Development

Hong Kong film industries during the past century in terms of production, distrubution and screeing (鍾寶賢, 2007). Since the early 1990s, Hong Kong was the third largest produces of cinema and most of the movies would export to other countries while the first two producers were American and India (鍾寶賢, 2007). Therefore, we can see that Hong Kong is the city that cultivates its roots with cinema for a long time. In the following part, our group would present a brief timeline for explaining the development of Hong Kong cinema production and its reasons for renting the regional culture.

1990-1920

Lai Man-Wai and his friend,

Leung Siu Po, organized the performance team and produced

some silent movies, for example,

Zhuangzi Tests His Wife. Those product-ions were just experimental film and amateur, however, they were the first local film production and Lai even

being named as "Father of

Hong Kong Cinema".

1921-1940

Lai Man-Wai's production

could by reach the populations

as there were not many theatres

that suitable for screening. With the

problem of high production cost, Lai

tried to seek help from Lee Hysan. Lee

theatre was constructed and it helped

offer a stable preforming and screen-

ing. The emergence of large-scale

film studio also boost the deve-

lopment of film industries.

1941-1960

Influenced by the Sino-

Japanese War, Hong Kong

film production was domi-

nated by Japanese government.

Hong Kong cinema was decliced

sharply until the end of the war.

However, China immediately suffered from civil war during 1945-1950. Hong Kong film industries were divided into leftist and rightist models. Until late

1950, the ideological tension

was broke by market

force.

With the stable social

develpment in the post-

war period, film production

become so flourished. Investors

were from Singapore and Malaysia

were willing to channel fundings for

the performing team to offer trainings

to young actors and technician. Unfor-tunately, the production of Cantonese

film was nearly stopped in 1970s as the structrual changes of the market un-

til the emergence of Shaw St-

udio and Golden Harvest.

1961-1980

1981-1995

Cinema City, Shaw Studio

and Golden Harvest were

the major players in the film

prduction in this period of time.

In the mid- 1980, Shaw was decided

to invove in the television broadcast

so D & B Films Co. Ltd was placed its position. In the late 1980 to early 1990, Hong Kong cinema reach it peak since as most film talents were distributed

in different companies and com-

peted with each others. Audi-

ences were benefited

from it.

1996-2015

With the technological

improvement and the invention

of VCD, the habits of cinema-goers

changed. Later, the pirated copy of

film further harm the development of Hong Kong cinema. Film producers start-ed to realize that they should steer the rapid technological improvement with cultural neighbors. Hence, renting regio-nal networks for launching home theatre channels and explore protential

markets become the key sur-

vival strategies for Hong

Kong film.

(鍾寶賢, 2007)