Chow Yun-Fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom

'This is a well-focused, highly original and impressively detailed analysis of one of the world's leading Chinese film stars in terms of the shifting meanings of celebrity cultures and transnational media.'
Julian Stringer, University of Nottingham
As one of the most popular and versatile Hong Kong film stars, Chow Yun-fat has enjoyed international success over the last four decades. Using Chow's transnational and trans-regional star persona as a case study, Lin Feng investigates stardom as an agent for mediating the sociocultural construction of Hong Kong and Chinese identities. Through the analysis of Chow's on- and off-screen star image, the book recognises that a star's image is unstable and fragmented across distinct historical junctures, geographic borders and media platforms.
Following Chow's career move from Hong Kong to Hollywood, and then to transnational Chinese cinema, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom highlights the complex redefinitions of local and global, traditional and modern, and East and West that Chow's image has undergone. At the same time, it explores the nature of Chinese and transnational stardom, the East Asian film industry, and Asian male stardom beyond martial arts and action cinema.
Lin Feng is the subject coordinator of Chinese Studies at the University of Hull.
Cover image: Chow Yun-fat in The Corruptor, James Foley, 1999 © New Line/The Kobal Collection
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ISBN 978-1-4744-0589-8
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Lin Feng is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Leicester.