đ Im presenting next week, so i went to the library and did some research in advance. This is the stuff i extracted, and probably will present (in addition to other stuff)
The Cinema of Hong Kong: History Arts Identity
Edited by Poshek Fu, David DesserCambridge University Press 2000
Selected history of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Cinema
-1840 signing of Treaty of Nanjing which cedes Hong Kong to the British as a result of Chinaâs defeat in the Opium War
-1930 Founding of Lian hua (united china) production and printing company funded by several Hong Kong business men
-1941 Japan occupies Hong Kong in December, Hong Kong film production ceases completely during the entire Japanese occupation
-1945 British occupy Hong Kong following Japanese surrender ending the Pacific War
-1949 Founding of People Republic of China (PRC). First film of the long running Wong Fei Hung series
-1950 Nanyang Studio renamed Shaws Father and Sons Film Company, hundreds and thousands of Chinese including shanghai film makers come to Hong Kong to escape communist rule
-1953 Massive fire in Shek Kip Mei leaves thousands homeless
-1965 Shaw Brothers release King Huâs first martil arts film Da Zui Xia (Come drink with Me)
-1968 King Huâs Longmen Kezhan (Dragon Inn) breaks Hong Kong box office record grossing 2.2million
-1970 Former Shaw Brothers executive Raymond Chow forms Golden Harvest Studio
 -1988 New censorship ordinance passed leading to a ratings system (cateogories I, II, III) a new form of censorship on politically sensitive films.
-1991 Success of Tsui Harksâs Naner Dang Ziqiang (Once Upon A Time In China) starts a new Wong Fei Hung series
-1994 Chunking Express brings Wong Kar Wai to international attention
-1997 âreturnâ to China on July 1st
The cinema of Hong Kong
Has until recently been a neglected area of scholarly attention in the west.
Except of pioneering works by Leo Lee and Rey Chow.
Always marginalized both within and without China, the Hong Kong cinema, like Hong Kong itself seemed to suffer from the same malaise what PoShek Fu termed âthe Central plains syndromeâ.
The 1970s was a crucial decade for the Hong Kong cinema as it achieved an international recognition that was unknown to it before while it experienced something like a boom, a bust and a renaissance.
The 1997 handover and the transnational appeal of filmmakers like
Jackie Chan, John Woo, and Wong Kar Wai however, has combined to propel Hong Kong cinema into a significant field of research.
Hong Kong cinema aesthetics are often constrained by the relatively low budgets mandated for its productions, a factor influenced by the small market for its cinema. Hong Kong films are distributed only within the Cantonese speaking community, a tiny market compared with the Mandarin speaking cinema.
Perhaps the need to churn out films rather quickly to capitalize on the latest trend or fad or the generic nature of Hong Kong production itself largely influences the particular characteristics of Hong Kongâs cinematic imagery or perhaps it has something to do with the landscape of Hong Kongâs itself, resolutely urban, crowded.
 Directors
Tsui Hark, one of the later directors, would go to great lengths to show the impossible, he seemed always concerned with making his fights however fantastic, seem probable it not possible.
Michael Hui and Cantonese comedy with his 2 other brothers,
explore the connection between Hong Kong and the mainland and breaks free from the predominant focus of the Western critics on Hong Kongâs kung fu and gangster films.
(this is quite a good link : http://us.yesasia.com/en/Emagazine/ArticlePage.aspx/section-videos/code-c/articleId-69/Â if you want a quick write up on Michael, Sam and Ricky Hui)
Wong Kar Waiâs flims especially Chung King Express, the characters represent the perfect paradigm of HongKongâs âbricolage of American pop culture, British culture and Asian Commerceâ. A close reading of the film reveals its focus on the commodity, shifting identity and keen concern with time as allegories of the 1997.
 The Kung Fu Craze Â
In 1973 American audiences were thrilled to the exploits of Bruce Lee, and years on, in 1996 Jackie Chanâs Rumble in the Bronx opened and became the top box-office draw of the month.
