In Loving Memory
Situating the new millennial films vis-à-vis several critical turns in the representations of the city in Hong Kong cinema, this chapter aims to examine the cinematic city as an episteme that grounds our knowledge of political, cultural, and socio-economic dynamics of Hong Kong society within a complex global–national–local network. It is argued that the urban cinema provokes critical discourses on […]
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Contemporary Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke demonstrates how auteurism performs an essential role in shaping an impressive grassroots poetics within a rapidly vanishing space. Hailed by some critics as “the cinematic poet” of postsocialist China, Jia has developed an expansive field of citation where the recurrent spaces of demolition and construction are notable tropes. Bound up with the transformations of local […]
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Funded by government financial aids from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (ADC), Vincent Chui’s Leaving in Sorrow is an independent film which belongs to the tradition of realism in Hong Kong cinema. A digital video shot at a low cost, the film contributed to the revival and growth of independent film-making in the late 1990s and the new millenium; […]
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Abstract: This chapter attempts to examine the ethical relationship between self and other by way of focusing on the theme of estrangement in the New Hong Kong Cinema. In his study of the voice-over in cinema, Michel Chion creates a category of “acousmatic voices” or in French the acousmêtre. The acousmêtre refers to the image-voice relation in which one does […]
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Abstract: This chapter explores how various moments of disjointed time in Hong Kong history are associated with the expression of a sense of ghostliness, alienation and homelessness. It discusses the possibility of writing a meta-history of Hong Kong over the past thirty years or so through a hermeneutical reading of the cinematic depictions of space. It focuses on how an […]
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Abstract: With persistent efforts on constructing personal and collective memories arising from the unprecedented transformations in post-socialist China, Jia Zhangke has produced an ensemble of realist films with an impressive personal and authentic appeal. This paper examines how his films are characterised by a variety of accents, images of authenticity, a quotidian ambience, and a new sense of materiality within […]
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James Clifford’s essay ‘Diasporas’ (1994), which discusses the need to move from the ‘ideal type’ of ‘diaspora’ to non-Jewish kinds of migratory experiences, casts significant implications on the study of Chinese diasporas. We can follow this stance to assert that ‘diaspora’ as an analytical category must be referred to in the plural form and with a lowercase ‘d’. In many […]
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「為了證實自己的存在，古老的記憶比未來的瞭望更明晰、親切。」──張愛玲〈自己的文章〉《流言》 「我在你自戀的鏡像中看見自己，欣喜若狂。」──佚名 鬼魅、雙城、對話 人總有一死，文本卻生生不息，新的文本在連綿不絕的文化承傳、革新和交流中再生逝去的人與事。我們不得不承認，許多時候，歷史傳統對當下上下求索的眾生來說，有若揮之不去的鬼魅，創作者必須竭力驅魔，「破舊立新」，解開心結。改編小說為電影的人，也常常把舊的文本輪迴再生，在創新和忠於原著的衝突中，尋求出路。若說原著小說有時像鬼魅般纏繞改編者，也沒有誇大其辭。但曾幾何時，在鬼影幢幢的新文本內，我們看見「過去」與「現在」彷彿一對好友知己，在斷裂的歷史脈絡中促膝談心。
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This paper attempts to theorize the intricate relations among built space, cinema and the changing city.
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