Cinema of Hong Kong

In the film Chan is Missing, director Wayne Wang creates a detective story in which he allows the audience to be engaged with the characters in the film in order to find Chan. Upon the adventure of finding Chan, the audience comes to realize that Chan is this complex, changing, and elusive figure that Wang has presented. Presenting Chan through multiple perspectives, Wang undercuts the homogenized Asian America stereotypes and shows how they have no solitary identity. In essence, with the mystery going unresolved, Chan becomes a representation of Asian Americans, which are a complex, contradictory group that are impossible to be stereotyped or be ‘found’. Yet Wang was only able to do that through creating a detective story so the audience can be linked with the characters and their experiences as they go along on a quest and journey to find Chan. The audience is able to see the realistic lives of these ‘Asian Americans’ in a real place so they can hopefully deconstruct the perceiving notions and stereotypes that they had of their identity and culture. Through purposely placing the audience on a journey to solve an unresolving mystery story, Wang allows the audience to capture and see the realistic identities and culture of Asian Americans Throughout the film, many people display an image of who they believe Chan is. Although some conflicting, each character in the film seems to have seen Chan as a different person than the other. One person said says that Chan is not an…

1997 was a milestone in Kon's career for two reasons: The release of this particular movie in cinemas and the initiation of his collaboration with Madhouse Inc, who sheltered his genius until his last birth. Prefect Blue was initially meant for a live action TV series; however, after the Kobe earthquake in 1995, the production studio suffered extensive damages resulting in a reduction of the budget, up to a point that solely allowed the shooting of an OVA. Nevertheless, while the shootings were…

I.Topic For my project, I will be examining the cultural issue, the depiction of women in an action film where they represent feminism. In film, there is not enough representation of female characters that are capable of being independent and strong all while not being sexualized. Most female character who are given the traits strong and independent often times are hyper sexualized because they are women which means there objects in male’s view. However, female characters are need of makeovers…

Australian director George Miller’s 2015 blockbuster, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, is an action filled, post-apocalyptic film. The Mad Max universe is a set in a stark, desert landscape filmed in Namibia, with an oil and water crisis, which forces humanity to revert back to a state of war and isolation. One of the main characters, Max is captured by the “war boys” who live in the Citadel run by tyrannical Immortan Joe, and eventually finds Furiosa and her rig. In the ‘Furiosa’ scene, he attempts to…

placed these two together and formed the genre of martial art films. So what makes martial arts films the genre it is today? Many popular figures in history have changed the course of the genre, and made it the way it is today. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li are all examples of people who have steered the path of martial arts into a better direction. Bruce Lee, born in 1940 and died in 1973, is one the most widely known martial artists in the world. He was also a philosopher, and played a…

minimal screen time. Lee’s success in the spotlight meant that anyone has the potential to thrive in the movie industry, given they have a unique persona and desire to act. One man who fits these criteria is the Hong Kong native, Jackie Chan. After Lee’s surprisingly early death, the action film industry was left searching for another actor to bring the same intensity and style of action to the center stage. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee’s unique characteristics, and original charisma could not be…

Jackie Chan is a martial art film actor. Before he was born, his parents, Charles and Lee-lee Chan, travelled to Hong Kong, where they found a job to work for a French ambassador. His father became the ambassador’s cook and handyman (4). Jackie Chan, born in April 7, 1954, lived in Hong Kong with his father and mother. He was named Chan Kong-sang which meant “Born in Hong Kong” and was nicknamed Pao-pao, which meant cannonball, since his parents had never seen such a big baby (3-5). As…

Both Daughters of the Dust and In the Mood for Love provide counter memories that challenge hegemonic structures of memory, that have dominated how African American and Hong Kong cultures have been remembered. In particular the films counteract typical representations of their respective cultures that have been strongly rooted by prominent imaginations, by presenting a counter-memory of their own cultural past. While subsequently they imagine a cultural past that lives outside its hegemonic…

caused the decline of Hong Kong action film industry. According to Peter Rist, “ Immediately following the handover of Hong Kong by the British to the People’s Republic of China”, the Hong Kong filmmaker started to change the mood of action films. Instead of comedic action, the films produced after Handover “were characterized by strains of pessimism and unpleasantness” and that those works were not welcomed by local audiences and the received abysmal box office (163). In his paper, Peter Rist…

Many similarities can be found between Hong Kong action films and Reservoir Dogs. The plots of Hong Kong action films are often centered around “melodramatic catastrophes” (Bordwell, 11). They include “gunplay abounds and high body count results” (Stokes and Hoover, 38). Reservoir Dogs is extremely melodramatic. The men are trying to figure out who the rat in the group is while Mr. Orange lies bleeding out in the warehouse. Throughout the film, the men are constantly shooting at each other,…