ABSTRACT
This chapter brings the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong together so as to foreground the parallel development of the new wave in filmmaking in all three Chinas during the 1980s. Chronologically, the new wave started first in Hong Kong in 1979. It dramatically changed the look of Hong Kong cinema and the way in which filmmakers there negotiated with their colonial history and postcolonial prospects. As in Hong Kong, New Taiwan Cinema developed an increasing awareness of identity issues in Taiwan’s own culture and history. Indeed, culture and history were of crucial importance to New Chinese Cinema in the post-Mao period, as cinema became one of the most popular means of rethinking what had gone wrong in the socialist revolution and what people could do to improve their lives. Emerging from the new waves in all three Chinas were new cinematic reflections on national and regional cultures and the common concerns with humanism in the face of the dominant political and economic regimes. Such concerns were put to the test in the 1989 prodemocratic demonstration in Beijing’s Tiananmen square, televised live by the Western media and followed by the PLA’s brutal crackdown that shocked the entire world. Although the momentum of the new waves had been exhausted by that time, a decade of cinematic innovations, increased interactions among filmmakers from the three Chinas and a number of top international film festival awards had placed Chinese film in a prominent position in world cinema.
