The Colonial Screen

Hong Kong is known as an entrepôt in its colonial history, but its place in early cinema has not received the same scholarly attention. The Colonial Screen: Early Cinema in Hong Kong explores the exhibition, regulation, circulation, reception, and social place of motion pictures, from the time the cinematograph, an early mechanism for motion pictures, first arrived in the territory in 1897 through to the late 1920s when Hong Kong emerged as a film entrepôt in South China. Drawing on concepts of screen practice, dispositif (deployment, apparatus), kinematography (motion pictures before cinema), and entrepôt, author Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh presents an unknown history of early film in Hong Kong. She traces the transition from film exhibition as a tie-in with staged entertainment to a full-fledged attraction of its own, acquiring a niche position in local society, and explores the roles of showmen, technologies, regulation, movie theatres, and entertainers. In each chapter, she brings to light