Topics and Readings:
I. Early Hong Kong Cinema
Session 1 (Wednesday, April 3): Introduction to the Course and An Overview of Hong
Kong History, Culture, and Cinema
Stephen Bordwell, “All Too Extravagant: Too Gratuitously Wild – Hong Kong and/as/or
Hollywood” in
Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. 1-16.
Esther Yau, “Introduction: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World” in
At Full Speed: Hong
Kong Cinema in a Borderless World.
Session 2 (Wednesday, April 10): Early Hong Kong Cinema: The Shanghai “Hangover”
Lisa Odham Stokes and Rachel Braaten, eds. Preface, Chronology, and Introduction in
Historical
Dictionary of Hong Kong Cinema. xi-14.
Stephen Teo, “Early Hong Kong Cinema: The Shanghai Hangover” in
Hong Kong Cinema: The
Extra Dimensions. 3-28.
Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Translating Yingxi – Chinese Film Genealogy and Early Cinema in Hong
Kong” in
Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China. 19-50.
Film:
Center Stage 阮玲玉 directed by Stanley Kwan 關錦鵬, 1991.
II. Wuxia, Kung Fu, and Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema
Session 3 (Wednesday, April 17): The Wuxia Films of the 1970’s: King Hu, Lo Wei, and
Bruce Lee
David Bordwell, “Motion Emotion: The Art of the Action Movie” in
Planet Hong Kong. 127-
156.
Stephen Teo, Introduction in
Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. 1-16.
Stephen Teo, “The Martial Arts Film in Chinese Cinema: Historicism and the National” in
Art,
Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema. 99-109.
Stephen Teo, “The Rise of Kung Fu: From Wong Fei-Hong to Bruce Lee” in
Chinese Martial
Arts Cinema.
Stephen Teo, “The Wuxia Films of King Hu” in
Chinese Martial Arts Cinema.115-142.
Man-Fung Yip, “In the Realm of the Senses: Sensory Realism, Speed, and Hong Kong Martial
Arts Cinema” in
Cinema Journal. 76-97.
Films:
A Touch of Zen 俠女 directed by King Hu 胡金銓, 1971 and
Fist of Fury 精武門
(aka
The Chinese Connection) directed by Lo Wei 羅維, 1972.
7
Session 4 (Wednesday, April 24): Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan: Transnational Stardom and
Identity
David Bordwell, “Local Heroes: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan” in
Planet Hong Kong.17-38.
M.T. Kato, “Burning Asia: Bruce Lee’s Kinetic Narrative of Decolonization” in
Modern Chinese
Literature and Culture.
Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema”
in
Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide. 437-456.
Paul Bowman, “Spectres of Bruce Lee” in
Beyond Bruce Lee. 162-172.
Kin-Yan Szeto, “Jackie Chan’s Cosmopolitical Consciousness and Comic Displacement” in
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. 229-261.
Raechel Dumas, “Kung Fu Production for Global Consumption: The Depoliticization of Kung
Fu in Stephen Chow’s
Kung Fu Hustle.”
Films:
Enter the Dragon 龍爭虎鬥 directed by Robert Clouse (1973) and
Drunken Master
醉拳 directed by Yuen Woo-ping 袁和平 (1978). Optional additional film:
Kung Fu Hustle
功夫 directed by Stephen Chow 周星馳, 2004.
III. The Hong Kong New Wave: Entertainment, Aesthetics, and
Reinvention
Session 5 (Wednesday, May 1): The “Accented Cinema” of Tsui Hark and the Politics of
Disappearance
Ackbar Abbas, “The New Hong Kong Cinema and the ‘Déjà Disparu’” in
Hong Kong: Culture
and the Politics of Disappearance.
Law Kar, “An Overview of Hong Kong’s New Wave Cinema” in
At Full Speed.
Tony Williams, “Under ‘Western Eyes’: The Personal Odyssey of Huang Fei-Hong in
Once
Upon a Time in China in
Asian Cinemas.
Tan See Kam, “Tsui Hark: Accented Cinema” in
Hong Kong Cinema and Sinophone
Transnationalisms.
Tan See Kam, “Shanghai and Peking Blues: Fiction as Imagined History” in
Tsui Hark’s Peking
Opera Blues. 103-118.
Craig Reid, “Interview with Tsui Hark” in
Film Quarterly.
Films:
Peking Opera Blues 刀馬旦(1986) and
Once Upon a Time in China 黃飛鴻 (1991)
directed by Tsui Hark 徐文光.
