ABSTRACT
Hong Kong directors could content themselves with localised production aimed at the domestic market, the reliable but modest pan-Asian territories and the overseas diaspora. They could try to penetrate the fast-growing People's Republic of China's (PRC) market by mounting Hong Kong China co-productions. The PRC government issued a statement that Chinese films should go international. State censorship, self-censorship, ideational imperatives, postproduction dubbing, American retitling and re-editing, narrow theatrical release windows all these mediations assail the transnational Hong Kong filmmaker. Peter Ho-Sun Chan a Hong Kong producer-director renowned for transnational storytelling and distribution has during his career pursued several of these production pathways. Chan's American Dreams in China provides an instance of the ambivalence attending the China pathway. For directors like Chan, to target the North American market much like targeting the PRC market is to tolerate a kind of censorship whereby tacit essentialist principles constrain creative freedom. Chan's swordplay drama Wu Xia provides a paradigm case.
