Magic city

The late scholar Dr. Cheung Mei-kwan (1958–2015) specialized in Hong Kong literature and film. From the popular Hong Kong films, she glimpsed the complex and contradictory emotions towards Hong Kong, and gained insight into how the works are inseparable from the era in which they were produced. From "Crazy" and "Rouge" to "Made in Hong Kong" and "Xiluxiang", from "Ruan Lingyu" and "Sweet Honey" to "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" and "The Thief of Time", the images and sounds of film works are here. The summary of this thesis stacks up into a ghostly and phantom city.

Zhang Meijun's "Ghost Review" is not about ghost movies, nor does it have to include undead ghosts, but the film's sound and space are filled with a spooky feeling. Since the 1980s, various crises have been closely following Hong Kong. The so-called ghosts are just suppressed things in a city in crisis. The six essays in the book examine the emotions in the film as a response to current crises, clarifying the issues faced by individuals and society at the time.

"The Rhythm of Love" uses the pop songs of Nanyin and Teresa Teng to think about the identity issues caused by 1997; "A World Without Strangers" uses sounds separated from the body to explore the problems brought about by the openness and flow of the city. Challenge; "Shanghai Phantom" hears the "murmur of Hong Kong tunes" in Kwan Kam-peng's "Shanghai Trilogy", imagining the dialogue between the two cities as a dialogue between adults and ghosts; "Grassroots Hong Kong" looks back at the history of public housing and its representation in film and television, It extends to the discussion of class that has received little attention; "The Transformation of Our City" examines domestic space in three films spanning twenty years, reviewing how globalization and urban changes affect spatial narratives; "The Myth of Place" goes in-depth Analyze the love of place complex in new millennium films, and point out how new local chronicle films respond to the emerging structure of feelings in the post-1997 period.

Savoring Zhang Meijun's thoughts on movies allows us to examine Hong Kong movies from another angle and then understand the city. The research directions she proposed in her paper, including historical orientation, ghost analysis, emotional research, ordinary and daily inspiration, etc., are still applicable to the analysis of Hong Kong film texts in recent years. If she were still alive, I believe she would have made a more thought-provoking discussion about Hong Kong movies in recent years.