Film Criticism in The 70's Biweekly (original) (raw)

2023, The 70's Biweekly: Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in 1970s Hong Kong, edited by Lu Pan. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press

The 70’s Biweekly collectives’ writing on film has been neglected in discussions about Hong Kong film criticism, which has meant that their focus on the politics of cinema and exploration of how cinema negotiates contradictions in (colonial) capitalist society is a lost chapter of 1970s Hong Kong film culture. Whether writing about Hong Kong cinema or international cinema, the film criticism in The 70’s Biweekly was always attuned to the radical and political potentialities of cinema, and focused especially on ideological criticism related to pressing issues such as capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, female emancipation and social injustice. The writers often made explicit their personal, political and ideological perspectives in their focus on how film can negotiate, and at times resist and critique, the ruling ideology and patriarchal capitalism. As well as critical reviews of individual films and essays on directors and cinematic new waves, there were also Chinese translations of interviews with directors including Costa Gavras, and Chinese translations of English or French language film criticism, including the hugely influential article “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism” written by Jean-Louis Commoli and Paul Narboni in the wake of the May 1968 protests, which helped develop a Marxist approach to the critical analysis of cinema. This chapter will explore the critical endeavours related to cinema in the pages of The 70’s Biweekly to reveal and recuperate the internationalist left-wing position of this pocket of oppositional film culture in Hong Kong film history.

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