Hong Kong Cinema LaserDisc Collection

Introduction

LaserDisc (LD) debuted to the American consumer electronics market in December 1978 and it represents the first home video format to employ the storage capabilities of an optical disc. The technological precursor to audiovisual formats like DVD and Blu-ray, LD offered viewers superior analog picture quality, when compared to Betamax and VHS videocassette tapes, and unparalleled digital sound. Originally, LDs contained analog signals for both video and audio. However, as the format and its hardware developed, digital audio became commonplace.

Pioneering a host of features now standard to DVD and Blu-ray releases, including interactive menus, frame-by-frame navigation, deleted scenes, and audio commentaries, LD revolutionized the content, marketing and consumption of home video during the 1980s and early 1990s. In doing so, LD nurtured a burgeoning subculture of American videophiles, established the conventions of home video releasing, and granted viewers access to foreign films unavailable on other home video formats.

Beyond a dedicated niche of film enthusiasts, Americans never embraced LD in significant numbers, primarily because LD players were expensive, could not record broadcast television, and played cumbersome, easily damaged discs with limited storage capacity of the discs themselves, which stored only thirty or sixty minutes of video on each side. However, LD achieved widespread popularity across several Asian nations, including Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and most notably, Hong Kong.

While LD was becoming ensconced as the preferred home video format in many areas of East and Southeast Asia, Hong Kong’s film industry witnessed a boom of unparalleled proportions. The explosive growth of Hong Kong cinema yielded a torrent of innovative films and filmmakers, whose work garnered the attention of critics and audiences from around the globe, including the U.S. For many Western audiences in the late twentieth century, LDs were the only means whereby Hong Kong films could be viewed.

Scope and Content

Amassed primarily from the holdings of now-defunct video rental stores, this collection contains a host of Hong Kong films that have never received a commercial, U.S. home video release. Offering a look at early performances of actors such as Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat, and Donnie Yen alongside the formative works of Ann Hui, Ang Lee, John Woo, and Wong Kar-wai, this collection helps illustrate the transformation of Hong Kong actors and auteurs from regional celebrities into transnational superstars. By the late 1990s, Hollywood had enticed a significant number of Hong Kong’s most popular creative talents to the United States and adopted many of Hong Kong cinema’s formal techniques, stylistic tropes, and action-genre affectations. Although DVD’s arrival in 1997 signaled the death kneel for LD, this collection delineates the evolution of American popular interest in Hong Kong cinema while also highlighting LD’s role in shaping the U.S. home video industry, the patterns of consumption stimulated by that industry, and the transnational exchange of popular culture that LD technology engendered.

This collection also contains several English-language documentaries and educational films that have not been released in the United States on home video formats other than LD or, in some cases, VHS as well. These include American films, such as Paul Newman’s The Glass Menagerie, works by video artist Bill Viola, and the documentary Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali.

The LDs are arranged alphabetically by title. The collection would be useful for Hong Kong cinema, film and marketing scholars. The library does own a LaserDisc player and the LDs can be viewed by appointment only.

This finding aid was prepared by William Avila, Graduate Student Supervisor, and Dana Nemeth, Reference Archivist, in February 2020.  The slideshow below includes some highlights of the collection.

Inventory

For More Information

Primary Sources

• Chan, Jackie, with Jeff Yang. I am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action. New York: Ballantine, 1998.
  pop PN2878.C52 A3 1998
• The Complete Classic Home Video Mail Order Catalog / Foothill Video, 1994-97.
  Pop Cult Spec Coll: Mail-Order Catalogs
• PBS Home Video, Oct. 2005.
  Pop Cult Spec Coll: Mail-Order Catalogs
• The Laser Disc Newsletter, No.165, May 1998.
  Pop Cult Spec Coll: Fanzines
• MCA Universal Home Video...Catalog, 1995
  pop PN1998 .M33
• Video, Vol. 11, Oct. 1987- Vol. 20, Sep. 1996.
  Offsite Storage - Pop Culture: Periodicals
• Video Movie Guide, 1989, 1991-93, 1998-99.
  Offsite Storage - Pop Culture: pop PN1992.93.V53
• Video Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1980-Vol. 15, No. 1, 1994.
  Offsite Storage - Pop Culture: Periodicals

Secondary Sources

• Corcoran, John. The Unauthorized Jackie Chan Encyclopedia: From Project A to Shanghai Noon and Beyond. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2003
  pop PN2878.C52 C67 2003
• Dannen, Fredric, and Barry Long. Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
• Glaessner, Verina. Kung Fu: Cinema of Vengeance. New York: Bounty Books, 1974.
  pop PN1993.5.H6G5 1974b
• Hammond, Stefan. Hollywood East: Hong Kong Movies and the People Who Made Them. Lincolnwood (Chicago), Ill: Contemporary Books, 2000.
  pop PN1993.5.H6 H25 2000
• Mayo, Mike. VideoHound's Video Premieres: The Only Guide to Video Originals and Limited Releases. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1997.
  Offsite Storage - Pop Culture: pop PN1998 .M32 1997
• Server, Lee. Asian Pop Cinema: Bombay to Tokyo. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999.
  pop PN1993.5.A75 S37 1999
• Sunshine, Linda, ed. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Portrait of the Ang Lee Film. New York: Newmarket Press, 2000.
  pop PN1997.C8772 C76 2000
• Wroot, Jonathan, and Andy Willis, eds. DVD, Blu-ray and Beyond: Navigating Formats and Platforms within Media Consumption. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. (Online)