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Intellect Books - Linda Chiu-han Lai and Kimburley Wing-yee Choi

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116 pages

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The rapid development of Hong Kong has occasioned the demolition of buildings and landscapes of historic significance, but film acts as a repository for memories of lost places, vanished vistas and material objects. Location shoots in Hong Kong have preserved many disappearing landmarks of the city, and the resulting films function as valuable and irreplaceable archives of the city’s evolution.

Far more than a simple collection of movie locations, this book delivers a rare glimpse into the history of film production practices in Hong Kong. The locations described here are often not the most iconic; rather, they are the anonymous streets and back alleys used by local film studios in the 1960s and 70s. They are the garden cafes with outdoor seating near the Chinese University of Hong Kong where moments of conflict in romantic comedies erupt and dissipate. They are the old Kai Tak Airport, which channels rage and desire, and the tenement housing, which splits citizens into greedy landlords and the diligent working class and embodies old-day communal values. Modern Hong Kong horror films draw their power from the material character of home-grown convenient stores, shopping arcades and lost mansions found under modern high rises.

As in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Johnnie To, readers will drift and dash through the streets of Central to the district’s periphery, almost recklessly, automatically, or for the sheer pleasure of roaming. The first of its kind in English, this book is more than a city guide to Hong Kong through the medium of film; it is a unique exploration of relationship between location and place and genre innovations in Hong Kong cinema.

Maps/Scenes

Scenes 1–7 – 1957–1980

Scenes 8–14 – 1982–1992

Scenes 15–20 – 1994–1997

Scenes 21–26 – 1998–2003

Scenes 27–32 – 2003–2007

Scenes 33–38 – 2008–2012

Essays

Hong Kong: City of the Imagination – Linda Chiu-han Lai and Steve Fore

Here, There and In-between: Transitional Space in Hong Kong Movies – Kimburley Wing-yee Choi

The Kid on the Street: Dai pai dong, Tenement Buildings, Public Housing – Linda Chiu-han Lai

Many-splendoured Thigns: The Wharf, the Roof-tops and the Floating Population – Linda Chiu-han Lai

Colonial Remains: From Non-place to Self-referential Simulacrum – Lam Wai-keung

My Movie Scenes: A Director's Impression of Home – Derek Chiu (Chiu Sung-kee)

Victoria: Room with a View, or Unsettled History? – Hector Rodriguez

Sujets

Arts visuels

Cinéma

Cinema

General officer

Art

General

Asia

Film

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	14 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783201051
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	4 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0950€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

