page_title: Film industry
section_title: Hong Kong
hierarchical_section_title: Film industry / Modern film industry / Hong Kong
caption_attribution_description: Lai Man-Wai (d. 1953) in the 1913 Chinese film Zhuangzi Tests His Wife. Lai Man-Wai also directed the film and is the only known author of the film for copyright purposes. The film is public domain in the United States (because it is published before 1923), and public domain in China and all other countries with a rule of pma (post-mortem author) of 50 years.
context_page_description: The film industry or motion picture industry, comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution and actors, film directors and other film crew personnel. Though the expense involved in making films almost immediately led film production to concentrate under the auspices of standing production companies, advances in affordable film making equipment, and expansion of opportunities to acquire investment capital from outside the film industry itself, have allowed independent film production to evolve.
  In 2018, the global box office was worth $41.7 billion. When including box office and home entertainment revenue, the global film industry was worth $136 billion in 2018. Hollywood is the world's oldest national film industry, and remains the largest in terms of box office gross revenue. Indian cinema is the largest national film industry in terms of the number of films produced, with 1,813 feature films produced annually as of 2018.
context_section_description: Hong Kong is a filmmaking hub for the Chinese-speaking world (including the worldwide diaspora) and East Asia in general.  For decades it was the third largest motion picture industry in the world (after Bollywood and Hollywood) and the second largest exporter of films. Despite an industry crisis starting in the mid-1990s and Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997 Hong Kong film has retained much of its distinctive identity and continues to play a prominent part on the world cinema stage.
  Unlike many film industries, Hong Kong has enjoyed little to no direct government support, through either subsidies or import quotas.  It has always been a thoroughly commercial cinema, concentrating on crowd-pleasing genres, like comedy and action, and heavily reliant on formulas, sequels and remakes.  Typically of commercial cinemas, its heart is a highly developed star system, which in this case also features substantial overlap with the pop music industry.
caption: Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (1913) is credited as the first Hong Kong feature film
exif: {}