City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema

Front Cover
Verso, 1999 M09 17 - 372 pages
Hong Kong’s film industry gained global attention in the 1980s, at the time of negotiations over Great Britain’s return of the colony to China. Uncertainty about the post-handover era accelerated Hong Kong’s race for economic growth, and found expression in cinema’s depictions of a ‘city on fire.’ In this accessible introduction to the extraordinary cinematic output of the colony, Michael Hoover and Lisa Stokes review the directors and films that have established Hong Kong cinema internationally: John Woo’s martial arts flicks, Tsui Hark’s wire-worked fantasies, Ann Hui’s exile melodramas, Stanley Kwan’s limpid romances, and Wong Kar-wai’s stylish art films.
 

Contents

ONE Mapping the Territory
1
TWO Reeling in the Years
17
THREE Whose Better Tomorrow?
38
SEVEN To Live Love and Die in the Time of Twilight
141
EIGHT Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong
169
EPILOGUE Hong Kong Calling
308
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