Hong Kong Documentary Film

Ian Aitken was a chair professor, and is now an Emeritus Professor, affiliated to Hong Kong Baptist University. His areas of expertise lie in British documentary film studies, the British official film in South-East Asia, and theories of cinematic realism. His most recent book publications include World, Time Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), Cinematic Realism (2020), The Major Realist Film Theorists (ed.), The British Official Film in South-East Asia (2016), and The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia (2016). Associate Professor in the Department of English at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

• Introduction; 1. Hong Kong, Britain China; the documentary film (1896-1941), A Page of History (1941) and The Battle of Shanghai (1937); 2. Hong Kong, Britain China; the documentary film (1947-69), the ‘picturesque’ committed film and Water comes over the Hills from the East (1965); 3. Colonial film: The development of official film-making in Hong Kong (1945-73), the Hong Kong Film Unit (1959-73) and This is Hong Kong (1961); 4. ‘Under Siege’. Public-service broadcasting in an authoritarian setting: The case of Radio Television Hong Kong, and the development of television documentary film in Hong Kong; 5. The documentary films of Radio Television Hong Kong and The Hong Kong Case (1989); 6. Aesthetics and radicalism: An overview of independent documentary film in Hong Kong (1973-2013); 7. A critical analysis of significant independent documentary films of the past three decades: Ed Kong’s Rising Sun (1980); Evans Chan’s Journey to Beijing (1998); Tammy Cheung’s Rice Distribution (2003); Anson Mak’s One Way Street on a Turntable (2007); Cheung King-wai’s KJ: Life and Music (2008) and Louisa Wei’s Storm under the Sun (2011); Conclusions; Bibliography; Index