Why Hong Kong films are successful around the world?

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The 9 reasons why Hong Kong films are successful around the World.

Hong Kong is a small place. So how come its films have done so well around the world? Movies produced in Hong Kong were distributed across Asia by Shaw Brothers studios, and found international success during the 1970s, and again in the 1990s. What are the reasons for this success?

1. Hong Kong films are highly entertaining

The main reason for the success of Hong Kong cinema is because of the industry's highly entertaining films. "How did this tiny cinema industry become so successful? Some answers lie in history and culture, but many others are found in the films themselves," he wrote. "Hong Kong's film industry offered something audiences desired. Year in and year out, it produced dozens of fresh, lively and thrilling movies. Since the 1970s it has been arguably the world's most energetic, imaginative popular cinema."

2. They broke down cultural barriers

Hong Kong action films became an international cultural currency, film historians Law Kar and Frank Bren wrote in their book Hong Kong Cinema: A Cross-Cultural View. "The martial arts boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s represented a success in marrying the foreign and the indigenous," they wrote. "Fights evolved from a stylised stage-based mode to a more realistic, visceral one bolstered by photographic and editing techniques learned from Western and Japanese films, and by special effects developed from years of making martial arts films."

3. They connected with marginalised people

Hong Kong films appealed to underdogs everywhere, wrote Wu-Tang Clan's RZA in the introduction to his book These Fists Break Bricks. "The violence of the New York City streets reflected the violence on screen. Looking for stories that reflected their own struggles, audiences could role-change at any moment, inspired by the characters they watched.

4. Filmmakers were free to be outrageous

Hong Kong films fitted in with the "anything goes" attitudes of the West in the 1970s and audiences liked that, according to the Hong Kong Film Archive essay Creating a Uniquely Hong Kong 1970s. "During the 1970s politically sensitive content was still censored, but restrictions on sexual content, violence, and crime became increasingly lax. Consequently, bloodshed, debauchery, nudity, gambling, fraud, and gangsters were frequently featured in Hong Kong cinema.

5. Foreign critics threw caution to the wind

Western critics thought they should not like Hong Kong films, but actually did, Matthew Polly wrote in Bruce Lee - A Life. "Even New York critics, who wrung their hands at Enter the Dragon's violence, sensed its power. The New York Times declared, 'The picture is expertly made and well meshed. It moves like lightning and brims with colour...' "In The Village Voice, William Paul confessed: 'In my most civilised, right thinking frame of mind, I'd like to dismiss the film as an abhorrently grotesque masculine fantasy, but I have to admit that deep down in the most shadowy recesses of my subconscious, the fantasy struck a chord.'"

6. Hong Kong cinema was always international

Hong Kong filmmakers were always engaged with the global movie scene, according to the book The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study. And talking about Shaw Brothers, the largest film production company in Hong Kong for decades, it said: "Throughout the years, the studio has engaged in collaborative exchanges with companies in Asia, Europe and America, and recruited talent from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and Western countries.

"Shaw's enormous contribution to the transnationalism, internationalisation and modernisation of Hong Kong cinema once resulted in the title 'Hollywood East' being given to Hong Kong."

7. Filmmakers had support in high places

Top US directors helped raise the global awareness of Hong Kong films in the 1990s, Rick Baker wrote in the 1994 edition of The Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies. "Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s has started to look healthier with recognition from some of the bigger names in Hollywood, like Scorsese, Tarantino, Stallone, Joel Silver, and Walter Hill. Their seal of approval has made it fashionable to like Hong Kong movies. "It's easy to spot the influence on many big-budget Hollywood movies. The changing style of fight choreography and the stylised shoot outs are the most apparent."

8. Hong Kong films are fast and furious

Hong Kong's fast-paced action scenes are loved abroad. They are a result of the city's frantic lifestyle, critic and filmmaker Shu Kei said in the book Cine East in 1998. "I think that Hong Kong cinema is determined not only by the nationality and character of the people, but also by the geography of the city. Hong Kong cinema is defined by a very condensed and concentrated geography which results in a lack of space and a speeding up of the rhythm. "It has less expository scenes than other cinemas and that is a result of the high speed of Hong Kong life and the way that the city operates at a high speed level."

9. They drew in international viewers

Hong Kong films made foreign viewers feel special, said academic Leon Hunt in his 2002 study Kung Fu Cult Masters. "The kung fu film allows the 'outsider' to feel like an 'insider' - that of the cult aficionado, the hardcore fan who knows the difference between Mantis and Crane, Shaolin and Wudang, northern leg and southern fist. "This esoteric cult capital, which is often nostalgic for old martial arts films with 'authentic' techniques, is sometimes transformed into new urban mythologies, such as the Wu-Tang Clan's kung fu-inspired hip hop, or The Matrix's cyber-mysticism."

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