Hong Kong Cinema celebrates 100th Birthday!

It depends on who you talk to, but by some accounts, Hong Kong is celebrating its first century of filmmaking this year. The earliest recorded “made-in-Hong Kong” movie is a short film from 1909 called STEALING A ROAST DUCK. The film itself, if it ever existed, disappeared long ago. But despite the paucity of documentation, the anniversary has been embraced as an excuse to celebrate the long and colorful history of the Hong Kong movie industry. As film historian Law Kar pointed out in a recent interview with the Guardian, “1909 is as good a place to start as any.”

Top: Lau Kar-leung’s 1982 film LEGENDARY WEAPONS OF CHINA represented a high point in kung fu filmmaking. Above: Flyer for THE LADY IN COMBAT (1941) by early martial arts director Ren Pengnian.

Hong Kong cinema is much more than just kung fu and wuxia movies, but those are the genres that have found fans all over the world. Kung fu filmmakers arguably have done as much as any Hollywood mogul to shape modern cinema. The earliest Chinese action films may be primitive by today’s standards, but today there would be no classic kung fu movies by Yuen Woo-ping or Lau Kar-leung if their fathers Yuen Siu-tin and Lau Cham hadn’t spent a lifetime honing their craft with directors like Ren Pengnian and Wu Pang. When modern directors like Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, and Zhang Yimou bring all their skill and artistry to recreating the kind of low budget martial arts films they loved as youngsters, it’s time to pay respect to forgotten masters like Shek Kin, Yu So-chow, and Han Yingjie.

Top: Flyer for HOW WONG FEI-HUNG SUBDUED TWO TIGERS (1956), directed by Wu Pang. Above: Jackie Chan and Yuen Siu-tin in DRUNKEN MASTER (1978), directed by Yuen Woo-ping.

So let’s celebrate the anniversary and wish Hong Kong filmmakers another hundred years of profitable and influential industry. For more information about the centennial, read the Hollywood Reporter historical overview here. If you can read Chinese, the website hkfilm100.asia has been set up as a resource by Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK).