New Hong Kong Nostalgic Movies From The Perspective Of Identities Of "the Hong Kong People"

July1,1997is the most historic day for Hong Kong in recent centuries as it gets rid of the shackles of semi-colonial identity and the fundamental policy of "one country, two systems" enables Hong Kong to open a new era of economic and political independence.But the transformation process of identity of Hong Kong people did not keep pace with the objective change in its economic and political status. On the contrary, around the "China-UK Joint Declaration" signed in1984, Hong Kong people have got the deadline panic due to the looming return.It is mainly attributed to the confusion and anxiety about their identity. Whether it is for individuals or groups, identity is the premise of existence.Hong Kong has undergone British colonial rule for a long period^At the same time, it has been isolated from mainland in terms of culture. In consequence, Hong Kong is known as the world’s rare city with education only in civics and lack of that in nationality throughout more than a century. The Hong Kong people have flabby national consciousness of citizenship。In the mainland people’s eyes, they are western, but there is difference in identification between them and the westerners. While in the eyes of Westerners, they are mainlanders although it is obvious that they are quite culturally different from those local mainlanders.Therefore, Hong Kong is identified as a city without cultural identity. Since it was ruled by British colonists, the Hong Kong people have been hesitant in choosing their identity from the British, Chinese and Hong Kong.Anderson reckoned that the identity forms as the community is constructed. The deconstruction of community witnesses the prospect of the crisis of identity.As Hong Kong is the society that has not been transformed into a stable community, the people of Hong Kong would be trapped into the awkward predicament regarding identity.The film, as a cultural carrier, is also an important means of the construction of its "community" since ideology is the deep-underlying kernel spirit with omnipresent influence. As the "Hong Kong people’s self-portrait", Hong Kong films develops hand in hand with the development of the whole city.Nostalgia is an effective way for modern people to construct "identity" and often involved in Hong Kong films in recent years. The nostalgia in Hong Kong movies originated in the sixty’s of the last century and reached to its climax in the period of new wave.However, the films of the new-wave period is more through the nostalgia for figuring out the identity, which producing an not ideal result; and the new wave movement passed over in a very short period of time.With the increasingly close exchanges in economy and culture between Hong Kong and mainland, the Hong Kong film has made quite a few trials. Eventually it walked out the corner:re-finding the identity for "Hong Kong people" and re-constructing a new community under the rise of new nostalgic movies.From the perspective of Hong Kong people’s identity, four awarded movies in Hong Kong Film Award from2009to2012are chosen, that is, The Way We Are, Echoes of the Rainbow, Gallants and A Simple Life. In addition, from the four Hong Kong local Box-office hits (CJ7, All’s Well Ends Well,72Tenants of Prosperity and Wo Ai Xiang Gang) ranging from2008to2011, the most representative one,72Tenants of Prosperity, is also sorted out as the object of study. The chosen five movies are all typical representative of Hong Kong new nostalgic movies.The five new nostalgic movies are employed as sample; text analysis is made specific to the Hong Kong people’s identity with the application of textual analysis.This thesis is divided into four parts:the first chapter is the first part briefly introducing the genesis of the research in this thesis and relevant theoretical origin. According to the investigation, the film is the artistic interpretation of social life. The change of films is able to show that of the social culture to some extent. The social life in films can be carefully grasped through studying the text such as film script, scene, elements and etc.Besides, this study will combine the identity of individuals and a collective community theory and indicates that political and economic changes taken place in certain regions or a community will lay a deep imprint on the citizen’s self-identification and sense of belonging in a community.As the second part, the second chapter works out the approach to the construction of Hong Kong people’s identity through investigating the changing process of Hong Kong films and Hong Kong people’s identity.The third, fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are the core part of this paper. In those chapters, how to build Hong Kong people’s identity and confirm their subjectivity in the new Hong Kong nostalgic movies is explored and discussed through a text analysis of the mentioned five films.As a summary, the seventh chapter summarize the conclusions from textual analysis of the film samples, revealing that how the changes in political status and economical state are interpreted in the specific film texts and influence the Hong Kong people’s identity in real life. As a different movie trend from the old nostalgic movies, the new nostalgic movies prove the statement above in a direct way.