This article reviews the film policy undertaken by the Hong Kong SAR government since the late 1990s. This film policy has been revised and refined over the past two decades, with several earmarked subsidy schemes intended to renew the film industry in production, promotion, and overseas exhibition. We present an account of government film subsidies and examine their effectiveness in the rejuvenation of Hong Kong cinema, followed by the feedback of filmmakers on the schemes. The dynamics and tension between the top-down approaches and the bottom-up perspectives of industry and film workers are critical in gauging the impact of the subsidies. In our final analysis, we reflect on how and why Hong Kong film policy might not have fulfilled its promises. We argue that the government cultural policy leverages the film industry as constitutive of creative and cultural industries to position Hong Kong as a creative capital and cultural hub.

This book provides an in depth look into the digital transformation of the Indian media industries, arguing that it has primarily been facilitated by the advent of social media platforms and a resulting shift in the creator dynamics of contemporary film and television production. Drawing on first-hand research within three categories of agents: creators, platform and portal executives, and intermediaries (talent agents, and multi-channel networks), Smith Mehta develops the concept of the ‘new screen ecology’ to show how the Indian screen industries are affected by social relations between these actors and how industrial practices blur the amateur-professional divide through creator and content interdependencies. Mehta interrogates the production practices of 13 different platforms and portals, including Hotstar, Netflix, YouTube, and TVFPlay, analyzing the extent to which they benefit from the lack of censorship and restrictive industrial practices characteristic of traditional media structures. In doing so, he examines the dynamics of digital transformation in the screen industries in a region-specific context and contributes to a body of literature on Indian digital production cultures. This book investigates the political, social and economic transactions that led to the digital transformation of the Indian audio-visual industries. It traces the interdependences between two social (YouTube, Facebook) and eleven digital (Hotstar, Spuul, Hoichoi, Addatimes, TVFPlay, Reliance Jio, Zee5, Voot, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, AltBalaji) video streaming services, in platforming content drawn from both professional and professionalizing-amateur sources. Drawing on approaches from critical media industries studies, political economy and cultural studies, it interrogates the shifting creator dynamics in contemporary Indian film and television production with the advent of internet-based local and global video distribution services. In doing so, it brings to light the contribution of Indian intermediaries such as talent agents and third-party service providers that manage YouTube channels, also referred to as multichannel networks, in facilitating the localisation strategies of global portals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, enabling the movement of creators from platforms to portals and expanding their value propositions through investments in content and talent-led ventures.

Zimuzus are professional subtitlers, who work on a volunteer basis. They target foreign television and film for their, online translations. In China where the state’s control of media is strict, informal groups like the ZMZ, who use the internet as a tools, play a disproportionate role.

Zimuzu (字幕組, ZMZ) are Chinese online communities that share subtitled versions of foreign television and movies, often within hours of domestic release. Although unauthorized and unlicensed, the programs are streamed and downloaded on tablets and smartphones, free of charge. ZMZ allow many thousands of Chinese viewers to devour foreign fare (e.g., Prison Break, Desperate Housewives, The Big Bang Theory), sidestepping official channels of circulation. The volunteerism of ZMZ subtitlers is remarkable and distinctive, and it may not be too much to call ZMZ an industry. We propose understanding ZMZ within the spheres of marketization and the regulatory framework of China’s media industry. In scale, organization, and professionalism, ZMZ typify slippage between state regulation and market-driven media consumption.

This chapter shifts the focus from the popular film industry to a parallel, competing discourse that has been labeled art cinema. This term is used as a commonplace and self-evident phrase in Bangladesh. The chapter aims to outline the genealogy and workings of the notion of art cinema that developed in various forms and shapes in post-1971 Bangladesh over last four decades. First, it demonstrate how these cinemas represent different methods used by Western-educated, cultural-modernist Bengali Muslims in creating a discourse of art in the realm of cinema. In the first step, chapter presents the relationship between the Western-developed notion of art cinema and Bangladeshi middle classes. Here, first situating the middle-class modernists in between Western art cinema and Bangladesh popular cinema, it delve into how film club discourse in this land made possible a strong and ongoing interaction between …

This piece reviews the historical accounts of Shaw Brothers Studio, targeting its presentation as a diaspora company whose commercialism was enhanced by political pragmatism, frugality, and agility. The studio's activities were constrained by twentieth-century geopolitics, but its behavior was also shaped by its show business competitors, new technologies, and emergent popular forms. Existing historical accounts tend to overstate the studio's diasporic qualities, especially compared to other firms. This essay argues that there are limits to the diaspora model and proposes a more complex understanding of the firm. Alternative factors are considered in the company's colonial stratagems, in both its earlier and later phases, and in its dealings with Hong Kong's left-wing studios and subsequent business in Taiwan. Finally, Shaw Brothers Studio's appropriation of Japanese and other Asian talent is significant to the diaspora model of Shaw Brothers Studio.

