He also looks at the film's relation to the American road movie and to the history of the tango. He poses questions how emotions are presented in the film (is this a 'nostalgia film'?); whether the masculinity in it should be seen negatively or as signs of a new hopefulness about Hong Kong's future; and whether the film indicates new ways of thinking of gender relationships or sexuality.

John Woo's A Better Tomorrow: Autobiographical Stories by Modern Chinese Women Writers
Book 3·Jan 2004
0.0
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$20.00
A Better Tomorrow has always been hailed as a milestone in Hong Kong cinema. This book describes the different responses to the movie in Hong Kong and later in its reception worldwide, which paved the way for the promotion of John Woo and Chow Yun-fat to their current prominence in Hollywood.

Fang examines the different notions of the genre of action cinema in Asian and Western film industries. She tracks the connections between ying shung pian, or "hero" movie, the term by which Woo's film became famous in Hong Kong, and the spectacle of violence emphasized in the term "heroic bloodshed," the category in which the film was known in the West. Finally, she concludes with a discussion of the status of the film and its huge success in the current globalized industry.
Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs - The Trilogy: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841-1880
Book 4·Apr 2007
5.0
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$20.00
Infernal Affairs has received journalistic, popular and corporate notice but little vigorous critical attention. In this book, Gina Marchetti explores the way this example of Hong Kong's cinematic eclecticism has crossed borders as a story, a commercial product and a work of art; and has had an undeniable impact on current Hong Kong cinema. Moreover, she uses this trilogy to highlight the way Hong Kong cinema continues to be inextricably intertwined with global film culture and the transnational movie market. Infernal Affairs served as the source for the Academy Award-winning film The Departed (2006). The Martin Scorsese-directed film won Oscars for best motion picture, director, adapted screenplay and film editing. This is the first time that an American film based on a Hong Kong production swept the Academy Awards by winning four top prizes.
King Hu's A Touch of Zen
Book 5·Nov 2006
3.0
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$20.00
A Touch of Zen is one of the first Chinese-language films to gain recognition in an international film festival (the Grand Prix at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival), creating the generic mould for the "crossover" success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 2000. The film has achieved a cult status over the years but little has been written about it. This first book-length study of the classic martial arts film therefore redresses its critical neglect, and explores its multi-leveled dimensions and mysteries. One of the central features of the film is the enigmatic knight-lady (xia nü) whose quest for revenge leads her to cross paths with a poor scholar whose interest in military strategy seals their alliance. Teo discusses the psychological manifestations and implications of this relationship and concludes that the film's continuing relevance lies in its portrait of sexuality and the feminist desires of the heroine. Teo also analyzes the film's form as an action piece and the director's preoccupation with Zen as a creative inspiration and as a subject in its own right. As such, he argues that the film is a highly unconventional and idiosyncratic work which attempts to transcend its own genre and reach the heights of universal transcendence. Teo grounds his study in both Western and Chinese literary sources, providing a broad and comprehensive treatise based on the film's narrative concepts and symbols.
Mabel Cheung Yuen-Ting's An Autumn's Tale: A Cultural Janus
Book 6·Apr 2008
0.0
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$20.00
This study of An Autumn's Tale argues that Hong Kong films are a window into understanding the shared pasts and ongoing connections between Hong Kong and other globalized cities. Viewed through the lens of transnational American Studies, the film sheds important insights on both Hong Kong and U.S. history, culture, and identity.

Through this important film from a woman director, the author explores the way Hong Kong and the U.S. have been and continue to be connected through flows of people, ideas, and events that make their impact known on both sides of the Pacific. The book reminds readers of the importance of seeing Hong Kong films as cultural texts that address historical events, socio-economic shifts, and the impact of those events on individual lives.

With its focus on migration and migrants, An Autumn's Tale especially benefits from the transnational American studies perspective that Dr. Ford brings to her examination. This exciting new field draws from the best of many disciplinary perspectives as well as interdisciplinary perspectives in cultural and postcolonial studies with an eye towards understanding how national identity is both fluid and resilient, even in these global times.

The book is readable and teachable for those looking to understand connections between the U.S. and Asia during the closing years of the twentieth century during a dynamic period – the 1980s – in both Hong Kong and New York.

