HONG KONG FILMS STRUGGLING

As US director James Cameron’s Titanic has entered its victorious sea voyage in Hong Kong’s cinemas, to become the second gweilo - foreign devil - film to break local box-office records, which traditionally belong to such action heroes as Jackie Chan and Steven Chiau, the Hong Kong film industry is not only caught by the effects of Asia’s financial crisis, but is also facing the problem of restoring the faith of the audiences in domestic features.

Last year, for the first time, gross box-office receipts from Cantonese-language films fell below Hollywood productions, and although Who Am I?, the Jackie Chan starrer partly shot in Rotterdam, is performing well, there is still a long way to go, reckons Lighthouse-Grand Prix-Fortissimo executive Wouter Barendrecht, who is based in Hong Kong. “Desperate to increase admissions for local films, the industry decided to drop the ticket price to HK$30 for domestic movies, maintaining HK$55 for American features. It was the same as telling audiences they were not worth seeing, so the result was close to zero. We are likely to see the situation go back to normal.”

The exodus from Hong Kong to Hollywood of, among others, Chan, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark, Michelle Yeoh, John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat has added an artistic crisis to the troubles of the production companies, which as late as three years ago provided an annual output of close to 150 action, drama, romance, comedy and kung-fu features. Today, they shoot between 80-90. “The strained financial climate will make it difficult to channel product into Asia for the next couple of years. I have heard of several companies which are not attending the upcoming American Film Market, and of others who will either not be buying, or just go to renegotiate deals. On the other hand there will also be fewer films to pick up,” says Barendrecht. Hong Kong is one of the tiger economies which is less influenced by the Asian meltdown, which is widely seen as a needed correction of the exploding 8%-15% growth in such countries as South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The media business in South Korea has been especially hit hard, waiting for the effects of the IMF bail-out. Major companies, including Samsung, have announced they will make no new acquisitions for a while. Both Daewoo and SKC are allegedly considering dismantling their film divisions. Although less affected, film production in Taiwan has been reduced by a third, to 9 or 10 features annually, almost exclusively funded by the government or made by such directors as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, who can attract foreign investment.

“The situation is very difficult, both financially and politically,” says Taiwanese producer Peggy Chiao of Arc Light Films. “The state is not always subsidising the right projects, so our only hope is to find financing abroad.”

According to Beki Probst, director of Berlin’s European Film Market, the strained economies in the Asian markets did not influence the number of Asian participants at this year’s Berlinale. “Traditionally we have not had that many attendants from Asia, but the key sellers and buyers, who used to come, are here,” she said at the festival.