Kung fu â invented as a genre in Shanghai in the 19200s, martial arts cinema has a long pedigree. It grows out of the historical existence of the martial arts literature. Possessing two main strands:
Kung Fu and Swordplay.
The latter almost without expectation are period films, historical epics, mythological tales of magic, action spectaculars with colorful costunmes.
In 1938 due to emigration of film makers and the different situation in Hong Kong, the Cantonese industry took up martial arts movies. It outshone every Cantonese genre from 1938 to 1970.
A burgeoning overseas market in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and United States (in Chinatown theaters) led to almost risk free production with preproduction budgets often supplied by overseas buyers.
The Wong Fei Hung dominated the Cantonese cinema of the 1950s and 1960s and was something of a golden age for Cantonese sword films.
As the 1970s wore on, the Hollywood studios began adapting the martial arts genre for American movies, such as Black Belt Jones.
If nothing else, the genre managed to maintain a hold, however slight, on the youth audience, for it always was the youth audience that had been the heart of Kung Fuâs fandom , white working class, middle class boys, side by side with black urban and rural audiences.
Many Kung Fu films portrayed a rather anarchic world view, routinely a nihilist one with violent death a way of life and continued and continual trial by combat the typical narrative drive. Such filmic values and motifs clearly mirror the psychosociological states of young people. And the sheer kinetics of the films â rapid fire editing trick photography and the unbridled athleticism of young stars.
The meteoric rise of the martial arts madness is a classic example of âtotal propagandaâ concept for it was not film alone that caused the boom. It was capitalist opportunism and marketing.King Hu
Hu wanted to avoid making martial feats look artificial, he was proud of not employing trick photography. Instead of trying to put the feats on the same plane as ordinary sequences as special effects ad orthodox constructive cutting tend to do, he sought a stylization that set these extraordinary feats apart from mundane reality. Not that he wanted to glorify the warriors as super human.The powers they display are not supernatural they spring from the mastery of chi or essential energy. Huâs task was to difnfy and beautify these feats without tipping them into implausibility and sheer fantasy. He makes his actions faster then the eyes. Even it seems the camera can follow. His combat scenes were obliged to present near fantastic feats of martial prowess. By editing, the âimperfectionsâ makes Huâs action scenes so distinctive. The dynamic between stability and momentary indiscernibility that yields his most original effects.
______________________________________________________Â
David Bordwell âAesthetics in action: Kungfu Gunplay and Cinematic Expressivityâ IN At Full Speed, HongKong Cinema in a Borderless World University of Minnesota Press 2001Â
Â
Hong Kong films employ death defying stunts that is not news. What is important is that the stunts are staged, shot, and cut for readability. The Hong Kong norm aims to maximize the actions legibility. From the 1960s swordplay films and 1970s kungfu movies to the cop movies and revived wuxia pian of the 1980s and 1990s this filmmaking tradition has put the graceful body at the centre. In order to follow the plot, one must be constantly apprised of the actorâs behavior down to the minute changes of posture, stance or regard. Hong Kong cinema has emphasized the concreteness and clarity of each gesture. Doubtless traditions of marital arts and Peking opera- cultural factors different from those governing Hollywood style have been central to aesthetic.
Very likely the marital arts tradition with its repertory of forms and combinations cultivated a belief that combat involved a balance between poised stillness and swift attack or defences.
The Hong Kong cinema manages to go beyond the performance and uses other film techniques to amplify the expressive dimensions of the action. The rapid zoom itself often manifest the pause-burst pattern from at the level of the performance as pose strike pose. The expressive force of running jumping, punching or kicking can also be strengthened by overlapping editing. In Hong Kong, overlapping serves to clarify key gestures by distending the time they take onscreen. Slow motion can intensify the fury or effort or danger of blow while also stressing its grace.
For example: Tsui Harkâs willingness to intercut shorts displaying different rates of slow motion to the stuttering pause-burst-pause printing. With the tradition of amplifying actions, emotional overtones by playing with speed of motion. However, Tsui hark never loses the context of âlocalityâ embedding his vision in a dense depiction of background and foreground with a keen eye to realistic detail as underscored by the scenes in his movies.
