Passing Flickers (1982)
May 17th, 7:00PM in Garland 104 (2441 E. Hartford)
This screening will be my last as head of the Asian Film
Series, but a new individual will be taking over and hopefully it will continue
for many more years. Look to this blog for information regarding where to find
news on future screenings. To celebrate this end I have chosen to screen a film
that is very special to me along with a newsreel, the topic of both being
moviemaking in Hong Kong. The short film is a remembrance of the actress Linda
Lin Dai after her 1964 suicide. With a kind of bizarre glee, the Shaw Brothers
studio put their entire promotional department behind an extravaganza of Lin
Dai as they continued to put out still unreleased films starring the actress.
The feature is a 1982 film also produced by the Shaw Brothers
studio and directed by Li Han Hsiang. Named after his popular newspaper column
which anonymously informed readers of all of the strange goings on in the movie
business, Passing Flickers is an episodic comedy following the behind the
scenes progress of a series of fictional productions ranging from studio to
independent style works. One of Hong Kong’s great studio directors, Li had been
working since the 1950’s making everything from refined palace dramas to erotic
farces which mixed everything from melodrama, slapstick, horror and complex
historical illusion.
Passing Flickers is packed full of both general and specific
references to three decades of Hong Kong cinema. This includes an extended
reference to the 1962 Shaw Brothers version of Madame White Snake and their
abortive Wong Fei Hung films. This should not discourage those unfamiliar with
such topics from seeing the film, as it works upon many levels. In a way both
feature and short provide an indictment of and exultation Hong Kong film from
an insider’s perspective.
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