Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In Shanghai Blues, a 1984 screwball comedy by Hong Kong legend Tsui Hark, we don\u2019t ever see Hong Kong, but we know that it is the destination of our two lovers departing postwar Shanghai in 1947. In a fantastic train-ride finale, Shu Shu and Tung run towards each other across crowded carriages to embark on a new life together. Hong Kong promises boundless beginnings. Its cinema is characterised by these departures and entries, by ephemerality and a melting-pot city defined by contradictions. Hawker stalls linger under skyscrapers; policemen and gangsters belong to one family; comedy and tragedy always sit side by side.From the late 1970s to the end of the 1990s, Hong Kong had one of the biggest film industries in the world, dominating the box office across east AsiaFrom the late 1970s to the end of the 1990s, Hong Kong had one of the biggest film industries in the world, dominating the box office across east Asia and surpassing almost all western countries in the number of films produced. The age is marked by multiple genres \u2014 the action films of John Woo, the stylised romanticism of Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui\u2019s humanist dramas and Stanley Kwan\u2019s excavations of film history. This month, Ho Tzu Nyen\u2019s futuristic animation \u201cNight Charades\u201d takes over the facade of the city\u2019s M+ museum, with a tribute to such classic Hong Kong films. The artist re-enacts familiar scenes, and then eerily estranges them through his slick AI imagery.Hong Kong cinema was also my first screen love-affair \u2014 pirated DVDs of action films filled our shelves at home. When I first saw John Woo\u2019s A Better Tomorrow (1986), which transposes the heroism of wuxia films to the world of Hong Kong mobsters, trading swords for guns, I was struck by its tragic heart. The older generation of gangsters \u2014 middle-aged Ho (Ti Lung) and his best friend Mark (a magnetic Chow Yun-fat) \u2014 is superseded by a cold-blooded new leader, Shing (Waise Lee) who feels no qualms about abandoning their moral code. Paradoxically, the real heroism within the film is marked by a total concession of power \u2014 when Ho allows himself to be arrested by his younger cop brother Kit (a fresh-faced Leslie Cheung).Woo\u2019s tragic action story foregrounds the destruction of the sacred bonds of gang brotherhood \u2014 and even the strongest of family ties. The film came only two years after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, which set 1997 as the handover year of the former British colony to Chinese control. Woo\u2019s film reflects the anxiety and uncertainty lurking in the advent of a new power structure. Similarly, Stanley Kwan\u2019s supernatural drama Rouge (1988) uses a ghost story to represent a palimpsestic history of Hong Kong. Fleur (Anita Mui), a courtesan, and wayward playboy Chan Chen-Pang (Leslie Cheung) are star-crossed lovers in 1930s Hong Kong who agree to die together in a suicide pact. However, only Fleur goes through with it. Betrayed, she returns as a ghost in the 1980s to search for her lover, wandering across an alien landscape in her qipao and perfect red lip-stain. She finds that the traditional Chinese opera centre she frequented has been replaced by a shopping arcade and a 7-Eleven. Nothing is the same now, and no one would die for love. This sense of impermanence also sits at the heart of many of my favourite light-hearted Hong Kong romcoms: An Autumn\u2019s Tale (1987), Chungking Express (1994) and Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996).\u00a0Happy endings are constantly deferred \u2014 and the audience is left dangling. In Wong Kar-wai\u2019s Chungking Express, Faye (Faye Wong) and Cop 663 (Tony Leung) only find each other again a year later; in Peter Chan\u2019s Comrades, Li Xiao-Jun (Leon Lai) and Li Qiao (Maggie Cheung) serendipitously bump into each other in New York after failing to get together almost 10 years earlier in Hong Kong.Growing up in a Chinese household, love was expressed quietly, often through food \u2014 as it is in films, too. In Mabel Cheung\u2019s An Autumn\u2019s Tale, a naive attempt by Jenny (Cherie Chung) to cook for Pang (Chow Yun-fat) is almost farcical as Pang spits out her fish soup and lovingly teaches her the correct method. When I watched the film with my mother, she sighed, \u201cThat was just like your dad.\u201d Although Hong Kong\u2019s golden age is now regarded almost elegiacally, following its decline after 1997 with the Asian financial crisis and Hong Kong\u2019s handover, as well as the rise of digital piracy and new investments in the mainland film industry, its influence continues to light up our screens in unexpected ways. Just look at recent films \u2014 Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia\u2019s All We Imagine As Light (2024) is a sensuous study of solitude amid the bustle of Mumbai, a gentle tribute to Wong Kar-wai. In Hong Kong, contemporary artists have turned to the moving-image in fruitful ways. Recent highlights include Bo Wang\u2019s An Asian Ghost Story (2023) which used the ghost genre to explore 20th-century industrialisation. M+ is also hosting the second edition of its Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival in May, featuring innovative moving-image works (guests include artists May Fung and Ali Wong Kit Yi).And it is rewarding to return to under-celebrated gems of the bygone era \u2014 from Allen Fong\u2019s Ah Ying (1983), the portrait of a young woman attempting to enter Hong Kong\u2019s new film scene, to Patrick Tam\u2019s avant-garde pop-satire Love Massacre (1981), which is being restored by M+ as part of its programme \u201cM+ Restored\u201d in partnership with Chanel. Just as Hong Kong\u2019s golden age was dedicated to the ephemeral and the unstable, perhaps we should not think of its lineage as a fixed path \u2014 just watch how Ho Tzu Nyen\u2019s AI-created vignettes morph and abstract. Cinema needn\u2019t be trapped by the limits of the silver screen.March 22-June 29, mplus.org.hk, artbasel.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In Shanghai Blues, a 1984 screwball comedy by Hong Kong legend Tsui Hark, we don\u2019t ever see Hong Kong, but we know that it is the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-248727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248729,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248727\/revisions\/248729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}