Watchful Partners, Hidden Currents: Hong Kong Cinema Moving into the Mainland of China

Abstract

The naming of Hong Kong cinema became detached from the city of Hong Kong in the mid-2000s when its major local film companies, producers, and directors relocated their offices and personnel to the Chinese mainland to redirect their energies into co-producing films. Moving Hong Kong's film industry operations inevitably brought change to the ideoscapes and mediascapes of the mainland. This chapter discusses the context and related issues of Hong Kong-in-mainland operations and the co-production films of Hong Kong and China. It also elaborates the following related aspects: 1) the salient business moves of Hong Kong industry, involving producing, filmmaking, and multiplex business as a transregional force of global culture; 2) an alternative potentiality of Hong Kong films, with examples of critical appropriations that identify alienation as a shared condition of modernity; and 3) an example of partnership and a discussion of a partnership imaginary of two co-produced films.