Projects per year
Personal profile
Chinese Name
Biography
Kenny K.K. Ng is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Film. His published books include The Lost Geopoetic Horizon of Li Jieren: The Crisis of Writing Chengdu in Revolutionary China (Brill, 2015); Indiescape Hong Kong: Interviews and Essays, co-authored (Hong Kong: Typesetter Publishing, 2018); Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Hong Kong Cinema with Sino-links in Politics, Art, and Tradition (Hong Kong: Chunghwa Book Co., 2021). He has published widely in the fields of comparative literature, Chinese literary and cultural studies, cinema and visual culture in the U.S., UK, Europe, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. His ongoing book projects concern censorship and visual cultural politics in Cold War Hong Kong, China, and Asia, Cantophone cinema history, and leftwing cosmopolitanism.
From studying comparative literature at the University of Washington and earning a doctorate in East Asian languages and civilization at Harvard University, to venturing into cinema and literary studies early in his academic career, my journey in the academe has led me to investigate the cultural politics of Chinese-language cinemas.
My study shifts the focus of investigation from elite politics to popular culture and cinematic expression. How did Cold War popular culture and marketism shape the ethics and aesthetics of filmmaking by individual filmmakers and groups? I examine how creative people moved beyond ideological divides and deployed dynamics of storytelling, image-building, interactive listening and performing to appeal to disparate Chinese audiences and tastes. By unveiling how filmmakers exploited mass culture and media in rapidly commercializing Chinese societies, the study reveals the tension between political rhetoric and cultural representations.
Currently I have been working on a monograph to examine the impact of British film censorship and colonial cultural policy on Hong Kong cinema in the postwar era. Besides political and social factors, the study concerned about issues of aesthetics and the artistic performance of film as an artefact, the intellectual pursuits of filmmakers who produced their works against commercial and political constraints, and the social and educational functions of film.
The book project explores how ideology and political idealism shaped the ethics and aesthetics of postwar Hong Kong cinema. I analyze the migratory and creative experiences of exiled intellectuals, filmmakers, and cultural entrepreneurs, for whom cinematic sights and sounds became the embattled cultural venues of their moral and intellectual visions. In the book, I query the notion of “Chineseness” and argues that the understanding of “Chineseness” should not be reduced to the placing of political allegiances over the organic expressions of local and cultural identities.
These current projects lead me to explore my interest in film censorship, cultural policy, screen adaptation, historical imagination, comparative literature, critical theory and aesthetics. I want to share my interests with scholars in the fields of diaspora, global Sinophone, transnational Chinese cinema, and Hong Kong studies. I hope my work will blur national boundaries and break regional barriers in film and media studies.
Research Interests
Film Censorship and Colonial Cultural History
Transnational Chinese Literary and Visual Culture
Historical Imagination and Cultural Geographyo
Comparative Literary and Visual Studies
Urban Culture and Globalization
Cultural Memory and Heritage
Critical Theory and Aesthetics
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
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- 1 Similar Scholars
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Between Politics and Aesthetics on the Left Screen: Rewriting the History of the Chinese Cinema of Hong Kong, 1937-1997
1/09/21 → 31/08/24
Project: Research project
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The Cultural Cold War and Contested Chineseness in Hong Kong Cinema
1/09/19 → 31/08/20
Project: Research project
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Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Chang Kuo-sin’s Asia Enterprises and Cultural Legacies
1/01/19 → 31/12/22
Project: Research project
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Borderscape, Exile, Trafficking: The Geopoetics of Ying Liang’s A Family Tour and Bai Xue’s The Crossing
Ng, K., 22 Sept 2022, Affective Geographies and Narratives of Chinese Diaspora. Yunzi Li, M. & Tally Jr., R. T. (eds.). 1st ed. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 51–68 18 p. (Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies).Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
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From Gone with the Wind to The Spring River Flows East: Melodrama and Historical Imagination in Postwar Chinese Cinema
Ng, K., Jul 2022, Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization. Kyong-McClain, J., Meeuf, R. & Chang, J. J. (eds.). Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press, p. 79-96 18 p.Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
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Midnight Movies in Chinatown: Chinese theaters were a popular draw in the first half of the 20th Century
Ng, K., Jun 2022, In: New York Archives Magazine. 22, 1, p. 28-34 7 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
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Romantic Love, Self-Exaltation, and Social Rebellion: The Influence of Goethe’s Werther on Chinese Epistolary Novels in the 1920s and 1930s
NG, K., 14 Mar 2022, Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern and Premodern China : Global Networks, Mediation, and Intertextuality. Chan, K. K. Y. & Lau, C. S. G. (eds.). 1st ed. Springer Singapore, p. 83–95 13 p. (Chinese Culture; vol. 3).Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
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《人生曲》的倫理奇情: 從紐約州電檢紀錄窺探早期粵語電影中關於母親的情景劇
吳國坤, May 2022, 探索1930至1940年代香港電影. 下篇: 類型.地域.文化(中文版). 郭靜寧 & 吳君玉 (eds.). 香港: 香港電影資料館, p. 354-369 16 p.Translated title of the contribution :Song of Life. Maternal Melodrama in Early Cantonese Cinema: A Preliminary Study from Records in the New York State Archive Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Chapter
Open Access