World Film Locations: Hong Kong - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783200219 ISBN 13: 9781783200214

Verlag: University of Chicago Pr., 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Far more than a simple collection of movie locations, this book delivers a rare glimpse into the history of film production practices in Hong Kong. The rapid development of Hong Kong has occasioned the demolition of buildings and landscapes of historic significance, but film acts as a repository for memories of lost places, vanished vistas and material objects. Location shoots in Hong Kong have preserved many disappearing landmarks of the city, and the resulting films function as valuable and irreplaceable archives of the city's evolution. The first of its kind in English, this book is more than a city guide to Hong Kong through the medium of film; it is a unique exploration of relationship between location and place and genre innovations in Hong Kong cinema.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Linda Lai and Kimburley Choi are associate professors of critical intermedia art at the School of Creative Media, the City University of Hong Kong.

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World Film Locations Hong Kong

By Linda Chiu-han Lai, Kimburley Wing-yee Choi

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78320-021-4

Contents

Maps/Scenes, 
Scenes 1-7 1957 - 1980, 10, 
Scenes 8-14 1982 - 1992, 28, 
Scenes 15-20 1994 - 1997, 46, 
Scenes 21-26 1998 - 2003, 62, 
Scenes 27-32 2003 - 2007, 78, 
Scenes 33-38 2008 - 2012, 94, 
Essays, 
Hong Kong: City of the Imagination Linda Chiu-han Lai and Steve Fore, 6, 
Here, There and In-between: Transitional Space in Hong Kong Movies Kimburley Wing-yee Choi, 8, 
The Kid on the Street: Dai pai dong, Tenement Buildings, Public Housing Linda Chiu-han Lai, 26, 
Many-splendoured Things: The Wharf, the Roof-tops and the Floating Population Linda Chiu-han Lai, 44, 
Colonial Remains: From Non-place to Self-referential Simulacrum Lam Wai-keung, 60, 
My Movie Scenes: A Director's Impression of Home Derek Chiu (Chiu Sung-kee), 76, 
Victoria: Room With a View, or Unse led History? Hector Rodriguez, 92, 
Backpages, 
Resources, 108, 
Contributor Bios, 109, 
Filmography, 112, 

CHAPTER 1

HONG KONG

City of the Imagination

Text by LINDA CHIU- HAN LAI AND STEVE FORE

IT'S ALMOST CLICHÉ, a banal simplification, too, to say that Hong Kong is crowded.

Tokyo is crowded, but its flyover complexes divide the city into neat zones of dwellings and pockets of street-level identities. New York can be crowded, but only if you are near Times Square or Wall Street on a regular business day. Manhattan to me always affords a leisurely stroll. But Hong Kong ...

The sensation of 'crowdedness' in HK is arresting; it compels us to exhaust our vocabulary. I learn, from the many contributors of this volume, that crowdedness is indeed the key and has many names. Traffic jams and crammed public housing needless to say> Crowdedness demands metaphors: crisscrossing strands, labyrinthine passages ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/City on Fire [Ringo Lam, 1987]). It has smells and flavours (The World of Suzie Wong [Richard Quine, 1960]); it is flared up by speed, exaggerated by the urgency of the moment (Boarding Gate [Olivier Assayas, 2007]) and poetized by a very slow stroll ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/The Walker [Tsai Ming-liang, 2012]). Crowdedness is embodied in the exploding desire for a window with a harbour view (Spotlight #6), at least some breathing space ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Life without Principle [Johnnie To, 2011]). There's no crowdedness without the contrasting presence of hidden avenues of solitary isolation ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Chungking Express [Wong Kar-wai, 1994]). Crowdedness is about juxtaposition and contrast, the contiguity of the incompatible to the incommensurable: little cubicles self-multiply and pile up, chaos if you zoom in, yet an extraordinary sense of order not quite matched in any other world cities. Crowds mean young people ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Young and Dangerous [Lau Wai-keung, 1996]). A crowd draws out fear. Crowdedness is when you can't tell gang-boys from ordinary youngsters ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] fit [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Once upon a Time in Triad Society 2 [Cha Chuen-Yee, 1996]). Crowdedness drives people to make space ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] /On the Edge of a Floating City, We Sing [Anson Mak (Mak Hoi- shan), 2012]). Kids on the street prefer to be part of the crowd to flee crowded housing (Spotlight #2). Crowds point to collectivity, to infectious homogenization ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Bio Zombie [Wilson YIP (YIP Wai-shun), 1998]). Crowdedness indicates the need to stretch our visual grammar and perceptual consciousness ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Fallen Angels [Wong Kar-wai, 1995]; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Made in Hong Kong [Fruit Chan, 1997]). It also demands technical problem solving – how to shoot in a crowded area. Ask directors Ringo Lam and Cha Chuen-yee.

