Hong Kong history, as it applies to the its influence on Hong Kong cinema, starts with the Opium War of 1839. Following Britain's victory over China in 1842, Britain took the port city of Hong kong as a prize, declaring it British territory. Despite this, British enforced little influence on Hong Kong and left the city of Hong Kong to self govern. Fast forward fifty eight years to the 1900’s. As film begins to take off, Chinese cinema found direction from martial arts, their first films taking inspiration from martial arts operas. Despite this, in the 1930’s China’s government places a ban on the creation of martial arts films within mainland China under the belief that the messages portrayed and the supernatural imagery might insight possible uprisings. Hong Kong being under British rule, this fact doesn’t relevant until the Chinese Civil War of 1945. Spanning 1945 - 1949, the Chinese Civil War was fought between China’s existing nationalist KMT government and the Communist Party of China (CCP). Through the duration of this war, many of China’s citizens are forced to flee to Hong Kong. Amongst the refugees came film makers from Shanghai, China’s film capital, who in turn bring with them the film business. Filtering into Hong Kong, Chinese film markers discover that under British rule Hong Kong is freed from Chinese media censorship. As such cinema flourishes within Hong Kong. Martial arts films, which remain banned in mainland China until the 1980’s, find mass popularity within Hong Kong and flourish during the 1960’s and 70’s. 1967- 1977, the Chinese Cultural Revolution within mainland China creates censorships and prevents importation of Hong Kong media. As a result Hong Kong exports their films to other markets with Chinese speaking communities. This became the norm for Hong Kong as cinema grew thanks to the lack of censorship. The major pivotal point for Hong Kong cinema comes in 1984 when Britain and the People's Republic of China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Under this document Britain agreed that after a grace period of 13 years ending in 1997, it would return ownership of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China under the stipulation that Hong Kong be able allowed to continue to self govern. From then till the handover in 1997, two major factors came from the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The first was that as Britain was about to lose control of Hong Kong soon anyways, any sense of censorship that might have been implemented on Hong Kong was discarded allowing for a completely unfiltered period in Hong Kong cinema. The second was that during this period in which Hong Kong was between ownerships, there arose this evident fear of having to acclimate to life under the People's Republic of China. Films such as Hong Kong’s A Better Tomorrow (1986) encapture the fear of not being able to properly be able to reintegrate and feeling of foreignness among that which should be familial. In 1997 as was agreed upon in the the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Britain handed over control of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China. Though Hong Kong still being allowed to self govern meant that the censorships that affected the film business within the remainder of China didn’t apply, Hong Kong had little time to enjoy. Within that same year, the Asian Financial Crisis occured. As result Hong Kong could not produce as many films. To compensate Hong Kong started to create more marketable films, films that could pass through Chinese censors. As such Hong Kong began to self censor films. Cooperative media co-produced between Hong Kong and mainland China helps ensure that Hong Kong media reaches the larger demographic of all of China but at the price of the freedom of content. Despite this Hong Kong continues to solo produce media free from the censors of mainland China. Infernal Affairs (2002) comes five years after the handover of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and expresses the essence of Hong Kong fear of being infiltrated from the inside while simultaneously expressing the fear impossibility of returning to a previous way of life.