Michael Rogge, Amateur Expatriate Cinema, and Hong Kong Cinephilia of the 1950s

The editor, critic, and programmer Law Kar has identified the 1960s with the birth of the cine club in Hong Kong. This article challenges Law’s claim by revealing evidence of cine club activities of the early 1950s as part of amateur expatriate film culture. It argues that Dutch photographer, filmmaker (and, later, YouTuber) Michael Rogge’s (1929–2024) works can best be understood as amateur expatriate cinema and situated as part of Hong Kong cinephilia of the 1950s. Their affinity to experimental nonfiction and the modernist avant-garde relates them to the genesis of alternative moving image practices in 1960s Hong Kong. In this regard, Rogge’s work challenges standard historiographies that identify the birth of new film cultures in Hong Kong with the rise of the Hong Kong New Wave of the late 1970s, signaling an experimental turn that predates this New Wave by at least two decades.