The Colonial Screen

Hong Kong is known as an entrepôt in its colonial history, but its place in early cinema has not received the same scholarly attention. The Colonial Screen: Early Cinema in Hong Kong explores the exhibition, regulation, circulation, reception, and social place of motion pictures, from the time the cinematograph, an early mechanism for motion pictures, first arrived in the territory in 1897 through to the late 1920s when Hong Kong emerged as a film entrepôt in South China.

Drawing on concepts of screen practice, dispositif (deployment, apparatus), kinematography (motion pictures before cinema), and entrepôt, author Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh presents an unknown history of early film in Hong Kong. She traces the transition from film exhibition as a tie-in with staged entertainment to a full-fledged attraction of its own, acquiring a niche position in local society, and explores the roles of showmen, technologies, regulation, movie theatres, and entertainers. In each chapter, she brings to light the historical significance of Hong Kong as a regional node in movie trade routes and how racial politics and commerce were behind the British "rule of law" in making film regulations. Yeh locates the reception of motion pictures in the time of colonial modernity and governance, unveiling how, despite the dominance of European entrepreneurs in the exhibition circuit, the rise of Hong Kong Amusements in the early 1920s shaped a localized film practice. Ultimately, The Colonial Screen adds an important frame to Hong Kong as a film entrepôt across multiple borders and different regions in China in the early twentieth century.