Hong Kong cinema in the age of neoliberalization and mainlandization : Hong Kong SAR new wave as a cinema of anxiety

This chapter argues that “neoliberalization” and “mainlandization” have become more accurate terms to characterize actually existing problems of globalization that Hong Kong and the Hong Kong film industry are facing today. Their combined impact has drastically altered Hong Kong's sense of reality, resulting in a different kind of anxiety. The chapter explains that neoliberalism is giving globalization studies a theory that can analyze existing global economic assumptions and forms of governance and how they are localized. The chapter also focuses on films definitive of the cinema of anxiety as a result of the combined effects of mainlandization and neoliberalization. They include two SAR New Wave films, Rigor Mortis (2013) and Cold War (2012), and the Hong Kong Second Wave film The Grandmaster (2013), all representing different approaches.