Becoming a niche genre
Lie Fu: Personally, I think Hong Kong films in the future will become a niche genre.
Mao Jian: Local movies will be standard. Many people online have quoted you (Lie Fu) as saying "Hong Kong cinema is dead." Did you say that?
Lie Fu: I wrote that in 1995. But by "death" I didn't mean completely over and done with; rather, I meant the cessation of creativity, that no one would be carrying it onwards.
Mao Jian: Did you feel this was the case in 1995, or were you making a prediction?
Lie Fu: It was already the case. I was still with "Ming Pao Monthly"《明报月刊》then, and I wrote a piece on how Hong Kong cinema was already in a bad way. The editor decided to make it a cover feature, and we went with this sentence as a gimmick.
Moderator: "Ip Man" just got the [Hong Kong Film] award for Best Picture; what do Hong Kong people feel about this movie?
Lie Fu: That "Ip Man" is a Hong Kong film. From Wong Fei Hong through Fong Sai Yuk to Ip Man, there have been a series of folk heroes who are a special part of Hong Kong movie culture. There have been heroes who were not from Guangdong Province, such as Huo Yuanjia and Chen Zhen, who were created out of Hong Kong films. And in the broader view, Hong Kong movies can still preserve and spread the Lingnan culture. [Lingnan: literally, "south of the Five Ridges," meaning the area covering Guangdong and Guangxi provinces] Watching "Ip Man" is very comfortable: director Wilson Yip didn't get fancy with his characters. Of course, the Ip family descendants had certain demands, much like those of Mei Lanfang ["Forever Enthralled"], that their ancestor couldn't be turned into this or that.
Luo Gang: There was also an easy way out there. "Ip Man" took the national mood as the film's structure. Of course, Hong Kong filmmakers have been more likely to use nationalistic sentiment, for example the Wong Fei Hong series, right up through the complexity of Dongfang Bubai.
Lie Fu: This began with Bruce Lee's "Fist of Fury."
Luo Gang: This nationalistic sentiment is also more suitable for the mainland market, less likely to go wrong.
Moderator: [Producer] Raymond Wong has attempted a lot of movies on the mainland in recent years, but it wasn't until "Ip Man" that he won some awards and praise. But were you as surprised as many people were when "Ip Man" beat out "The Way We Are" for Best Picture at the Hong Kong Film Awards?
Mao Jian: Not at all. I felt quite comfortable with that, and welcomed it. "Ip Man" most embodied the characteristics of Hong Kong cinema, and thought that in Donnie Yen's fight scenes they had really grasped the spirit of Hong Kong films.
Lie Fu: Since "City Entertainment" 《电影双周刊》ceased publishing, the Hong Kong Film Awards have been an industry award, and that has definitely encouraged commercial films.
Mao Jian: Otherwise, Hong Kong movies would have too small an audience, and we would be advocating the protection of Hong Kong commercial films.
Moderator: But one can't just make artistic films, that's a dead end.
Luo Gang: Hong Kong cinema is a rich genre in and of itself. But the problem now is that commercial films are becoming overly reliant on the mainland market, without the success that came in the golden age. There will all kinds of possibilities in the next decade, and the next generation of Hong Kong filmmakers will be growing up in this environment.
Moderator: So are you saying that even without a censorship system, Hong Kong cinema could not be as dynamic as it was in the past?
Luo Gang: Yes.
Moderator: Was that due to Hong Kong directors misreading the mainland market? Otherwise, why have most of the co-productions done so badly?
Mao Jian: Possibly. They couldn't find the feeling of mainland audiences.
Sun Ganlu: There's another problem here. Those small art films haven't taken the psychology of mainland audiences, their expectations, into account at the outset. They've just centered on the director himself, so the main determinant of these films' rise or fall has largely been a measure of Hong Kong local creativity. As for a movie finding a market, its integration into both the mainland and the Hong Kong markets certainly has an impact. Before the mainland market opened up, Hong Kong movies were more aimed at the Southeast Asian and the Japan-Korea markets, but after so big a market as the mainland opened up, it couldn't help but have an impact of Hong Kong filmmakers' creative work. But even without censorship Hong Kong filmmakers will still encounter problems.
Mao Jian: Much like John Woo making movies in the United States, that's all over with.
Sun Ganlu: It's a kind of customization, a customized structure, a customized market, even customizing oneself. But Hong Kong filmmakers' image and understanding of the mainland market is definitely problematic.
Mao Jian: So like Ang Lee, it's not easy.
Moderator: So we've now discovered that John Woo's original understanding of the mainland market was that it was more difficulty to understand than the U.S. market.
Luo Gang: He completely used "Troy" in filming "Red Cliff."
Sun Ganlu: As a creative person matures, his reactions to his environment become increasingly complex, and there are more factors influencing him. But we must not forget that he is still a creator, still growing, and are there problems in this growth? "Red Cliff" was really bad, but if you say the environment was a factor in that, what does that have to do with him personally?
A steadily narrowing road
Sun Ganlu: I think there's been a subtle change with Hong Kong filmsy. I once saw a small film called "Love Story,"《恋爱物语》and Hong Kong films like that do not stress Hong Kong's identity, but just relate a story of everyday life, a relaxed state of mind. But now in movies like "The Sparrow" we are seeing the first signs of a stress on Hong Kong characteristics in a genre that used to rely heavily of the use of force to tell their story.
Lie Fu: This is related to Johnnie To's own state of mind, with so many of his peers gone.
Moderator: And Johnnie To has stayed in Hong Kong.
Sun Ganlu: It's very difficult now to just look at Hong Kong films in isolation. There is a latent power behind them. Hong Kong filmmakers are already considered to be "insiders" on the mainland. Their standpoint and vision have changed.
Lie Fu: It's just as Joe Ma (马伟豪) said in an interview, I worry that we will all run to Beijing, and the only Chinese movies left will be northern ones.
Moderator: China's most popular directors have basically all come from north China. Since Xie Jin (谢晋) there really haven't been any good directors from Shanghai or south China. Will Hong Kong directors going north form a distinctly southern counterbalance to that?
Lie Fu: What worries me is whether Hong Kong will take the same road Shanghai did.
Sun Ganlu: It could be that a small part of Hong Kong cinema will continue to exist, and one movie may stand out from time to time, but the overall pattern might not go that way. In addition, as far as film production is concerned, "going north" may well be the trend. It's like Hollywood movies, with the investment pressures so great, that may be the only choice. Otherwise, it will be like movies from Denmark or Norway: there are some, but by having to fend for themselves they don't have a global impact, and not even much regional impact.
Luo Gang: The road will get steadily narrower. Making movies today requires so much financial support, there are so many things to do. With funding, a director can assemble the very best team. Directors realize that if they can't assemble that team, it's useless.
Moderator: Funding now comes primarily from the mainland, since there is very little Hong Kong money for investment in motion pictures. And since the investors are from the mainland, it naturally follows that the mainland side will control production of the film.
Lie Fu: There aren't many Hong Kong studios left, and it seems as if Johnnie To is about the only one who can still get funding from abroad.
Sun Ganlu: If you look at the current situation for actors in the three cross-straits locations, it's clear that if you don't come to the mainland to act, sing or appear on TV, you have no hope.
[End of Part V and discussion] Part I Part II Part III Part IV
