Hong Kong's cinema screens are increasingly dominated by big-budget mainstream fare, while the best indie and art-house releases must often settle for a DVD release. Edmund Lee talks to the people who decide what we watch.

Read our other features:
Edmund Lee meets five hong Kong filmmakers who each have a distinctive take on their craft:-
Johnnie To, The auteur
Wong Chun-chun, The accidental feminist
Wong Jing, The crowd pleaser
Herman Yau, The cult director
Pang Ho-cheung, The enfant terrible

Cast your eye across the schedules of Hong Kong’s multiplex cinemas on any given week and you’ll be forgiven for feeling a little underwhelmed by the breadth of choice on offer. If you’re hankering for anything other than blockbusting action, mainstream comedy or animated adventure, your odds of finding something that spins your reel are frustratingly long as indie, art house and alternative cinema are generally posted missing.

That the same five films generally occupy the bulk of our cinema screens is common knowledge, of course. What is less clear, however, is why this state of affairs exists. How exactly do Superhero Movie and Meet the Spartans get general releases while the likes of David Lynch’s Inland Empire go straight to DVD? Surely the cinema chains are to blame? Not so, says C. L. Chan, General Manager of UA Cinema Circuit. “It’s not really down to us to pick the movies,” says Chan, expressing sympathy for local audiences’ limited choices. “The distributors have determined what films to bring in before recommending them to the exhibitors [the cinemas]. After different stages of selection – from the trend-following production companies [to the distributors] – we just don’t have that many films to choose from.”

So the distributors are the ones who determine what we can and can’t see on the big screen? Not according to Winnie Tsang, founder and managing director of Golden Scene, a local distributor that boasts an impressive catalogue of non-mainstream movies alongside commercial fair such as Rambo and Nim’s Island. When informed of Chan’s position, Tsang looks surprised, before pointing out that UA Cinemas are part of The Lark Group, which also includes Lark Films Distribution. “First, if they’re thinking that way, they should be buying and releasing many other movies through Lark Films,” says Tsang. “And secondly, they’re not even releasing all the non-mainstream movies that we distribute – so how can they complain about the lack of such films?”

Li Cheuk-to, the Artistic Director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) places part of the blame on changes in our film-going habits: “When we wanted to see a movie in the past, we first decided which film to watch before looking up the venue and time; nowadays, the audiences go to the cinemas before deciding what to watch.”

“There must be one [movie] for your taste [at the multiplex],” deadpans Jacob Wong, the curator of the HKIFF, sitting next to Li. “But the truth isn’t like that. It’s a scam! When you go there, you’ll probably find Indiana Jones showing in four or five houses, with little else to choose from. There may only be a couple of screenings of less mainstream movies throughout the day at some unfavourable timeslots.”

While this may be true for the majority of cinemas in Hong Kong, there are exceptions. Broadway Cinema circuit, which is operated by Edko Films, a film production and distribution company that also runs AMC cinemas, offers Hong Kong cinemagoers a range of alternative films at Broadway Cinematheque (BC), the closest thing to an art-house cinema that the city currently has to offer. Gary Mak, BC director, admits that there are financial pressures on his role. “We have to calculate very accurately to make this possible. After all, the investors would complain if you kept losing money. That’s one of the main reasons why we have to show some commercial movies [at BC]: we have to strike a balance. If we only wanted to make money, it’d be much easier to distribute ten Resident Evil movies; on the other hand, if we opted to screen alternative films in all the houses, we’d likely face the same fate as Cine-Art House [which closed down in 2006].”

The overwhelming dominance of mainstream movies at our cinemas nowadays is also partly related to the decline of the “cinema line” system that operated in Hong Kong until around 2000. Back then, “cinema lines” – a sort of middle-man or agency that worked as a go-between for the distributors and exhibitors – would negotiate with the distributors then determine the screening schedule for all its members. One cinema line would consist of cinemas from different circuits (e.g. three from Broadway, two from Golden Harvest, etc.) and other independent cinemas, and each cinema in that line would have to abide by the films and schedules it had been assigned. (Newport is the only remaining cinema line still operating in this way all year round, and focuses only on Chinese language films). Given that this did not give the circuits the flexibility to alter their line-up according to box office performance, it’s not surprising that the circuits decided to cut out the middle man and deal with the distributors directly, gaining total control in the process of what films they show, when, and for how long. This has led to most of their houses being occupied by the same blockbuster movie in an attempt to maximise profit.

