The Feminine Touch: Chinese Soft Power Politics and Hong Kong Women Filmmakers

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China boasts some of the world’s most productive female filmmakers. Although Chinese women may be holding up “half the sky,” their contribution to the state’s political agenda has been an ideologically mixed bag. Their films often deal with policies targeting women’s issues, inevitably, against the backdrop of the enormous economic changes in which neoliberal privatization of resources operates hand-in-hand with strict Communist Party control of political power. Melodramas, romantic comedies, biopics, and the occasional thriller offer reimagined historical figures, career women in dysfunctional families, unlucky mistresses of the nouveau riche, and various iterations of the “postmodern” lives of women across classes, generations, and political persuasions

Hong Kong New Wave women filmmakers such as Ann Hui, Mabel Cheung, and Clara Law routinely make films about Mainland Chinese women as well, which often take up similar themes but from a very different vantage point. This chapter explores Hong Kong women filmmakers’ distinct perspective on Chinese “soft power” in films about women from the PRC with emphasis placed on Ann Hui’s The Golden Era (2013). The focus is on the cinematic tactics Hui uses to approach ideologically charged issues involving women in an attempt to thrive in a very competitive and complicated cross-border market.