Hong Kong

Hong Kong cinema is shaped by two major factors—geographical location and politics. As a major port and trading center, Hong Kong was the first Chinese city exposed to the invention of cinema. During the "Chinese war against Japanese aggression" (World War II), due to its geographical marginality from China, Hong Kong became the wartime filmmaking capital. Hong Kong's British colonial status also protected it from the subsequent Chinese civil war and the eventual takeover of mainland China by the Communist Party in 1949. The subsequent exodus of money and talents from the mainland provided the base for a permanent film-making capital. In the 1980s, after the Sino-British Joint Declaration affirmed the coming (1997) reunification of Hong Kong with China, anxiety permeated the political climate, and Hong Kong cinema, which had established its own subjectivity, found itself in crisis. The new challenge became the process of internationalization, which has required a commercial strategy for combating global competition and a political position to fend off interference from China.