The 1950s was a prosperous period in the history of Hong Kong cinema, giving rise to flourishing film genres, techniques, and highly skilled personnel. The audience was dazzled by rich doses of melodramatic realist, martial arts, comedy, and Cantonese opera films, to name but a few. For the first time, the monotonous black and white screen was livening up by the emergence of 3-D, Scope and colour films. The rise of dialect films represented an interest in expanding the root and culture of overseas Chinese, a sentiment shared by the filmmakers and audience alike.
Hong Kong Filmography Volume IV documentsthe 1,694 fiction films and documentaries produced between 1953 and 1959, providing key information such as the date of release, language, genre, production company, main cast and crew, synopsis, quotes from the director, screenwriter and actor, notes, illustrated by precious stills. A complete film list and indices are appended. Published in 2003 in separate Chinese (540 pages) and English (696 pages) editions.