Film Series – Hong Kong 1997

At midnight on July 1st, 1997, 156 years of British rule in Hong Kong came to an end, as the colonial city-state was reunited with Mainland China under the status of “special administrative region.” The uncertainty many Hong Kongers felt about this event and its implications would, subtly or quite directly, influence films made in the moviemaking capitol of Greater China in the years immediately after the Handover—works by Hong Kong legends like Wong Kar-wai, Johnnie To, Fruit Chan, Tsui Hark, and others which reflect the epochal shift in the destiny of the city in which they were made in an often anxious and frenetic cinematic language.