Hong Kong as a ‘Para-site’

Can there be a national cinema in the absence of a nation-state (however small) and, more importantly, without the aspiration for a nation-state? This is the question posed by the Hong Kong cinema, which has become one of the world's more important cinemas, while Hong Kong itself has never been and will never be an independent nation-state. Before 1997 an economically developed British Crown Colony whose gross domestic product exceeded that of many small nations, and now a Special Administrative Region of China with an assurance that its status will remain unchanged for fifty years, Hong Kong has always been a political anomaly, a special case. However, it is arguably its ambiguous position vis-à-vis nationalism and self-determination that has been instrumental in stimulating the emergence of a successful international cinema: a cinema that has produced a string of outstanding films, a growing roster of auteurs like Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan and Fruit Chan, and some would even say a distinctive cinematic style. It is precisely the paradoxical nature of the Hong Kong case that allows us to raise certain kinds of critical questions about ‘the cinema of small nations’, including: Can ‘statelessness’ generate a ‘national cinema’? And if so, how can we understand the ‘national’ in cinema?