Johnnie To Kei-Fung's PTU
Book 7·Mar 2009
0.0
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$20.00
PTU is an underappreciated noir masterpiece by one of Hong Kong's most prolific and commercially successful directors. Johnnie To Kei-fung has been called "the poet of post-1997 and the economic savior of the Hong Kong film industry" for an extraordinary range of films produced during some of Hong Kong cinema's most difficult years. While many of To's celebrated films such as Election, Exiled and The Mission feature themes of criminal glory and revenge, PTU centers on the ethical dilemmas, personal dramas and stoic teamwork in the elite Police Tactical Unit. The story follows the PTU's all-night search for an officer's missing gun as they navigate triad turf struggles and marauding jewel thieves from mainland China. Shot over several years in the hauntingly empty pre-dawn streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, and released coincidentally amid the 2003 SARS panic, the film evokes Hong Kong's post-handover economic despair and multiple identity crises. In terms of character development and psychological complexity, Mike Ingham argues that PTU is the most aesthetically rigorous and satisfying of To's many films.
John Woo's The Killer
Book 8·Jan 2009
5.0
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$20.00
A classic tale of loyalty and bloody betrayal, John Woo's The Killer (1989) was centrally important to the growth of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. It helped launch the international stardom of Woo and lead actor Chow Yun-fat, who plays a disllusioned hitman taking his fatal final assignment to help a lounge singer he accidentally blinded. Illustrating the film's place in the chivalric tradition of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema, where cops and noble villains sometimes join forces in defense of traditional virtues and personal honor, Kenneth Hall documents the strong influence of Woo's mentor Chang Cheh as well as Jean-Pierre Melville and other film noir pioneers. Hall also analyzes the film's influence on other directors, including Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.
Yuen Woo Ping's WING CHUN
Book 9·Mar 2009
3.8
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$20.00
Yuen Woo Ping's kung fu comedy based on the legendary female character Wing Chun is a landmark of action choreography and heroic womanhood in Chinese cinema. This book explores Wing Chun's narrative representation of femininity and the martial arts genre, its history, traditions and cultural influences. While studio-made Hong Kong genre cinema has stressed action over narrative, Wing Chun offers a more egalitarian gender imaginary rooted in Daoist and Buddhist thought. The book provides new insights on the non-linear cinematic storytelling of the film. This is the first in-depth study of the work of Yuen Woo Ping, the well-known Hong Kong film director and action choreographer who achieved international recognition as an action choreographer of films such as The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2.
Peter Ho-Sun Chan's He's a Woman, She's a Man
Book 10·Apr 2009
0.0
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$20.00
This raucous, gender-stretching comedy follows the disruptions of a glamorous Hong Kong music couple's tumultuous romance by an "ordinary" fan's noisy arrival in their lives. With great comic story development, the film confronts social stereotypes of masculine females, male anxieties about homosexuality, and the limits of male femininity. This book offers important background on comedic narrative structure in Cantonese opera and other traditional sources that have influenced Hong Kong cinema.
Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong
Book 11·Jul 2009
3.5
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$20.00
This tragic coming-of-age story follows three disillusioned local youths struggling to navigate Hong Kong public housing projects and late adolescence amid violent crime, gang pressure, and broken homes. Their personal friendships and family lives intersect with a mysterious fourth protagonist, a girl whose suicide haunts the other three throughout the film as they move toward their own premature ends. This 1997 film was the first in Chan’s acclaimed "handover trilogy." Shot on a very low budget, utilizing excess film stock, amateur actors, and a crew of five, it marked the beginning of Chan’s career as an independent film director.
Ann Hui's Song of the Exile
Book 12·Mar 2010
4.7
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$20.00
The resolutely independent filmmaker Ann On-wah Hui continues to inspire critical acclaim for her sensitive portrayals of numerous Hong Kong tragedies and marginalized populations. In a pioneering career spanning three decades, Hui has been director, producer, writer and actress for more than 30 films. 

In this work, Audrey Yue analyses a 1990 film considered by many to be one of Hui's most haunting and poignant works, Song of the Exile. The semi-autobiographical film depicts a daughter's coming to terms with her mother's Japanese identity. Themes of cross-cultural alienation, divided loyalties and generational reconciliation resonate strongly amid the migration and displacement pressures surrounding Hong Kong in the early 1990s. Even now, more than a decade after the 1997 Handover, the film is a perennial favourite among returning Hong Kong emigrants and international cinema students. 

This book examines how Hui challenges the myth of the original home as singular, familial and romantic, and constructs the second home as a new space for Hong Kong modernity. Yue also discusses the teaching of the film in the diaspora, demonstrating its potential as an affective and performative text of transcultural literacy and diasporic negotiations in the cross-cultural classroom.