Community building through screen sharing: community screening as cultural practice in postmillennial Hong Kong and beyond

Abstract

Community screenings in this study are understood as the exhibition of moving images outside conventional theatres and commercial circuits. Based on fieldwork observations and interviews conducted between January 2019 and January 2020 with film workers, community groups, and venue providers who knitted together a rhizomatic community screening network in Hong Kong, this paper explores the (self-)making of urban cultural space by way of the reinvention of "screens" and the rebuilding of a place-based, people-centred community with ethical concerns for small businesses, artists, craftspeople, workers, and members of the public during the first two decades of postmillennial era. The paper concludes with some observations about the phenomenal shift in not only the mode, but also the site of film dissemination from Hong Kong to overseas diasporic communities before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and following the emigration wave in the 2020s.