Description:
Hong Kong Cinema and Sinophone Transnationalisms explores the intricate complexity of selected films and film-making practices from 1930s Hong Kong (and Shanghai) to the later 'new wave' phenomenon of the 1980s. The result is a Sinophone cinema that created some very different ways of understanding 'China' and 'Chineseness', developing their own 'cosmopolitan dreaming' within the cultural and economic changes of those times. Exploring sinification and its multiple manifestations in film, the book examines cinematic genres including Huangmei Opera films, qiqing (strange or queer romance) films, fanchuaners (professional cross-sex performers) in film, Hong Kong's Bond Movies (bangpian), erotic (fengyue) films, and New Wave Hong Kong cinema. In doing so, this book lays fruitful foundations for further understanding the development and changing faces of Hong Kong films and sinophone transnationalism in the even more complex and changing times of today.
Brief description: Dr See Kam Tan is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Macau.
Review Quotes: Tan offers a welcome and insightful survey of Hong Kong and Shanghai cinema from the 1930s to the 1980s, arguing for changing concepts of "nation," "China," and "Chineseness." [...] The book offers a thorough analysis of Sinophone culture and cinema through a nonessentialist lens, resulting in a model for transnational cinema studies, rejecting the "nation" as a model for organization. Recommended.--K. J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University "CHOICE"