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GeoExpat  Lifestyle Hong Kong Entertainment Kung Fu Conquerors
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Page 1 of 3  For a territory of around 7 million, Hong Kong punches well above its weight on the international film scene. Hong Kong stars have become household names and its films cult hits the world over. In Hong Kong's heyday, the city was second only to the Hollywood machine in exporting productions. So how did a territory with the equivalent population of Switzerland manage to make films with such global success?
Rory Boland finds out.
Laying the Groundwork
The birth of the Hong Kong film industry came about because of the death of another. Shanghai had been the centre for Chinese-language productions until the 1930s. After a cycle of war and revolution, most filmmakers made for Hong Kong, bringing their talent and the money from under their mattresses with them.
Emigration, war and finally a stringent communist regime sounded the death knell for production on the mainland and Hong Kong took up the baton for producing Chinese-language films, in both Mandarin and Cantonese.
One of the most notable émigrés from Shanghai was the Nanyang Studio, later known as the Shaw Brothers Studio which went on to become one of the most successful in Hong Kong.
Chinatown
Initially , Mandarin speaking films were the main staples , produced by the transplanted film makers and their cast of stars. However as the mainlands, mandarin speaking, market was closed off and the stars aged, Cantonese speaking stars rose to prominence and Cantonese language films took centre-stage. At first these were, low on imagination, low on budget, family dramas, Cantonese opera films and swordfight films, made quickly and cheaply.
What kept the industry ticking was Hong Kong people¹s insatiable desire for local-language movies. Years of intrepid Cantonese travellers had also
created numerous Chinatowns the world over; these communities would wait with baited breath for the next film release. It was these Chinatowns that would prove the fifth column for Hong Kong movies making their name abroad. Cinema-going thrived in Hong Kong. In 1959, the attendance per capita was 22 times per year, twice the US average and by far the highest in the world. With a larger income, production values also rose.
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