Despite the genre’s global audience, Hong Kong cinema was now ready for new developments.
The First Waveīy the late ‘70s, martial arts cinema from Raymond Chow (of Golden Harvest) and Run Run Shaw (of the Shaw Brothers) had dominated the industry’s mainstream output for years. But in Hong Kong, creative young filmmakers were ready to subvert industry trends and make their own mark on the colony's cinematic output. It's wide appeal spread well beyond Asia, having also become popular in Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America. By the mid-70s, the martial arts genre had firmly found its global audience. This allowed Raymond Chow, who had helped turn Lee into a global star and previously worked as Shaw's head of production, turn his enterprise Golden Harvest into a major production company.
But before his death, Lee had already helped martial arts cinema connect to a global audience. However, after the death of cult star Bruce Lee in 1973, there was a noticeable decrease in quality throughout the martial arts genre. Making this feat possible was Run Run Shaw (of the hugely successful Shaw Brothers) who had built an ambitious Hong Kong studio called Movietown in 1958. While having great success with relatively low budget productions, Shaw would look to reinvent the martial arts genre by 1960. Instead of focusing on Confucian philosophy, the reinvigorated genre would become a celebration of cutting-edge stunts, taking influence from popular Japanese samurai flicks and spaghetti Westerns.ĭirectors King Hu and Zhang Che helped bring the genre into fruition, while also recruiting a line of assistant directors who would become significant to Hong Kong's film scene in the 1970s.
A mass-production studio system had been implemented in 1950s Hong Kong, which would eventually produce over 120 features per year by the late 1970s. Understanding Hong Kong cinema prior to the new wave may shed light on why these directors stood out from their peers. Output from South Korea and Pakistan was also on the rise, but it was the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong that arguably benefitted the most from this significant shift. Throughout the 1960s and early '70s, an increase in population led many third world countries to increase their cinematic output significantly Egyptian productions targeted historical dramas towards African and Middle Eastern markets, while Mexico continued to dominate South America.
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