The making of the citizen-spectator in postmillennial Hong Kong: Authorial and spectatorial engagement with independent documentary films

Established by several independent filmmakers in Hong Kong in 1997, Ying E Chi (YEC) has facilitated the production and the distribution of Hong Kong independent films by means of VCD/DVD releases, video streaming, film festivals and community screenings. The non-profit body has played a key role in aiding local independent filmmakers’ projects, seeking film distribution opportunities locally and transnationally and building community networks in its home city. As the organizer of the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival since 2008, YEC has demonstrated its fluid translocal positioning by not just promoting the works of local filmmakers, but also introducing worldwide independent cinema to Hong Kong audiences. In retrospect, the development of YEC has reflected the transforming cultural landscape of Hong Kong to different degrees. From cinephiles and academics to the public, the audiences YEC has developed over the years indicates an ever-changing spectatorship in the making, bespeaking the various responses to the social environment under which these films were made, shown and watched. This article will use YEC as a case study to explore the mutual impacts between documentary films and their spectatorship which have shaped independent filmmakers’ production and distribution strategies continuously in postmillennial Hong Kong, particularly in the wake of the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. The article will draw on interviews with local independent filmmakers, in order to understand how industry practices and dynamics have responded to identification, social events and audience behaviours over time. In this regard, spectatorship is understood as not just an embodied experience of film viewing, but also a series of affinities between the filmmaker, the audience and the film work. As a whole, the article will probe how the idea of citizen-spectator has evolved and has become inscribed in spectatorial engagement with independent documentary films, which has oscillated between audiences’ approval and authorities’ disapproval in postmillennial Hong Kong.