Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (The New Hong Kong Cinema)

Hjort argues that Stanley Kwan’s contribution in Center Stage is to develop an approach to nonfiction filmmaking that is realist without being naïve. The value of the film’s reflexive dimension, Hjort shows, has nothing to do with poststructuralist skepticism but with the compelling manifestation of a communicative model that serves as an alternative to hierarchical and authoritarian modes of social organization.