Planet Hong Kong by David Bordwell
Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment
A wide-ranging study of Hong Kong popular cinema as a distinctive industrial and aesthetic system, arguing that its energy, rapid pacing, and emphasis on choreography and visual virtuosity produce a mode of entertainment different from classical Hollywood: films rely on scene-based construction, genre-blending, star personae, and inventive action staging rather than psychological realism. The book traces how local production practices, market pressures, and cultural hybridity foster improvisational storytelling, tightly edited set-pieces, and recurring motifs, and it shows how directors, performers, and stunt crews collaborate to create densely staged sequences that circulate globally. Interweaving formal analysis with industry history, the work explains both the internal logic of Hong Kong filmmaking and its influence on world cinema and transnational audiences.
- Published
- 2000
- Nationality
- American
- Length
- Unknown
- Pages
- Unknown
- Original Language
- English
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