SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Yeung argues that Ann Hui’s co-produced films in her post-CEPA oeuvre embody a framework of “allegorical cinema.” Yeung theorizes this framework with reference to Walter Benjamin’s “baroque allegory,” Ackbar Abbas’s “cinema of the fragment as a nation,” and Yau Ka-Fai’s “cinema of the political.” The chapter first identifies the features of allegory in Hong Kong new cinema. It then explicates the necessity of allegory in the context of CEPA, state censorship, and self-censorship. After illustrating Hui’s mode of allegorical storytelling in The Golden Era (2014) and Our Time Will Come (2017), Yeung concludes with the uses of allegorical cinema in regard to investigating the future possibility of Hong Kong cinema under the influence of mainland China.