A unique cinematic language evolves to symphonize crowdedness in serial mashed-up scenes. At the turn of a street corner, a main road populated by banks and multinational corporations becomes an old neighbourhood. Collage work brings together crossroads and landmarks from different districts into successive scenes of temporal-spatial continuity. One district is rendered just the same as anothers into one big visual extravaganza of Hong Kong ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/ McDull prince a la bun [Toe Yuen, 2004]). A little girl's runaway excursion becomes a convenient excuse to mash up various crowded spots in the city ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Little Detective [Chan Pei (Chen Pi), 1962]). As chronicled in Wong Kin-yuen's 2000 essay, 'On the Edge of Spaces: Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Hong Kong's Cityscape (Science Fiction Studies, #80, v27(1)), the Japanese animation team of Ghost in the Shell (Oshii Mamoru, 1995) decided to develop a mutated version of HK's built environment as the retro-futurist setting for their story of a cyborg having an identity crisis in the reasonably near future. Influenced by the entropic vision of Los Angeles in Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and the post-apocalyptic Tokyo of Akira (Otomo Katsuhiro, 1988), they were intrigued by the tension in HK between ultra-modern high-rise structures and older buildings representing diverse cultures and times. In a scene in Ghost, the now-dilapidated Streamline Moderne low-rise residential buildings are still hanging on in some Hong Kong Island neighbourhoods such as those along Queen's Road East in Wanchai, as well as the start of Ladder Street. The latter dated from the 1840s, off Queen's Road Central, which was the first built thoroughfare by the harbour front. This architectural variety in turn suggests the film's theme of unstable, fluid, sentient identity in a technologically advanced society. Oh, and this pastiche of HK has canals in addition to a harbour.

At the extreme opposite end of crowdedness, we have vacant spaces pending for their next round of usage, turned into the Film Service Office's real estate portfolio since 1998. They are disused office mansions, spatial tokens of HK's former colonial administration. During their lingering presence without a designated purpose, the practical HK government invited film-makers to use them for inexpensive rented sets. (Spotlight #4)

Due to the size of the book, one type of important location has to be left out. In the 1960s, as a result of a strong studio system emerging, HK films were mainly filmed inside the studio. On-location shooting, often used for narrative transitions, occurred in places nearby the film companies. This was the case for Daguan Motion Pictures, MP & GI, Shaw Brothers Studio, Yung Hwa and Golden Harvest, which all happened to have set up their studios in Kowloon near the old airport and in Diamond Hill, now a residential area ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]/Lost Souls [Mou Tun-fei, 1980]). Many Cantonese classics in the 1960s, such as Eternal Regret ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Chor Yuen, 1962) and Country Boy Goes to Town ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Chan Cheuk-sang, 1965), were filmed in Diamond Hill.

As the writings by all contributors finally came in, we couldn't help noticing some significant repetition. Victoria Harbour and the Star Ferry pop up many times, each time articulating a facet of our...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Pr.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783200219
• ISBN 13: 9781783200214
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 114
• Herausgeber: Lai Linda Chiu-Han, Choi Kimburley Wing-Yee
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland