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| May 2000 Hong Kong movie industry Surviving in hard times By Angel Hau RELATED ARTICLES: According to movie critic Jason Keeto Chan, director Tsui Hark is going to plunge again into the local movie industry. Mr. Tsui is now working on a remake of Zu: Warrior From the Magic Mountain, a movie that he produced in 1986. However, the capital he raised so far is only about $1 million, far short of the $45 million he had in 1986. One of the reasons for this is the decline of the local movie industry. “From the perspective of the industry, Hong Kong is too small to support a movie industry,” said Mr. Lee Chek To, former editor-in-chief of the magazine City Entertainment, previously known as Film Bi-weekly. “Yet Hong Kong still managed to survive because it could rely on foreign markets,” he added. According to Mr. Lee, Hong Kong movies were once very popular in other Asian countries, especially Taiwan. Some Taiwanese companies invested lots of money in Hong Kong’s movie industry. However, as there are too many imports from Hong Kong, the market in Taiwan was saturated. Meanwhile, filmmakers in Taiwan also produced their own movies. So investments in Hong Kong movies dropped immediately. Mr. Jason Lam, a movie critic known as Kee-To, said pirated VCDs pushed the movie industry to a worse situation. “Similar to Hong Kong, there are pirated copies of movies in the United States and Europe. But their movie companies are more responsive than their counterparts in Hong Kong. They took action to improve the quality of movies. “The public also shows their respect for copyrights. Therefore the situation in foreign countries is not as serious as in Hong Kong, though the problem of piracy exists,” said Mr. Lam. Director Gordon Chan, on the other hand, attributed the stagnation of the local movie industry to red-hot competition. Said he: “A bad market produces bad movies. Some big movie companies used to steal ideas from other companies and make the movies faster than the creator. “Being aware of that danger, many filmmakers have no choice but to make their movies as quickly as possible,” he said. However, Mr. Lam does not think that local movies are ill-matched to foreign competitors. Said he: “The concept that foreign movies are better than ours is wrong. They also produce low quality movies, but we never see them because they aren’t exported. “Under such circumstances, local movies are easily regarded as low quality,” he said. The decline of the Hong Kong movie industry lowered the production of medium-cost movies, for which the budgets range from $3 million to $8 million. “Now we only have some big-cost festive movies and a lot of small-cost movies. This is a problem because medium-cost movies are the pillars of the Hong Kong movie industry,” said Mr. Lam. Mr. Chan agrees with Mr. Lam. He regards the medium-cost movies as cradles of amateur filmmakers. Both Mr. Lam and Mr. Chan also blame the government for doing little to support the local movie industry. Mr. Lam said, “Little is done by the government on the promotion of culture — not only movie culture, but also the entire local culture.” Although the Chief Executive has promised to spend $1 million on local filmmakers, it seems that this will do little to rejuvenate the industry, at least in the eyes of Mr. Chan. Said he: “This sum of money is little help. The government stated that the money can only be used for educational purposes and training professionals. “The fact is that most of the Hong Kong people are not interested in filmmaking. What they are concerned about is making money. What the government should do is to improve the environment for making movies in Hong Kong.” Though Mr. Chan is a bit pessimistic, he clings to his hope. “In recent years individual movies are emerging, and most of the filmmakers are quite young. It is encouraging to see the growth of individual filmmaking. They have the vision that the public lacks, and they are talented. Said Mr. Chan: “After all, there’s a generation gap between young filmmakers and directors like me. “I’m waiting to see what they can do in this 20-year gap,” he concluded. |
(Courtesy of Hong Kong ARts Centre)
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