Hong Kong’s Film Industry Reconstituted: Pathways to China after the Golden Age

Abstract

This chapter examines the factors underpinning the vicissitudes of Hong Kong’s film industry since the 1980s. It explores the industry’s competitive edge and discusses Hong Kong’s contributions to the growth of the Chinese film market in the context of the regional integration of the Chinese movie value chain. The analysis is organized in four sections. The first provides an overview of the Hong Kong film industry from a historical perspective. The second describes the structure and the production system of Hong Kong’s film industry in its golden age of the 1980s. The third illuminates the causes of the Hong Kong film industry’s collapse since the mid-1990s. The final section reflects critically on the recent and future development of Hong Kong’s film industry against the backdrop of its integration with the Chinese market. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of this study for developing a sociological perspective on the Hong Kong economy.