Against the Vanishing Border: Trauma and Hope in Post-colonial Hong Kong Cinema

Abstract

In 1997, the British colony of Hong Kong was "reunified" with the People's Republic of China, after nearly 100 years of separation. In those 100 years, Hong Kong has developed like many western capitalist nations with free market economies. Its film industry is the third largest in the world. But since 1997, serious changes have occurred in Hong Kong. The availability of cheap labor in China has driven many Hong Kong companies onto the Mainland. Like any industry, the film industry has also suffered. This is expressed not just in terms of the low box office returns but also in the films themselves, which represent the post-1997 era in Hong Kong as extremely problematic for the people of Hong Kong. My Richter project attempts to examine the ways in which Hong Kong cinema expresses the trauma of reunification and the effects of Hong Kong's disappearing border.