The Other Side of Glamour: The Left-wing Studio Network in Hong Kong Cinema in the Cold War Era and Beyond

Since its inception more than a century ago, Hong Kong cinema has been a pre-eminent form of local entertainment and a site of ideological contentions propelled by colonial, national and international politics at different historical junctures. The Other Side of Glamour is a study of the historical development of the left-wing film establishment in Hong Kong. In particular, it seeks to reconstruct a more dynamic picture of left-wing film production through closer attention to the entwinement of ideological, artistic, institutional and corporate agendas that informed the practices of filmmakers on both sides of the political divide. The inquiry is informed by the following questions: What does it mean to be on the “left” of the Hong Kong film industry during the Cold War era? How did the left-wing studios balance their artistic, ideological, and commercial agendas in their production and exhibition strategies? What makes a film “left-wing” or “right-wing”? How did national, colonial, and international politics intervene in the ‘making of’ the popular left-wing cinema in Hong Kong? How did the left-wing film establishment in Hong Kong reinvent itself in the post-Cold War, post-Cultural Revolution era? What are the nuanced legacies of the classical left-wing in Hong Kong cinema today? It argues that the left-wing’s institutional character and corporate strategies in the making of a ‘popular left-wing cinema’ are indispensable to an understanding of their nuanced (and often overlooked) legacy in Hong Kong cinema today. © Vivian P. Y. Lee, 2020