Hong Kong Laser Disc Collection

Collection

Identifier: SC-130

Staff Only

Collection Overview

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.

Dates

Creation: Primarily the 1980s through the 1990s

Extent

9 Linear Feet

Scope and Contents

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.

Conditions Governing Access

No known access restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright and other restrictions may apply to the materials in this collection. Researchers using this collection assume full responsibility for conforming to the laws of libel, privacy, and copyright, and are responsible for securing permissions necessary for publication or reproduction.