Hong Kong’s It/Ip Man: The Chinese Contexts of Donnie Yen’s Transnational Stardom

Abstract

Over the past two decades, film scholars have become increasingly aware that the “national-cinema” paradigm does not adequately address issues of film production, distribution, or consumption in an increasingly interconnected world.1 According to Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, “few places have a more complex relation to the national than the combination constituted by the People’s Republic [of China (PRC)], Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora.”2 As a result, scholarship on Chinese cinemas recognizes “the plurality of the concept of Chinese ‘national’ cinemas” and mobilizes the transnational to describe “filmmaking activities located in several geographical regions [… that] somehow share certain linguistic and cultural traits of ‘Chineseness.’”3 Importantly, the description of these cinemas as “transnational” does not necessarily displace the notion of the national, but rather repositions it in a broader ethnic framework.4