Anyone else feel as though New Wave & 21st Century are different from each other?

[Omni Dragon]

Anyone else feel as though New Wave & 21st Century are different from each other?

I personally feel as though New Wave started around the mid 80's & started ended around beginning of the Century. There a lot of difference in feel of the films, the choreography is more subtle though the 80's & 90's stuff looks slightly more basher/straight line like when compared to 00's & 10's also mid 00's started heading in a mma direction/more mix

of ranges of fighting.

[Iron_Leopard]

On 4/5/2013 at 9:44 PM, Silver and Gold Dragon said:

Anyone else feel as though New Wave & 21st Century are different from each other?

I personally feel as though New Wave started around the mid 80's & started ended around beginning of the Century. There a lot of difference in feel of the films, the choreography is more subtle though the 80's & 90's stuff looks slightly more basher/straight line like when compared to 00's & 10's also mid 00's started heading in a mma direction/more mix

of ranges of fighting.

I agree. I split it into two periods. New Wave which started in 85 with "Police Story" and the death of Shaw Brothers and then the Sophistication Wave which started in 2000 with "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon".

Edited January 4, 2018 by Iron_Leopard

[DrNgor]

The term "New Wave" seems to carry with it multiple definitions:

1. To quote @One Armed Boxer, "the more realistic and socially aware spate of movies which came out of the territory in the late 70's/early 80's - Tsui Hark's Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, Alex Cheung's Cops and Robbers and Man on the Brink,  etc."

2. Hong Kong cinema following the decline of the kung fu movie, which would include modern action (Jackie, Sammo, John Woo, etc.); the more FX-driven fantasies from Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain onward; and those that identify with #1 (including stuff like The Club).

3. The wire-fu wuxia and kung fu movies made from 1990 to 1997, starting with the likes of Swordsman; A Chinese Ghost Story 2; and Dragon from Russia...and ending with Once Upon a Time in China and America.

How do y'all define it? 

@masterofoneinchpunch and @TibetanWhiteCrane, I'm looking in your direction.

Edited December 22, 2022 by DrNgor

[masterofoneinchpunch]

You have to look at several factors.  First the revival of Cantonese as the major language for HK cinema.  Next the increasing film culture such as The Hong Kong International Film Festival (1977), directors who came from film colleges and brought up in the TV environment like TVB (some examples: Ann Hui, Tsui Hark, Kirk Wong) and who would experiment with technique.  So at minimum it starts in the late 1970s with Hui's The Secret and The Butterfly Murders (1979).  Film critic Li Cheuk-to picked 1979 as the start.  Jeff Yang points to the film "Yim Ho's The Extras (1978) is often cited as the first film of what is now known as the Hong Kong New Wave..."  And of course a change in subject matter as well going into politics, psychological etc...

[One Armed Boxer]

Worth a read - https://asianmoviepulse.com/2021/05/hong-kong-new-wave-a-debate/

[DrNgor]

11 hours ago, One Armed Boxer said:

Worth a read - https://asianmoviepulse.com/2021/05/hong-kong-new-wave-a-debate/

Great read. From that, one could surmise that that the term "New Wave" might hold two definitions. From the POV of the entire HK industry, it would be the period from 1976 (Jumping Ash) to 1984 (Long Arm of the Law) when foreign-educated filmmakers came back to Hong Kong and started working on TV and then movies, with innovative (by local standards) techniques for editing, filming, narrative. The Wave would have ended as the directors more or less got absorbed into the mainstream system.

"New Wave" within the martial arts fandom would also carry its own definition, which would be #3--a way of separating the wire-heavy wuxia and kung fu movies made in the early 1990s from those made during the "old school period" (1966-1986).

[masterofoneinchpunch]

Some quotes from this article from the book:

At Full Speed: Hong Kong in a Borderless World Ed. Esther C.M. Yau (2001):

[An Overview of Hong Kong’s New Wave Cinema by Law Kar]

“The colonial government suppressed political activism throughout the 1950s and 1960s, thus sowing the seeds of discontent and defiance of the establishment.  In May 1967, an industrial dispute in Kowloon sparked unprecedented city riots.”

“In 1968 Chor Yuen founded the New Films Company…”

“Teddy Girls was one of the first Cantonese films to use graphic violence in a modern setting to make a moral point.”

“The Arch was the first Hong Kong film to gain international recognition.”

“In 1972 no Cantonese films were produced, and the Cantonese cinema sank into an eighteen-month coma.”

“The first major film club, Studio One Film Society of Hong Kong, was formed in 1962…”

“There were three television stations in Hong Kong, two private (TVB and RTV, which became ATV after 1982) and one public (RTHK).”

“Jumping Ash… was regarded by some as the first actual feature exhibiting the New Wave spirit.”

[see page 46 for list of films and magazine article dealing with New Wave]

“Thus, the new films, when compared to those of the French New Wave, neither were aesthetically new, nor did they open new doors to cinema.”

“Still, the term New Wave is not inappropriate if by this one refers to the use of innovative techniques, an urban sensibility, interest in new visual styles, and more personal means of expression.”

“The new arrivals sought innovative visual styles and more personal means of expression, which necessitated technical improvements.  Improved dubbing and sound effects, more-serious attention to film music, and more-flexible uses of the movie camera helped modernize Cantonese cinema.”

“Location shooting, away from the stuffy studios, added a great sense of realism to the films and laid the tracks for what may be argued as Hong Kong cinema’s “Second Wave””

[Omni Dragon]

On 12/22/2022 at 4:01 PM, DrNgor said:

Great read. From that, one could surmise that that the term "New Wave" might hold two definitions. From the POV of the entire HK industry, it would be the period from 1976 (Jumping Ash) to 1984 (Long Arm of the Law) when foreign-educated filmmakers came back to Hong Kong and started working on TV and then movies, with innovative (by local standards) techniques for editing, filming, narrative. The Wave would have ended as the directors more or less got absorbed into the mainstream system.

"New Wave" within the martial arts fandom would also carry its own definition, which would be #3--a way of separating the wire-heavy wuxia and kung fu movies made in the early 1990s from those made during the "old school period" (1966-1986).

In my mind when I started this I was thinking about it from a martial arts fandom POV. However, it was a bit of a different definition to that, partly because I was mostly focusing on unarmed combat movies. I was thinking of it the way we try to classify martial art choreography into the concise generalized terms of bashers, shapes and new wave. And my thinking at the time was that basher must mean something like King Boxer with rigid, punch and block, karate like choreography. Shape must mean something like Executioners from Shaolin with more traditional kung fu shapes and an almost dance like rhythm. And new wave (sometimes referred to as neo-basher) must mean the kickboxing like choreography of something like Wheels On Meals.