Photo credit: HughieDW (via Flickr)
1 Movietown
One of the studios that contributed greatly to Hong Kong’s fame as a leader in global cinema—we were once the third largest motion picture industry in the world—was definitely the Shaw Brothers Studio. The studio was established by Runme and Run Run Shaw in 1958, and two years later the brothers unveiled what was then the largest privately owned studio in the world, with over 20 buildings spread over a 46-acre site in Clearwater Bay, known as Movietown. Shaw Brothers produced some 1,000 films during the Golden Era of Hong Kong cinema, including the most popular Chinese films of the period and titles that would popularise the kung fu genre. In 1986, the company turned its attention to television through its subsidiary TVB instead, and two years later was reorganised under the umbrella of the Shaw Organisation.
Movietown churned out its last production in 2003, Shaw opened new studios in Tseung Kwan O in 2006, and the old location in Clearwater Bay was gradually abandoned. There have been extensive discussions between the landowners and the Town Planning Board regarding the fate of Movietown, and in 2014 they decided to demolish it in favour of housing and commercial buildings. Luckily, the Antiquities Advisory Board stepped in with a Grade 1 Historical Site designation, though there are no concrete plans yet about how the site will be preserved.
These days the massive compound on Clearwater Bay Road and Ngan Ying Road is closed to the public along with the former TVB headquarters and the apartment blocks which used to house Shaw actors. There are security guards posted on duty, but according to urban explorers who have managed to venture in, the buildings lie deserted in varying degrees of damage, and there are still large amounts of old film canisters, projectors, props, documents, movie memorabilia, and machinery lying around in its many rooms. Movietown now sits in a vacuum, existing only within the films it has produced—a fitting metaphor to the waning of peak Hong Kong cinema.