Jackie Chan (成龍), John Woo (吳宇森) and Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) are among the many Asian stars who brought Hong Kong films to Hollywood.
But despite such international prestige, Hong Kong's film industry, just like many other sectors of the former British colony's economy, has suffered severely in the turmoil that followed the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
Now, as the city's film community prepares to reward its stars and moviemakers in Sunday's 2004 Hong Kong Film Awards, analysts say the industry is on the cusp of a recovery thanks to an improving economy and relaxed regulations in China.
One of the keys to the industry's future success, analysts believe, will be the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), a trade agreement between mainland China and Hong Kong that took effect on January 1.
Among its many provisions, the deal eases restrictions on the showing of Hong Kong films across the border.
Hong Kong filmmakers can shoot a co-production with a mainland company and distribute it in China as a local movie that is entitled to wide distribution through the country's theaters and video outlets.
Further, the deal removes Hong Kong from inclusion in China's release quota of 20 foreign films each year.
It enables the city's films to be distributed more freely than foreign films, including many Hollywood blockbusters, and gives Hong Kong moviemakers easy access to the fastest-growing cinema market in Asia.
"CEPA has definitely opened up the market for us. While film productions have been recovering since the second half of last year, co-productions with China are growing as the country relaxes its regulations," said Jeffrey Chan, head of distribution and sales at Media Asia, which produced all three of the widely acclaimed Infernal Affairs (無間道) police drama movies.
CEPA could not have come at a better time: Hong Kong's film industry has taken a dive in the past decade as the Asian financial crisis reduced outside investment.
Hong Kong was the world's third largest movie producer in the 1980s, after India and the US. But since the 1990s, its once-thriving international trade has steadily been eroded and last year it struggled to regain market share in Southeast Asia.
The Taiwanese market, for example, accounted for 40 percent of Hong Kong's film revenue in the early 1990s, but that had plummeted by 1995 due to problems with piracy, combined with the growing preference for Hollywood films in most Asian markets.
The negative impact was compounded last year by the SARS outbreak, which brought releases to an all-time low of 79 films in 2003, from 92 in 2002 and 126 in 2001, according to the Motion Picture Industry Association (MPIA).
This compares with 200 films a year in the early 1990s heyday.
But Hong Kong is seeing a rebound. Industry analysts estimate that up to 130 films will be produced this year, more than half of which will be co-productions with Chinese partners.
Hong Kong films are also faring better than foreign films at the local box office as Hong Kongers appear to be rediscovering their taste for domestic productions.
According to the MPIA, seven of the top 10 films last year were made by local companies, compared with four in 2002 and five the year before.
The return of Hong Kong people's confidence in domestic films had much to do with "a handful of outstanding films."
Along with better screenplays, they resulted in lucrative box office revenues, which in turn has seen investor confidence return, said Peter Tsi, director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the 2004 edition of which opens Tuesday.
"Instead of them watching DVDs, VCDs and videos, Hong Kong audiences are being lured back to the cinema and investors are more willing to invest," he said.
One of the most successful films of late was Infernal Affairs. The first movie in the three-part series grossed HK$55 million (US$7 million) in 2002, while the two sequels grossed similar sums.
Further, the rights to the film were recently snapped up by Warner Brothers for US$1.75 million and a production company owned by Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt and his wife Jennifer Aniston is planning an adaptation.
But while CEPA will undoubtedly offer financial benefits, the Hong Kong film festival's Tsi warns that it may also force the industry to compromise its creative integrity.
To be screened on the mainland, Hong Kong films have to pass stringent censors and the Chinese government will have the right to remove sections they deem offensive or "politically incorrect," he said.
Taboo subjects such as supernatural or superstitious beliefs, explicit sex scenes, politics and homosexual love stories are hard to get past the censors.
Infernal Affairs -- co-produced with a state-owned studio -- was shot with two different endings. In Hong Kong, the bad guy gets away with murders under the nose of the befuddled police. In the mainland version, the bad guy's cover is blown and is promptly arrested.
"That's the drawback. When you want to gain one thing, something else's got to be sacrificed," Tsi said.
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