WORLD
FILM
LOCATIONS
HONG
KONG
Edited by Linda Chiu-han Lai
and Kimburley Wing-yee ChoiWORLD
FILM
LOCATIONS
HONG
KONG
Edited by Linda Chiu-han Lai
and Kimburley Wing-yee Choi
First Published in the UK in 2013 by All rights reserved. No part of this
Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, publication may be reproduced, stored
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, First Published in the USA in 2013
mechanical, photocopying, recording, by Intellect Books, The University of
or otherwise, without written consent.
Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA A Catalogue record for this book is
available from the British LibraryCopyright ©2013 Intellect Ltd
World Film Locations Series
Cover photo: Chungking Express (1994)
ISSN: 2045-9009
© Jet Tone / The Kobal Collection
eISSN: 2045-9017
Copy Editor: Emma Rhys World Film Locations Hong Kong
ISBN: 978-1-78320-021-4
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-105-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-7106-8
Printed and bound by
Bell & Bain Limited, GlasgowWORLD
FILM
LOCATIONS
HONG
KONG
editors
Linda Chiu-han Lai
and Kimburley Wing-yee Choi
series editor & design
Gabriel Solomons
contributors
Evans Chan
Derek Chiu (Chiu Sung–kee)
Chu Kiu-wai
Bryan Wai-ching Chung
Steve Fore
Ho Yue-jin
Rita Hui (Hui Nga-shu)
Mike Ingham
Lam Wai-keung
Anson Hoi-shan Mak
Meaghan Morris
Hector Rodriguez
Wong Ain-ling
Wong Fei-pang
Sugar Xu (Xu Bingji)
Yip Kai-chun
location photography
Wong Fei-pang
(unless otherwise credited)
location maps
Joel Keightley
published by
Intellect
The Mill, Parnall Road,
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
T: +44 (0) 117 9589910
F: +47 9589911
E: info@intellectbooks.com
Bookends: Hong Kong harbour (Wong Fei-pang)
This page: University of Hong Kong (Wong Fei-pang)
Overleaf: The World of Suzie Wong (Kobal)CONTENTS
Maps/Scenes Essays
6 Hong Kong: 10 Scenes 1-7
City of the Imaginat ion1957 - 1980
Linda Chiu-han Lai and Steve Fore
28 Scenes 8-14 8 Here, There and In-between:
1982 - 1992 Transitional Space in Hong
Kong Movies
Kimburley Wing-yee Choi46 Scenes 15-20
1994 - 1997
26 The Kid on the Street:
Dai pai dong, Tenement
62 Scenes 21-26 Buildings, Public Housing
1998 - 2003 Linda Chiu-han Lai
44 Many-splendoured Things:
78 Scenes 27-32 The Wharf, the Roof-tops and
2003 - 2007 the Floating Population
Linda Chiu-han Lai
94 Scenes 33-38 60 Colonial Remains:
2008 - 2012 From Non-place to
Selfreferential Simulacrum
Lam Wai-keung
76 My Movie Scenes:
A Director's Impression of Home
Derek Chiu (Chiu Sung-kee)
92 Victoria: Room With a View,
or Unsetled History?
Hector Rodriguez
Backpages
108 Resources
109 Contributor Bios
112 Filmography
3World Film Locations | Hong Kongacknowledgementspublished by
IntellectSpecial thanks to Lorenzo J.
The Mill, Parnall Road, Torres Hortelano for introducing
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UKthe WFL series to us, and to
T: +44 (0) 117 9589910
Gabriel Solomons for his guidance F: +47 9589911
on editorial procedures.E: info@intellectbooks.com
linda chiu-han laiINTRODUCTION
World Film Locations Hong Kong
the rapid development of Hong Kong has resulted in extensive demolition of
buildings and landscapes of commemorative value. Cinema becomes like a mine rich in
mnemonic fragments of lost places, vanished landscapes and material objects. Location shots,
each with varied dramatic functions, turn out to have preserved many of the ever-changing
and disappearing locations of the city. HK Cinema is a valuable and irreplaceable archive of
the city’s ‘looks’ from the past as the city constantly goes through major facelifs.
HK Cinema is intrinsically space-bound. A few places became hot locations for outdoor
dramas: some are turned into the iconic equivalence of the city, such as the Victoria Harbour,
whereas the drama of many action thrillers and horror flms primarily evolve around the
physical features of a location. Far more than an ensemble of movie locations, this book
delivers a side-view of the history of flm production practices in the city (捉姦記/Caught
in the Act ([Ng Wui (Wu Hui), 1957] and 最佳拍擋/Aces Go Places [Eric Tsang, 1982]). Real
locations are rare in the 1950s and before. A garden cafe with outdoor seating near the
Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories is where peak moments of confict in
romantic comedies erupt and dissipate (玉女添丁/Te Pregnant Maiden [Chor Yuen, 1968]).
Many outdoor scenes in the 1960s and 1970s are in fact the anonymous streets and back alleys
of the very neighbourhood of local flm companies and studios. Te old Kai Tak Airport
channels the rage and desire of the colony to other world-class cities (Spotlight #1). Tenement
housing, splitting citizens into greedy landlords and the diligent working class of great
propriety, contains old-day communal values. As they were gradually replaced by government
public housing, social realism recounts crime and fury from one cubicle to the next as much