*** Response Paper Due on Canvas by Friday, May 3 ***
Session 6 (Wednesday, May 8): The Crisis Cinema of John Woo and its Global Influence
Tony Williams, “Space, Place, and Spectacle: The Crisis Cinema of John Woo” in
Cinema
Journal.
Kenneth Hall, “Style and Structure in
The Killer” in
John Woo’s The Killer
. 23-43.
Kenneth Hall, “Woo’s Inheritors:
The Killer as Influence” in
John Woo’s The Killer. 56-71.
Jinsoo An, “
The Killer: Cult Film and Transcultural (Mis)reading” in
At Full Speed. 95-114.
Robert Hanke, “John Woo’s Cinema of Hyperkinetic Violence – A Better Tomorrow to Face/Off”
Films:
A Better Tomorrow 英雄本色 (1986) and
The Killer 喋血雙雄 (1989) directed by John Woo 吳宇森.
Session 7 (Wednesday, May 15): Constructing Identity from the Margins: The Woman
Director Ann Hui 許鞍華
Ka-Fai Yau, “Looking Back at Ann Hui’s Cinema of the Political” in
Modern Chinese Literature
and Culture. 117-150.
Mirana Szeto, “Ann Hui at the Margin of Mainstream Hong Kong Cinema” in
Hong Kong
Screenscapes.
Patricia Erens, “Crossing Borders: Time, Memory, and the Construction of Identity in
Song of
the Exile” in
Cinema Journal, 43-59.
Esther Cheung et al, “Interview with Ann Hui – On the Edge of the Mainstream” in
Hong Kong
Screenscapes.
Films:
Boat People 投奔怒海 (1982) and
Song of the Exile (1990) directed by Ann Hui 許鞍
華. Optional Additional Film:
A Simple Life 桃姐 (2011)
Session 8 (Wednesday, May 22): The Poetics of Hong Kong New Wave Cinema: Wong
Kar-wai 王家衛
Esther Cheung, “Do We Hear the City? Voices of the Stranger in Hong Kong Cinema” in
Hong
Kong Screenscapes.
Gary Bettinson, “Wong Kar-wai and the Poetics of Hong Kong Cinema” in
The Sensuous
Cinema of Wong Kar-wai.
Olivia Khoo, “Love in Ruins: Spectral Bodies in Wong Kar-wai’s
In the Mood for Love” in
Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures.
Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli, “Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of Wong Kar
wai” in
Film Criticism.
View at least two of the following Films:
Chungking Express 重慶森林 (1994),
In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000), and
2046
(2004) directed by Wong Kar-wai 王家衛.
IV. Contemporary Queerscapes in Postcolonial Hong Kong
Session 9 (Wednesday, May 29): LGBTQ+ Cinema in Hong Kong, Before and After 1997
Natalia Sui-hung Chan, “Queering Body and Sexuality: Leslie Cheung’s Gender Representation
in Hong Kong Popular Cultre” in
As Normal as Possible. 133-149.
Hugo Cordova Quero, “Queer(N)Asian Im/Migrants’ Connectedness; An Inter-Contextual
Decolonial Reading of Wong Kar-Wai’s
Happy Together.”
Marc Siegel, “The Intimate Spaces of Wong Kar-wai in
At Full Speed.
Films:
Happy Together 春光乍洩 (1997) directed by Wong Kar-wai 王家衛 and
All About
Love 得閒炒飯 directed by Ann Hui (2010).
Session 10 (Wednesday, June 5): Postcolonial Identity and Struggle in Hong Kong from
1997 to Today: The Ghostly Cinema of Fruit Chan 陳果
Esther Cheung, “In Search of the Ghostly in Context: Fruit Chan’s
Made in Hong Kong”
Vivian Lee, “Ghostly Returns: The Politics of Horror in Hong Kong Cinema.”
Chia-rong Wu, “Hong Kong Identity in Question: Fruit Chan’s Uncanny Narrative and (Post) 97
Complex” in
American Journal of Chinese Studies, 43-56.
Wendy Gan, “Re-imagining Hong Kong–China from the Sidelines: Fruit Chan’s Little Cheung
and Durian Durian” in
Hong Kong Screenscapes.
Films:
Made in Hong Kong 香港製造 (1997) and
Little Cheung (1999) directed by Fruit
Chan 陳果 (2004). Optional Additional Film:
The Midnight After 那夜凌晨，我坐上了旺角 開往大埔的紅 VAN (2014)
