Initial D, an adaptation of famous Japanese comic, shooting on location in Japan, and produced by a team of talents from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, has been the box-office winner in the past summer holiday and reminded the public about the great potentials of Hong Kong-Japanese coproductions. In fact, collaborations between the Hong Kong and Japanese filmmakers dated back to the early 1950s. As the Hong Kong Film Archive and the Leisure & Cultural Services Department are organizing a film festival called "Hong Kong and Japan: Early Co-productions", showing a collection of seven masterpieces dated from 1955 to 1965, it would be a good opportunity for the audience to chase the origin of the collaborations between the filmmakers of the two regions. The retrospective will be screened from 23rd September to 9th October at the Cinema of the HKFA and the Lecture Hall of the Hong Kong Science Museum.

The program includes the classical, cross-cultural love trilogy - A Night in Hong Kong, Star of Hong Kong and Hong Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, all starring Hong Kong's superstar Lucilla You Min, who had won the "Best Actress in Asia" for two years, and Japan's famous actor Takarada Akira. Takarada will make a special appearance in Hong Kong at the seminar “Another Night in Hong Kong: Hong Kong-Japan Film Exchange in 1950s and 60s" at 4.30 PM on 8th October, sharing his experience of working in Hong Kong-Japanese co-productions.

In addition to the above trilogy (coproductions between MP&GI with Toho) which are seldom screened in Hong Kong in the recent years, Blood Will Tell and Madame Butterfly (productions of Hsin Hwa company), The Lone Swan (directed by Lee Sun-fung) and The Longest Night (production of MP&GI).

Hong Kong-Japanese co-productions date back to 1955 and 1956, when Zhang Shankun and Tong Yuejuan's Hsin Hwa went on location in Japan and made a series of films with the help of Toho, taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from the Japanese film industry. MP&GI went on a similar excursion at about the same time, making the Cantonese film The Lone Swan and the Mandarin film Miss Kikuko, later collaborating with Shochiku to make Hong Kong-Tokyo Honeymoon.

The cross-cultural partnership escalated in the early 1960s, resulting in the popular trilogy starring Hong Kong's Lucilla You Min and Japan's Takarada Akira, coproduced by MP&GI and Toho. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Shaw Brothers reached over to the Japanese film industry to sign long-term contracts with director Umetsugu Inoue and cinematographers Nishimoto Tadashi and Miyaki Yukio, whose work contributed greatly to the technical advancement of Hong Kong cinema.

Afterwards, the collaboration between Hong Kong and Japanese filmmakers keep intensifying. As Hong Kong productions are becoming much sophisticated, in the recent years the Japanese film industry also turn to Hong Kong for inspirations. For example, Toho has bought the script of the award-winning Hong Kong production Fly Me to Polaris (1999, GH Pictures) and made a Japanese adaptation in 2003. Showing in Japan and South Korea, the Japanese version was widely praised.

The latest successful example of Hong Kong-Japan collaborations is definitely the Initial D. With a storyline based on Japanese comic, this film, shot by the most talented Hong Kong filmmakers and with a casting of the most glamorous stars from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, turned out to be a huge success across Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, etc.

Being the film production and financing center in Asia, Hong Kong has been lining up the best talents across different countries for many years, promoting exchange in the film art. As more and more cross-region coproductions succeed, it is believed that cooperations between filmmakers from different regions will increase.

(hkfilmart September 27, 2005)