Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
Finding journal articles
Articles and other writings about Hong Kong cinema can be found in many publications. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
Journal of Chinese cinemas by Call Number: Electronic journalJournal of Chinese Cinemas is a major refereed academic publication devoted to the study of film and media as practiced in Chinese-speaking communities. They consider submissions on any aspect of production, distribution, and reception. They especially welcome essays based on original archival research and/or exploring cross-cultural manifestations of mediation. Objects of study include, but are not limited to, commercial releases, independent films, videos, video art, animation, new media, exhibition conditions, and texts and debates. ...
Film & television literature indexCall Number: Electronic resourceThis index covers over 300 journal and magazine titles for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest about film and television. About half the journals and magazines are film periodicals and the other half cover film and television with some regularity. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
Introduction to Hong Kong cinema
The China‐US co‐production, Zhuang Zi Tests His Wife (1913), directed by Li Ming Wei, is claimed to be Hong Kong's earliest film. Li Min‐wei then established two influential film companies, Minxin (China Sun) in 1922 and Lianhua (United Photoplay Services) in 1930, both based in Hong Kong but distributing films widely throughout China. With the arrival of synchronized sound in the 1930s the Hong Kong industry produced films both in Mandarin for mainland China and in Cantonese for Hong Kong and the southern mainland province of Guangdong. Adaptations of opera and wu xia martial arts films combining elaborate swordfighting and fantasy, were popular during this early period. With the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria and then Shanghai, the other key centre of film production in China, many filmmakers fled to Hong Kong where they worked on ‘national defence films’ until the 1941 Japanese invasion halted film production. ...
In the period following World War II, Hong Kong became a home for filmmakers who had been accused of collaborating with the Japanese on the mainland as well as a further group of communist exiles fleeing persecution by the Kuomintang government. Employing this displaced talent, and continuing to exploit the expanding mainland market, the Hong Kong film industry thrived.
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2012). Hong Kong, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 May. 2021
In the Library Collection
This page is dedicated to Hong Kong cinema. To see more of the Chinese diaspora in filmmaking, click on other pages within this guide.
- motion pictures china hong kongCall number range PN 1993.5 .H6.
Introductory reading(s)
The Chinese cinema book by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C4 C4422 2020ISBN: 9781911239529Publication Date: 2nd ed.This revised and updated new edition provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of cinema in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as to disaporic and transnational Chinese film-making, from the beginnings of cinema to the present day. ...
Chinese national cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780415172905This introduction to Chinese national cinema covers three 'Chinas': mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Historical and comparative perspectives bring out the parallel developments in these three Chinas, while critical analysis explores thematic and stylistic changes over time. As well as exploring artistic achievements and ideological debates, Yingjin Zhang examines how - despite the pressures placed on the industry from state control and rigid censorship - Chinese national cinema remains incapable of projecting a single unified picture, but rather portrays many different Chinas.
The cinema of Hong Kong: history, arts, identity by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .H6 C56 2000ISBN: 9780521772358The Cinema of Hong Kong examines one of the most popular and dynamic cinema traditions in the history of film. Providing an overview of major directors, genres and stars, from its origins to the present, this volume examines Hong Kong cinema in transnational, historical, and artistic contexts. ...
Early film culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780472901029This volume features new work on cinema in early twentieth-century Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China. Looking beyond relatively well-studied cities like Shanghai, these essays foreground cinema's relationship with imperialism and colonialism and emphasize the rapid development of cinema as a sociocultural institution. These essays examine where films were screened; how cinema-going as a social activity adapted from and integrated with existing social norms and practices; the extent to which Cantonese opera and other regional performance traditions were models for the development of cinematic conventions; the role foreign films played in the development of cinema as an industry in the Republican era; and much more.
Hong Kong cinema since 1997: the post-nostalgic imagination by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .H6 L44 2009ISBN: 9780230221437Taking as its point of departure the three recurrent themes of nostalgia, memory and local histories, this book is an attempt to map out a new poetics - the 'post-nostalgic imagination' - in Hong Kong cinema in the first decade of Chinese rule.
New Chinese cinemas: forms, identities, politics by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C4 N49 1994ISBN: 9780521444095New Chinese Cinemas analyses the changing forms and significance of film-making in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since the end of the Cultural Revolution, with a particular emphasis on how film comments on the profound social changes that have occurred in East Asia over the past two decades. ...
New Hong Kong cinema: transitions to becoming Chinese in 21st-century East Asia by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C4 C44218 2016ISBN: 9781782387039The trajectory of Hong Kong films had been drastically affected long before the city's official sovereignty transfer from the British to the Chinese in 1997. The change in course has become more visible in recent years as China has aggressively developed its national film industry and assumed the role of powerhouse in East Asia's cinematic landscape. The author introduces the "Cinema of Transitions" to study the New Hong Kong Cinema and on- and off-screen life against this background. ...
