ABSTRACT
Hong Kong cinema has always been an international cinema. Since its inception around the 1920s, with distribution networks throughout China, Southeast Asia, the Far East, and the Chinese diaspora, its films and personnel have moved through networks of global Chinese, drawing on resources – material and financial – from within these worlds. In this essay, however, I move outside these worlds to investigate the connections between Hong Kong cinema and international film festivals. More specifically, I am interested in how Hong Kong filmmakers have, over the years, progressively used international film festivals to showcase their works and to market them globally. At the same time, I am also interested in the ways film festival circuits have influenced the distribution, consumption and reception of Hong Kong films around the world. The success of Jackie Chan, John Woo, Ann Hui and Wong Kar-wai have made Hong Kong films global enough to be appropriated by Hollywood in various ways as popular entertainment. Yet for Hong Kong filmmakers, these festival circuits represent crucial points of access to both global film markets and artistic recognition – a conduit through which their films find and gain Western spectatorships.
