The rise and fall -- and rise? -- of Hong Kong cinema
By Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate
Thursday, July 22, 2009
The system I use to organize my movie collection is simple. On one handy tier of my media wall, I have what I call the Short Shelf; it's where I keep about two dozen films -- not necessarily the best or even favorite films in my collection, but those that, for whatever reason, I want to watch again and again, in whole or in part.
When the Shelf was inaugurated shortly after I graduated from college -- it was an Ikea shelf back then, and the films were on VHS, but the principle remained the same -- the collection of films were almost entirely from Hong Kong, reflecting that region's creative flush in the late '80s and early '90s. Some still remain, weathered and beaten copies of standbys like "A Better Tomorrow" and "The Mission," "Shaolin Soccer" and "Comrades: Almost a Love Story," "Project A" and "Police Story 3: Supercop."
By the end of the 1990s, however, the number of new Hong Kong films vying for Shelf status started to dwindle. And 10 years later, though a few Hong Kong movies each year are always worth watching, none since "Infernal Affairs" have made the cut.
The reason why is hardly a secret. You can blame 1997's Reunification with the Mainland, rampant piracy, pandemic bird flu and the passing or departure of many of the region's biggest stars and boldest creators, but the real culprit behind the catastrophic decline of Asia's most potent film market was simply an overabundance of crappy movies. The falloff in quality led to a collapse in demand, and then a wholesale commercial bloodletting; the industry has not recovered since.
"Look at Hong Kong in the late '90s -- you had a city of nine million people cranking out 150 movies a year," says Grady Hendrix, whose crew of volunteer film buffs organizes the nation's premier annual showcase for Asian cinema, the New York Asian Film Festival. "You had too many movies being made too fast, too poorly. The bubble was bound to burst at some point, and it did, and it was ugly."
How ugly? In 2007, the territory produced just 50 films, a third of the output at its height and the lowest recorded since World War II. And those 50 films earned just 23 percent of the Hong Kong box office, down from an already-low 31 percent the year before.
That's led some to predict the imminent demise of Hong Kong cinema, even as the industry this year celebrates its 100th year of existence, marked by the production of Liang Shaobo's antic 1909 short film, "Stealing a Roast Duck." But even if its prognosis isn't terminal -- as those of us who grew up loving it hope -- what, if anything, can be done to shock it out of coma?
In answering that question, Hong Kong's remaining true believers fall into two camps. Recently I had the opportunity to speak to the most prominent voices in each of those factions: Edko Films' Bill Kong, the producer behind a string of epic blockbusters, from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" to his current Samuel Goldwyn release, "Blood: The Last Vampire"; and Milkyway Image's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wai_Ka-Fai"Wai-Ka Fai, whose impressive success as a screenwriter, producer and director includes commercial and critical hits like "Needing You," "Mad Detective" and his latest, the metafictional melodrama "Written By," which had its world premiere last month at NYAFF.
Fusion!
Kong has always been a believer in judicious cross-pollination. His father, Kong Cho Yee, founded Edko Films in 1959 as Hong Kong's largest movie-theater operator; 40 years later, recognizing the deteriorating quality of the region's films as a threat to Edko's core exhibition business, the younger Kong moved the company into film production to ensure a steady pipeline of movies worth watching.
He wasn't the only one to make that move. In the late '90s, hundreds of opportunists, from restaurant owners to small-time gangsters, leapt into the Hong Kong film fray. While many of these self-styled "movie producers" were looking for neighborhood notoriety and a fast buck, Kong's goal was more ambitious: He wanted to make movies that would appeal to audiences beyond Hong Kong, enticing viewers throughout Greater China, across Asia and, eventually, around the world.
Kong's first major feature offered ample evidence of his boundary-blurring ambitions. It was a film by a Taiwanese director working in America that promised to combine the narrative texture of the art-house with the flamboyant action of the drive-in. Most industry-watchers panned the project; as a result, Kong had trouble finding investors and had to pay out of his own pocket to complete the $17 million film.
When "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) went on to make more than $213 million worldwide, Kong was vindicated. His followups, "Hero"(2002) and "House of Flying Daggers" (2004), did similarly soaring business, and his reputation as one of the few producers in Asia able to consistently achieve global box office success was sealed.
The surprisingly humble Kong is quick to explain his achievements as the result of an adherence to formula. "It's very challenging to do films that can reach a global audience," he says. "So far, the only common language we've been able to find that crosses over from East to West is action. So I make action movies. It's the only tool we can use to speak to both sides of the world."
That said, Kong's action movies look and feel like no other works in the genre. Their lushly stylized visuals, international casts and cosmopolitan sensibilities are expressly intended to appeal to both local and foreign audiences: Edko films are typically helmed by a non-Hong Kong director with a global reputation, like Taiwanese American Ang Lee and Mainlander Zhang Yimou; they feature top-tier talent and shooting locations drawn from across East Asia; and they're made with generous amounts of international money.
And that brings up something of a conundrum. Given their pancultural roots, can Kong's movies really be called "Hong Kong movies"? The authorities don't think so -- the most recent Edko production, Ang Lee's hypnotic potboiler "Lust, Caution," was formally classified as a "foreign" film despite being shot largely in Hong Kong, with film authorities noting its status as a co-production with companies based in the U.S., China and Taiwan.
But to Kong, of course, that's exactly where Hong Kong's opportunity lies -- outside of Hong Kong. "Yes, there are places where Hollywood dominates, but there are others -- India, China, Japan and Korea -- where Asian films have a tremendous and growing opportunity," he says. "The future of Asian cinema lies in Asia, [not Hollywood]. And Hong Kong can lead the way into that future."
"Blood," Kong's latest, takes his notion of pan-Asian global cinema to a new level. A live-action adaptation of a sleekly ultraviolent feature from Japanese animation auteur Mamoru Oshii, it showcases the brilliant action choreography of Hong Kong mainstay Corey Yuen Kwai, and stars Korean superstar Ji-Hyun Jun -- now going by the mononym "Gianna" -- as Saya, a half-human, half-vampire samurai tasked with hunting down her bloodsucker relatives. Co-produced with Pathe France (and directed by French action stylist Chris Nahon), it's also Kong's first film to feature almost exclusively English-language dialogue.
"We thought we had a chance to really break through to the American market," says Kong. "This is a very commercial movie -- the setting, the visuals, it's all perfect for appealing to the West. But even though audiences all over the world are accustomed to reading subtitles, Americans are not. Ten years ago, when we made 'Crouching Tiger,' we were successful theatrically, but once the film hit video, our research found that 95 percent of renters chose to watch the English-dubbed version. So we wanted to remove that obstacle."
But crossover creations face their own challenges. Critics have been mixed about Gianna's English-language performance, while box office has so far been moderate both in the U.S. and Asia. "It wasn't easy, bringing it all together, working with people from all over the globe," Kong admits. "I learned a lot, you could say, doing this film."