The history of the Hong Kong film industry, Part One

HF: The cinema of Hong Kong is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese language cinema alongside the cinema of China and the cinema of Taiwan. As a former Crown colony, Hong Kong had a greater degree of artistic freedom than mainland China and Taiwan, and developed into a filmmaking hub for the Chinese speaking world (including its worldwide diaspora).

For decades Hong Kong was the third largest motion picture industry in the world following US cinema and Indian cinema, and the second largest exporter. Despite an industry crisis starting in the mid-1990s and Hong Kong’s transfer to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997, Hong Kong film has retained much of its distinctive identity and continues to play a prominent part on the world cinema stage. In the West, Hong Kong’s vigorous pop cinema (especially Hong Kong pop cinema) has long had a strong cult following, which is now part of the cultural mainstream, widely available and imitated.

Economically the film industry together with the value added of cultural and creative industries represents 5 per cent of Hong Kong’s economy.

The Hong Kong industry. Unlike many film industries, Hong Kong has enjoyed little or no direct government support, through either subsidies or import quotas. It is a thoroughly commercial cinema: highly corporate, concentrating on crowd pleasing genres like comedy and action, and relying heavily on formulas, sequels and remakes.

Hong Kong film derives from a number of elements from Hollywood, such as certain genre parameters, a ”thrill-a-minute” philosophy and fast pacing and film editing. But the borrowings are filtered through elements from traditional Chinese drama and art, particularly a penchant for stylisation and a disregard for Western standards of realism. This combined with a fast and loose approach to the filmmaking process, contributes to the energy and surreal imagination that foreign audiences note in Hong Kong cinema.

HF: The first dramatic film production in Hong Kong, was ”Stealing the Roast Duck” made in 1909, directed by Liang Shao-Bo, made by Asia Film Company of Shanghai.

In 2010 the box office gross in Hong Kong was HK$1.339 billion and in 2011 it was HK$1.379 billion. There were 56 Hong Kong films and 220 foreign films released in 2011.

In 2017 the box office gross was HK$1.85 billion compare with HK$1.95 billion in 2016. 331 films were released in 2017, dropped from 348 the year before.

Source: Wikipedia.org

This article was first posted on 6th June 2025.

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