The disappearance of alternative films also came with the end of the use of the “holdover figure”. This was a certain box office take agreed in advance between the cinema owner and the distributor, after meeting which the film would be allowed at least another week of screening. Under the current climate, a film’s theatrical run can end with almost no notice. Chan leaves no doubt, in fact, as to just how little time a new film has to earn its continued presence at the cinema. “The fate of a film is always determined within two hours: from 12.30pm to 2.30pm on [the opening] Thursday. If it sells, it stays; if it doesn’t, it’s doomed.”

This is very bad news for non-mainstream movies, which have traditionally relied on slow-building word-of-mouth and positive reviews in the media – rather than enormous marketing budgets – to attract an audience. Says Li: “It’s no longer possible for a film to make it through good reviews. As alternative films usually don’t have great opening box office results, they’re always allocated small cinema houses from the start. The whole scenario is thus a self-fulfilling prophecy that guarantees the death of non-mainstream movies.”

But it’s not all gloom and doom. Distributors and exhibitors hoping to give a lifeline to less mainstream movies have been experimenting with different screening patterns. UA Cinemas have restored the tradition of midnight screenings at their Langham Place cinema, taking in an extra $6 million of annual revenue in the process, while BC’s strategy of releasing non-mainstream flicks with limited screenings has also achieved unexpected results: recently, they sold out each of five rounds of screenings for their Taiwanese film release The Most Distant Course.

Says Mak: “It’s difficult to guess the taste of Hong Kong audiences. If we open with ten or 20 screenings, the audience simply won’t come; on the other hand, if there are few screenings and the audience think it’s a precious opportunity, they’ll fight to get the tickets.” Similar reasoning may well apply to the HKIFF, as Li notes that “some audiences are seduced by the festival mood into participating in the HKIFF every year. It’s possible that the same audiences will not go to cinemas to watch anything other than Hollywood films throughout the rest of the year.”

Other chances to watch art house movies come in a variety of forms: there are the other programmes organised by the HKIFF (such as its Summer Festival, this year taking place between August 8 and September 15); the retrospectives and screenings organised by the government’s Film Programmes Office, the events by Alliance Française and Goethe-Institut, as well as the small-scale festivals initiated by the various consulates.

When asked about the financial considerations involved, Law Waiming, Programme Curator for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department’s Repertory Cinema series since 2002, concedes that it is simply impossible to make money with these programmes. Law’s past projects have brought us classic movies by the likes of Robert Bresson, Alain Resnais and Sergei Eisenstein, and he says, “As long as there’s a good response out there and a satisfactory attendance, we’ve already done a good job.”

His view is echoed by Wong: “We choose what we think are good movies, based on our experience and our own interests. We know very well that our job is to serve the community.”

Law adds: “Due to the lack of an art-house cinema which regularly shows alternative or classic movies, we have to rely heavily on these special screening programmes at the moment. The sad thing is, if a director has a retrospective recently, his films will probably not get another screening for ten years’ time. You can imagine how many generations have grown up in that period [without getting the chance to see any of the director’s films at the cinema].”

This essentially compels serious cinephiles to turn to the home market - which may not necessarily be a bad thing. “Undoubtedly, the range of options is much wider for video,” says Allen Fung, founder and CEO of Panorama Entertainment, a major DVD and VCD company in Hong Kong. “The number of films that can actually make it to the cinema screens is quite small - we're talking about 15 per month, perhaps 200 per year. In the same period, the catalogue titles that make it straight to video may amount to 1,000-2,000.”

Back in the world of the multiplex, however, money talks much louder than noble sentiments, and the enormous visibility of mainstream films is always going to be a more financially appealing prospect than the long shots of art house and indie cinema. Ultimately, these films are popular because they are the only choice, like a dictator who wins an election by a landslide in a one-horse race. By failing to expose audiences to a wider range of films, cinemas simply aren’t giving audiences the chance to develop more sophisticated tastes. Says Tsang: “The audiences don’t even realise their right to choose [what to see] in the first place. Sometimes I’ll tell the cinemas that they have a responsibility to screen a wider variety of movies. If they don’t screen any [non-mainstream] movies, the audiences will simply never know about them.”

Read our other features:
Edmund Lee meets five hong Kong filmmakers who each have a distinctive take on their craft:-
Johnnie To, The auteur
Wong Chun-chun, The accidental feminist
Wong Jing, The crowd pleaser
Herman Yau, The cult director
Pang Ho-cheung, The enfant terrible