Market and Marketization in the China Film Business Darrell William Davis (bio) On April 18, 2009, Jackie Chan told a high-ranking group of mainland business leaders that freedom for Chinese people was not such a great idea. "I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," he said, adding freedom in Hong Kong and Taiwan made those places "chaotic." This brought applause from the audience of officials and executives. "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want." He added he'd rather buy a TV set made in Japan, as Chinese-made sets might explode. The star's remarks sparked outrage in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland. "Who are you representing when you say this? And who do you want to be controlled by?" asked blogger Liu Qujing. Chan's company rushed to douse the flames, saying his comments had been deliberately misinterpreted. In China proper, Jackie Chan's work was well under control. His film Shinjuku Incident (San suk si gin; Derek Yee, 2009) was not released on mainland screens due to violence and a lurid story line about Chinese illegal immigrants. This decision was made by Chan and his backers, not by censors. Chan's character, a gangster named Steel-head, allies himself with a Japanese cop in order to clean up Shinjuku, Tokyo's red-light district, by thrashing rival gangsters from Taiwan. The film was quite favorably reviewed, and Chan was praised for his courage in a dramatic role. Chan's 2010 film, Little Big Soldier, (Da Bing Xiao Jiang, Ding Sheng) is an action comedy. This means a return to form, with Chan appearing in movies in which his audience and investors can feel more confident. That Hong Kong-Hollywood star Jackie Chan can address mainland elites with such familiarity says a lot about China's ambitions. Since the Reform and Opening thirty years ago, China has transitioned from a planned economy to a market-oriented economy. Chinese film enterprises, like the larger economy, enjoy booming production, investment, and international participation. To a world facing widespread recession, this is enviable. Firms from Hollywood, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and especially Hong Kong hotly pursue joint ventures with the People's Republic of China (PRC) production and exhibition outfits. [End Page 121] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. China's Annual Feature Film Production and Box Office (1998-2008) From 2002, domestic production climbed, with a spike in 2004, the year that the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) was launched (Table 1). CEPA sought to integrate China, Hong Kong, and Macau through a package of changes providing favorable conditions for products and services from the latter two, which are now Special Administrative Regions (SAR) of the PRC. This was especially helpful to Hong Kong companies like Media Asia, Edko, and Golden Harvest, and furthermore supported coproduction with foreign players abroad. In 2004 production and box office in the PRC grew by over 50 percent, in 2007 by more than 20 percent, and in 2008 by 27 percent.1 CEPA projects contributed forty pictures to the "domestic" film total in 2008 and therefore played a significant role in the rapid rise of China's film industry over the past decade. In exhibition, too, there was a 20 percent annual growth rate (400 new screens per year) with 570 new screens opening in 2008 alone, bringing the national total to 4,000 screens. This growth, however, was not merely a response to changes in audience demand, for China is of course not an unplanned economy. It is instead a country that espouses a very self-conscious policy of marketization. In China today, marketization functions to spur investment, production, and consumption with the aim of encouraging homemade products that are otherwise unable to compete with imports. China's marketization, according to the Communist Party, is supposed to align the industry with international standards, but it is not a path to liberalism or unbridled openness that might pose a challenge to the authority of the Party. [End Page 122] The purpose of marketization is...

Book Review| December 01 2009 Review: Kitano Takeshi, by Aaron Gerow Aaron Gerow. Kitano Takeshi. London: BFI Publishing, 2007. $85.95 cloth; $25.95 paper. 264 pages. Darrell William Davis Darrell William Davis Darrel William Davis is visiting associate professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong and author of East Asian Screen Industries (BFI Publishing, 2008). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (2009) 63 (2): 82–83. https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2009.63.2.82 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Darrell William Davis; Review: Kitano Takeshi, by Aaron Gerow. Film Quarterly 1 December 2009; 63 (2): 82–83. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2009.63.2.82 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2009 by the Regents of the University of California.2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.