The Oxford handbook of Chinese cinemas by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780199765607What does it mean for a cinematic work to be "Chinese"? Does it refer specifically to a work's subject, or does it also reflect considerations of language, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, or political orientation? Such questions make any single approach to a vast field like "Chinese cinema" difficult at best. Accordingly, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas situates the term more broadly among various different phases, genres, and distinct national configurations, while taking care to address the consequences of grouping together so many disparate histories under a single banner. ...
Transnational Chinese cinemas: identity, nationhood, gender by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C4 T65 1997ISBN: 9780824818456Zhang Yimou's first film, Red Sorghum, took the Golden Bear Award in 1988 at the Berlin International Film Festival. Since then Chinese films have continued to arrest worldwide attention and capture major film awards, winning an international following that continues to grow. Transnational Chinese Cinemas spans nearly the entire length of twentieth-century Chinese film history. The volume traces the evolution of Chinese national cinema, and demonstrates that gender identity has been central to its formation. Femininity, masculinity and sexuality have been an integral part of the filmic discourses of modernity, nationhood, and history. ...
Selected book title(s)
Filming margins: Tang Shu Shuen, a forgotten Hong Kong woman director by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9786612704215This book studies the work of filmmaker Tang Shu Shuen in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s. It raises issues regarding the applicability of paradigms of Western auteurism and feminist authorship in studying Tang's work and also examines the reasons why Tang Shu Shuen's work has been so underrecognised and underdiscussed historically.
Fruit Chan's Durian Durian by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9789622097438This book examines how Fruit Chan's Durian Durian sensitively portrays the unsettling seismic shifts affecting the inhabitants of both China and Hong Kong in a post-1997 context. The study covers different aspects of Durian Durian, its relation to the Hong Kong independent film sector, traditions of Hong Kong social realism; its representations of mainland Chinese women; and its representations of cross-border relations and issues of post-1997 identity for both inhabitants of Hong Kong and China. ...
Hollywood East: Hong Kong movies and the people who made them by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .H6 H25 2000ISBN: 9780809225811The Hong Kong based film genre, involving martial arts with stars like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Sammo Hung, is now well-known in the West. Stefan Hammond traces the history of the genre and the people who have developed it into a worldwide phenomenon.
Hong Kong cinema: a cross-cultural view by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C4 K37 2004ISBN: 9780810849860This cross cultural study of Hong Kong cinema looks at Eastern and Western influences upon the medium and examines its development compared to film industries of mainland China and Southeast Asia. The book spans the 20th century, focusing on a number of key elements, including the changing image of women and the rise of the martial arts film.
Hong Kong media and Asia's cold war by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780190073763Hong Kong was a key battlefield in Asia's cultural cold war. After 1948-1949, an influx of filmmakers, writers, and intellectuals from mainland China transformed British Hong Kong into a hub for mass entertainment and popular publications. While there was no organized movement for independence, largely because of its location directly next to Mao's China, Hong Kong was central in the cultural contest between Communist China, Nationalist Taiwan, and the United States. Hong Kong Media and Asia's Cold War discusses how China, Taiwan, and the U.S. fought to mobilize Hong Kong cinema and print media to sway ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia and across the world. ...
Remade in Hollywood: the global Chinese presence in transnational cinemas by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9789622090552The dramatic surge of Chinese visibility in Hollywood has been spurred by Sino-chic talents such as directors Ang Lee, John Woo, Wong Kar-wai, Wayne Wang, and Zhang Yimou, and stars such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Michelle Yeoh. Analyzing well-known films by Chinese stars and crew, and the influence they have had on Hollywood directors, Kenneth Chan describes how post-1997 notions of Chinese identity and cultural genres have been reinvented and repackaged by major US studios. Highlighting numerous contradictions and cultural anxieties evident in transnational Hollywood films, Chan suggests that many Chinese stars and directors have made painful compromises to get their films successfully launched into the global capitalist stream of cultural commodities.
Worldly desires: cosmopolitanism and cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .H6 H79 2018ISBN: 9781474428453How does cinema imagine our place in the world? Worldly Desires: Cosmopolitanism and Cinema in Hong Kong and Taiwan looks at the studios, films and policies that charted the transnational vision of Hong Kong and Taiwan, two places with an uneasy relationship to the idea of nationhood. ...
