Here is an interesting article about HK’s Film History:
[quote]The first Hong Kong film was Zhuangzi Tests His Wife in 1913. The director was Lai Man-Wai, called the Father of Hong Kong Cinema, who also played the wife himself.
Unfortunately the Hong Kong film industry didn’t take off until after World War II.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Cantonese movies were the dominant. Mostly Wu Xia films with cheesy props and special effects using crude animation drawn on top of the film. Drama and Cantonese opera on film was some of the most popular The Wah Tat Studio was the dominant studio.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the industry changed to mostly Mandarin movies. The Shaw Brothers Studio and the Golden Harvest Studio were the most popular. Other popular areas were a musical genre called Huang2 Mei2 Diao4 and love stories based on novels by Chiung Yao.
In the late 1970s, a new generation of Wu Xia film probably started by The dragon inn with a lot of wire work and acrobatic moves. This brought about a come-back of Cantonese movies. The most popular films were Michael Hui with his comedies, Kung fu, Police/Criminal, and ghost stories.
During the 1990s, the Hong Kong film industry underwent a significant decline, caused by the Asian economic crisis which dried up traditional sources of film finance. Revenues generated by the Hong Kong motion picture industry halved during this period. Some of the decline was also caused by Hollywood in the United States signing popular movie figures such as John Woo, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat to make movies directly for the U.S. domestic market.[/quote]
Rest of the article is here: learnaboutmovieposters.com/n … istory.asp