as on long and winding narrow corridors (Spotlight #2). Te ghostly and the fendish of HK
horror acquire new under-world pathos entrenched in the material character of home-grown
convenient stores, shopping arcades, and lost mansions scrapped under modern high rises
and coiling fyovers. As for Wong Kar-wai and Johnnie To’s flms, multiple protagonists drif
and dash through the streets up and down and inside out to the recoils of forgotten livelihoods
in a district’s periphery, almost recklessly, automatically, or for the sheer pleasure of roaming.
Te variety of locations covered in this book includes districts (such as Central, Wanchai,
Mongkok), landmarks (such as Jardine House and the Star Ferry), HK-style luminal spaces
(such as street stalls, 7-Elevens, back alleys and tenement buildings), passageways and so on.
Te 38 scene reviews are not just 38 locations. Tey are the tips of a traumatic spatial history
largely submerged and hidden. A possible alternative title of this book could be ‘Hong Kong:
an Itinerary for Time Travel’.
Te ensemble of voices that speak in this book is carefully sorted. We have flm scholars,
historians, critics, members of the flm industry, and flm programmers. A few writers are
directors from the local industry as well as prominent independent and experimental
flmmakers. All of them, no doubt, are 100 per cent flm bufs. {
Linda Chiu-han Lai, Editor
Note: In all pieces, ‘Hong Kong’ is abbreviated as ‘HK’ the second time it appears and
thereafer. All flm titles are appended with non-simplifed Chinese characters used in Hong
Kong, as opposed to Simplifed characters used in Mainland China.
5World Film Locations | Hong Kongn
Text by
Linda Chiu-
L
S Teve HONG KONG FORew
City of the Imagination
it’s almost cliché, a banal simplifcation, without the contrasting presence of hidden
too, to say that Hong Kong is crowded. avenues of solitary isolation (重慶森林/Chungking
Tokyo is crowded, but its fyover complexes Express [Wong Kar-wai, 1994]). Crowdedness is
divide the city into neat zones of dwellings and about juxtaposition and contrast, the contiguity
pockets of street-level identities. New York can be of the incompatible to the incommensurable: little
crowded, but only if you are near Times Square or cubicles self-multiply and pile up, chaos if you
Wall Street on a regular business day. Manhattan zoom in, yet an extraordinary sense of order not
to me always afords a leisurely stroll. But Hong quite matched in any other world cities. Crowds
Kong... mean young people (古惑仔之人在江湖/Young
Te sensation of ‘crowdedness’ in HK is and Dangerous [Lau Wai-keung, 1996]). A crowd
arresting; it compels us to exhaust our vocabulary. draws out fear. Crowdedness is when you can’t tell
I learn, from the many contributors of this volume, gang-boys from ordinary youngsters (去吧！揸fit
that crowdedness is indeed the key and has 人兵團/Once upon a Time in Triad Society 2 [Cha
many names. Trafc jams and crammed public Chuen-Yee, 1996]). Crowdedness drives people to
housing needless to say> Crowdedness demands make space (在浮城的角落唱首歌/On the Edge of
metaphors: crisscrossing strands, labyrinthine a Floating City, We Sing [Anson Mak (Mak
Hoipassages (龍虎風雲/City on Fire [Ringo Lam, shan), 2012]). Kids on the street prefer to be part
1987]). It has smells and favours (Te World of of the crowd to fee crowded housing (Spotlight
Suzie Wong [Richard Quine, 1960]); it is fared #2). Crowds point to collectivity, to infectious
up by speed, exaggerated by the urgency of the homogenization (生化壽屍/Bio Zombie [Wilson
moment (Boarding Gate [Olivier Assayas, 2007]) YIP (YIP Wai-shun), 1998]). Crowdedness
and poetized by a very slow stroll (行者/Te indicates the need to stretch our visual grammar
Walker [Tsai Ming-liang, 2012]). Crowdedness is and perceptual consciousness (堕落天使/Fallen
embodied in the exploding desire for a window Angels [Wong Kar-wai, 1995]; 香港製造/Made in
with a harbour view (Spotlight #6), at least some Hong Kong [Fruit Chan, 1997]). It also demands
breathing space (奪命金/Life without Principle technical problem solving – how to shoot in a
[Johnnie To, 2011]). Tere’s no crowdedness crowded area. Ask directors Ringo Lam and Cha
Chuen-yee.
A unique cinematic language evolves to
symphonize crowdedness in serial mashed-up
scenes. At the turn of a street corner, a main
road populated by banks and multinational
corporations becomes an old neighbourhood.
Collage work brings together crossroads and
landmarks from diferent districts into successive
scenes of temporal-spatial continuity. One district
is rendered just the same as anothers into one big
visual extravaganza of Hong Kong (麥兜菠蘿油王
子/McDull prince a la bun [Toe Yuen, 2004]). A
little girl’s runaway excursion becomes a convenient
excuse to mash up various crowded spots in the
city (小偵探/Little Detective [Chan Pei (Chen Pi),
6 World Film Locations | Hong Kong
and
ai haAbove © 1992 Eizo Tanteisha, Right Staff Office Company
O