This month sees the screening of Céline Sciamma’s film Tomboy, a coming-of-age story about gender identity. It’s a must-see at the upcoming Summer International Film Festival (SIFF, see p64), with a notable scene of a young girl crafting a clay penis to stuff in her Speedo swimming trunks. At first glance, it might be provocative for Hong Kong cinemas. But, in reality, far racier images grace our screens, as our city’s self-proclaimed ‘golden age’ – the glorious early 90s – can attest.

At this time, local cinema was at its creative peak and major studios were giving filmmakers free rein to tell just about any story. And given the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1991, this was an opportunity for the iconic scenes of queer culture to emerge. Take Brigitte Lin going drag in a role inspired by Chairman Mao in Swordsman II, or Tony Leung using his spit as lube for Leslie Cheung in Happy Together. Just short of a decade later, hugely popular male Hong Kong actors were going down on each other in blockbuster movies – a contradictory image, considering a city as hyper-conservative as ours.

But Professor Helen Leung offers an explanation for this with her definitive study on queer-Kong, entitled Undercurrents: Queer Culture in Post Colonial Hong Kong. In it, she makes a very clear parallel between the queer experience and what was stirring in the public’s mind in the years prior to the handover. Darker, more brooding entries, like mainland China’s Behind the Forbidden City (1996), use bleak love stories of a disenfranchised population to show how messed up the lives of the straights were at the time.

While on the other hand, queer characters in mainstream Hong Kong cinema were pigeonholed as victims, villains, whores or sissies. These are stereotypes that have been prevalent in fluff movies since the 80s and still persist today. From Simon Luoi in The Sting (1992) to Eason Chan in Lavender (2000), ‘it was all good exposure’, which led the way to a new era in queer cinema, according to Professor Leung.

 “Healthy, more positive characters are seeping into these movies,” she says. “It’s working on many levels… it is helping Hong Kong come to terms with their fears and it is creating the groundwork for a Hong Kong queer identity – not one that is defined by Western ideals.”

Another critic, Professor Travis Kong from the University of Hong Kong, takes a different perspective. As a specialist on gender identity and queer theory, Professor Kong is concerned about LGBT characters becoming increasingly exposed in the media, commoditised and ‘absorbed into straight culture’, which would ultimately render subversive resistance in a civil rights movement ‘to mere consumption’.

Despite this, the sheer presence of LGBT themes in cinema is a good thing. But as more well-rounded LGBT characters enter the mainstream, they’re met by an unfortunate roadblock. In the years following the handover, production companies in Hong Kong have been increasingly influenced by Chinese investors, meaning that filmmakers here are expected to pander to both northern and southern audiences. As a result, the output is less a part of our heritage and more about lucrative sword epics, threatening the future of local queer cinema.

Professor Leung presents a solution. “They’re going indie,” she says. “They are able to work without the restrictions of government and studio executives breathing down their back and that’s a good thing. But more importantly, they are keeping their identities as Hong Kong filmmakers...  it’s very important to them.”

With the Hong Kong heavyweights working today – most notably Scud (Danny Cheng) and his elegant take on modern gay life, Permanent Residence (2009), and the less credible but sexier Amphetamine (2010) – it would appear that we’re in safe hands. With the support of festivals, whether mainstream like the upcoming SIFF or queer-themed like the Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festival,  we hope this outspoken, patriotic pack of filmmakers will continue to thrive.