At the ongoing 37th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), "going local" and "resisting co-production" have become key words. It's one indication that some directors want to see a return of old-style Hong Kong movies.

The committee of the festival chose Herman Yau's Ip Man: The Final Fight to screen at the opening ceremony, reportedly saying it is "very local." The festival is echoing this inclination by including films dominated by kung fu, violence, sex and thrillers - all typical features of Hong Kong movies. But mainland audiences won't see some of the entries as some directors opted to make them without constraining themselves for the sake of censors, showing a resolve to revitalize the Hong Kong style.

Despite the determination of a few, Lee Lik-Chi, director of many classical Hong Kong comedies, is not optimistic. "The glory of the Hong Kong movie is gone," Lee told the Global Times in a phone interview on Friday, "It's time for Putonghua culture."

Rising awareness

At the festival, director Pang Ho-Cheung put forward the trailer of his SDU: Sex Duty Unit, which continues the vulgar style of Vulgaria, showing a return to Hong Kong style. William Kong, CEO of Hong Kong-based EDKO Film Company, also announced his plans to produce local movies by adapting Lilian Lee's series of ghost stories due out this summer.

Meanwhile, some movie projects unveiled at the festival also smell local. At a press conference on March 18, Emperor Motion Pictures announced a project called "Go Local" with STAR Chinese Movies, a channel under Fox International Channels, to encourage local film productions.

The project will cultivate local talents to produce Hong Kong movies. For phase one, Hong Kong actor and director Edward Ng was invited to be the supervisor of five movies over three years. His mission: shoot movies that are pure Hong Kong.

Such moves look like a response to events that occurred at the 7th Asian Film Awards, which was held on March 18 as part of the HKIFF. The once glorious Hong Kong movies harvested only one of the ceremony's 14 awards. Man Lim-chung won best costume design for The Silent War, but even that was a co-production.

It has long been an open secret that Hong Kong movies had declined, both in number and quality. Hong Kong directors find themselves caught in the middle - slaves to two masters, so to speak, as they perceive art in a Hong Kong style while trying to package it in a mainstream box.

Uncomfortable with the compromise, some directors have simply decided not to play the game. It is reported that Pang and Ng didn't take the mainland into consideration when making their movies.

"Hong Kong movies will be terminally ill if everyone only considers making money," Ng said at the "Go Local" press conference, "I want to keep the root of a Hong Kong movie."

"Some Hong Kong movies cannot be realized in the form of a co-production [with the mainland]. But we still need to develop it for the market in Southeastern Asia," Kong said, seeing sufficient talent and support from the success of Cold War and Vulgariain Hong Kong last year.

Against the current

The attempts to revitalize Hong Kong movies run counter to the other trend over the past decade in which Hong Kong filmmakers are "going north," under the framework of making co-productions with the mainland.

In 2003, part of the CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement) aimed to break quota restrictions for Hong Kong movies in the mainland. In 2004, after CEPA was put into effect, a large number of co-produced movies swarmed mainland screens.

In the following years, many famous directors such as Peter Chan, Tsui Hark and Wong Jing took steps northward, strengthening the trend. Even Pang Ho-Cheung and Johnny To, who used to hold their ground, followed the current.

It opened a huge market for Hong Kong movies, but it is "from then that they began to lose their original flavor," Cui told the Global Times in an online interview on Saturday.

The CEPA changed more than scene locations or the mix of cast members. It shifted the consumption of Hong Kong movies to the mainland, an area with different tastes and regulations.

Being co-produced means going through the censorship process. Certain topics like sex and graphic bloody violence that are important features of many Hong Kong movies cannot be seen in a co-production.

As Hong Kong movies cater to the mainland market, they lose their special Hong Kong flavor. Meanwhile, more and more directors are going north, leaving their home industry abandoned.

Cui pointed out that losing that special flavor is an inevitable part of becoming a cultural hybrid.

Quality matters  

But actually, there is no set definition of a Hong Kong movie. To Teddy Chan, director of Bodyguards and Assassins, the core of a Hong Kong movie is "its quality production value that reaches the level of a Hollywood movie."

"The audience needs both serious and light movies," Chan said, "but it doesn't make sense to use co-production as the excuse for the decline of Hong Kong movies. There are still good Hong Kong movies like Cold War and A Simple Life. It has nothing to do with co-production or 'going north.' Really good movies are welcome everywhere."

There have appeared numerous quality co-productions that win both the box office and public praise such as A World without Thieves, Hero, Bodyguards and Assassins, and so on. But as the number of co-productions has climbed rapidly since 2004, it has been noticed that the quality has dropped.

Chan even admitted that the quality of co-productions is uneven. "Some start to shoot a movie about the mainland before doing good homework," he said.

Now Chan shows a calm attitude toward "going north." He said he would make the topics of the movie the top priority, and would not deliberately produce it in Hong Kong or the mainland.

Optimistic about the future of the industry, he said that the priority is to protect today's Chinese films. "We cannot touch many topics, which makes us lag behind Hollywood particularly. I hope it could be widened," he said, calling for further discussion on establishing a film rating system in mainland as a possible solution.