JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

To work or not to work: the dilemma of Hong Kong film labor in the age of mainlandization

Mirana M. Szeto

Mirana M. Szeto is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong.

Email: mmszeto@hku.hk    Voice: (852) 64057149.
Web: http://hub.hku.hk/cris/rp/rp01180

Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.

Mirana May Szeto did her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, UCLA and is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong. She writes on critical theory, cinema, literature, coloniality, cultural-spatial politics and cultural policy in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan. She publishes in journals like Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (2006), Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies (2009), Journal of Chinese Cinemas (2012), Jump Cut: a Review of Contemporary Media (2013), and volumes like Neoliberalism and Global Cinema (Routledge, 2011), Hong Kong Screenscapes (HKU Press, 2011), Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (Columbia UP, 2013), Sinophone Cinemas (Palgrave, forthcoming).

Her current book projects are entitled, From Hong Kong New Wave to HKSAR New Wave, and Decolonizing Neoliberalism: Learning from Hong Kong Cultural Movements. Currently she is Principal Investigator (P-I) of a HKU grant entitled “Mainlandization of Hong Kong Film Industry,” and Co-Investigator (Co-I) of Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC) General Research Fund (GRF) grant project entitled “The Production-Innovation Networks of Cultural and Creative Industries in Hong Kong.” She is also the P-I of the project entitled “Contested Cultural Imaginations in Government Practices and Community Responses: Urban Renewal Processes in Wanchai, Hong Kong” (RGC GRF) and part of the team research projects on “Making Cultural Clusters: New Strategies for Culture-led Urban Redevelopment” (RGC and Hong Kong Government Central Policy Unit Public Policy Research) and “The Restructuring of the Movie Industry in Hong Kong: flexible specialization, Innovation and the labor Market” (RGC, GRF).

Links to related articles by the authors:

Szeto, Mirana M. (2013), “Sinophone Libidinal Economy in the Age of Neoliberalisation and Mainlandisation: Masculinities in Hong Kong SAR New Wave Cinema,” Sinophone Cinemas, Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 120-146.

Szeto, Mirana May & Chen, Yun-chung (2012), “Mainlandization or Sinophone translocality? Challenges for Hong Kong SAR New Wave
cinema,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 6(2): 115-134.

Szeto, Mirana M. & Yun-chung Chen, “Mainlandization and Neoliberalism with Post-colonial and Chinese Characteristics: Challenges for the Hong Kong Film Industry,” Jyotsna Kapur and Keith Wagner ed., Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique, New York and London: Routledge, pp. 239-260.

Szeto Mirana M. (2010), “Ann Hui at the Margin of Mainstream Hong Kong Cinema,” Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier, Gina Marchetti, Esther Cheung & Tan See-Kam (eds.), Hong Kong University Press, 51-66.

Szeto, Mirana M., (2013) "Intra-local and inter-local Sinophone: Rhizomatic Politics of Hong Kong writers Saisai and Wong Bik-wan," Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, Shih, Shu-mei,Chien-hsin Tsai & Brian Bernards ed., Columbia University Press, pp. 191-206.