Other library resource(s)
Asian film online: volumes 1 & 2 by Call Number: Electronic resourceAsian Film Online offers a view of Asian culture as seen through the lens of the independent Asian filmmaker. Through a selection of over 1,000 narrative feature films, documentaries and shorts curated by film scholars and critics, the collection offers highly relevant perspectives and insights onto themes relevant across Asia, including modernity, globalization, female agency, social and political unrest, and cultural and sexual identity. ...
Chinese cinema from Media History Digital Library by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe Chinese Cinema Collection covers a heterogeneous body of film publications in China’s Republican era. The collection highlights localized conceptions of Chinese film cultures, the cultivation of movie fandom in its semi-colonial society, as well as the history of the Chinese film industry spanning the three decades preceding the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The collection includes Movietone (Dian Sheng 電聲), one of the longest running and the most popular film periodicals in China’s Republican era. This magazine offers news on cinema that unsettles the boundary between scandal, true crime, sensation, actuality and fictionality. Published in Shanghai, it is representative of the roles that Chinese movie magazines played in the making of Chinese cinephiles (yingmi 影迷). The first film periodical published in Hong Kong, Silver Light (Yin Guang 銀光), showcases indigenous film writing of Hong Kong between 1926 and 1927. ...
Chinese cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Chinese cinema in this bibliography covers Chinese-language cinema, including films in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese (or Minnan dialect) as well as Sinophone productions by the Chinese diasporas.
Chinese language film from Oxford Bibliographies Online - Chinese Studies by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199920082International interest in Chinese cinema in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is often traced back to the showing of Chen Kaige’s 'Yellow Earth' at the Hong Kong Film Festival in 1985. Since then the number of publications from academics and film critics has grown steadily, and the teaching of Chinese cinema has spread through universities and, to a lesser extent, schools across the world.- Hong Kong cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Beginning as a colonial enterprise under British rule and continuing to the present day as a key creative industry within the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong film occupies a unique place within global motion picture history.
- Transnational and diasporic cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Although from the earliest years film production, marketing, and reception involved extensive national border crossing, the rubric “transnational cinema” has emerged only comparatively recently. Taken up from other disciplines such as anthropology and migration and postcolonial studies, the concept of “transnational” in this still-emerging area of cinema studies remains highly varied, pointing to sometimes contested working definitions and analytic approaches.
Selected movie titles
Find more Hong Kong film titles in the library's online catalog.
Exiled by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #9187The time is 1998. The setting is Macau. Every living soul jumps at every chance to make quick money before the Portuguese colony ushers in a new era under the Chinese rule. A relationship is formed between an ex-gangster trying to turn over a new leaf with his wife and newborn baby and two groups of hitmen - those who want to protect him and those who were sent to kill him.
A fei cheng chuan = Days of being wild by Call Number: Contact the Jones Media CenterInterweaving love-hate relationships and passion, tells the story of six young people living in the 1960s in Hong Kong and their individual quests for intimate connections.
Meng xiang he huo ren = MBA partners by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #20916Women business partners, creating new careers alongside friendship, love, and dreams.
Sui yue shen tou = Echoes of the rainbow by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #14701Told through the eyes of sticky-fingered eight-year-old boy Big Ears, Echoes of the Rainbow takes place in a close-knit grassroots community in 1960s Hong Kong. Big Ears' mother and father run the neighborhood shoe store, and his older brother Desmond is every family's dream son - an outstanding athlete with grades worthy of Hong Kong's best school. Their lives aren't always happy, but the family sticks together through all the rough times, no matter how bad it gets.
Supercop by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #9218Chia Chu is a Hong Kong police officer who is sent undercover to mainland China to break up a drug smuggling ring. After breaking the brother of the drug lord out of prison, he and an Interpol agent are taken to Hong Kong to work for the syndicate. The wife of the crime boss has been arrested in Malaysia for drug trafficking and is soon to be executed. However, she is the only person who knows the account number of a secret Swiss bank account containing millions in drug money. While the two officers are in Malaysia preparing for the jail break, Chia Chu accidentally runs into his girlfriend May, who has travelled there from Hong Kong. Soon his cover is blown, the criminals kidnap his girlfriend and he is forced to help them pull off the jail break.
Wu ren qu = No man's land by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18463A young lawyer from the city travels to the Gobi desert where he embarks on a series of adventures and challenges.
Internet resource(s)
- Hong Kong International Film Festival
The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFFS) is a charitable, non-profit and non-governmental organisation dedicated to the discovery and promotion of creativity in the art and culture of film. - Independent Documentary Filmmakers from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan web archive
Chinese independent documentary filmmakers from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have been crucial to bring attention to social and political developments. Their projects are important primary source material for the study of contemporary China, and support institutions’ programs on contemporary China studies. Because of the sensitive nature of their work, their web presences are at risk to disappear at any time. ...
