The incomparable martial arts movies we associate with Hong Kong have disappeared from the screens of that city in the space of a very few years. PNS corespondent Andrew Lam discovers that there are many possible explanations -- political, economic, and aesthetic - for the change. Andrew Lam is a PNS editor, journalist and short-story writer. He is currently traveling in East and Southeast Asia.

HONG KONG--The Plaza Theatre is playing all American films today --from The Blair Witch Project to The General's Daughter to The Sixth Sense -- and I am disappointed. For years, on each visit here, my favorite pastime here was indulging in the fast-paced, wildly imaginative martial art movies.

Today, I have to scour the newspapers to find a Hong Kong film -- and the two playing, a cheesy romance and a rehash of a gangster movie, are of poor quality compared to those produced less than a decade ago -- in the Golden Age of Hong Kong movies.

What happened?

Many here blame the Hong Kong handover to China, and the attendant feelings of uncertainty -- which caused a massive exodus, including the film industry's top creative talents.

"People no longer see things long-term any more. People are afraid to express themselves because they don't know what China could do to them, and the ones who are expressive are gone," said Francis Ng, a 20-something musician.

Ng says the beginning of the end of the movie industry was the departure of director John Woo, who now makes movies for Hollywood, and was soon followed by stars like Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat and even Jackie Chan.

"When will they come back?" Ng asked rhetorically. "Probably never. I think people like Woo find Hong Kong no longer suitable to their creative talents." On the other hand, he added, showing the famous Hong Kong pragmatism, "Hollywood pays well. I would go too if I were invited."

Others, however, blame rampant piracy. Indeed, the night market sells DVD videos, music CDs and software at bargain basement prices. The government seems helpless -- raids and arrests do little to deter the long time Hong Kong habit of copying everything, legally or illegally, and selling it dirt cheap. So potential producers, seeing no chance for a profit, have withdrawn in droves.

Yet only half a decade ago Hong Kong films kept Hollywood movies at bay. During the late 1980s and early 1990s Hong Kong movies reminded David Overbey, writing in Film Comment magazine, of Hollywood in its heydays "before the great split between commerce and art." In 1994, for instance, Hong Kong produced 160 movies, a magnificent number for a territory of 6.4 million people.

The decisive breakthrough in action movies came in the early 1990s with "Once Upon a Time in China" and "Swordsman II" where the characters are no longer burdened by tradition -- in fact, they are not bound by gravity -- dueling fighters float like birds in the air wearing entirely fanciful costumes and following a story line even more fantastic than their clothing -- eccentrics absorb chi power from lesser fighters and shrink them to nothing; energy bolts come through swords to split a horse in two; a fighter achieves inhuman power but in the process turns into a beautiful woman.

Anything can happen in these movies and the fighting reaches a level that can only be called superb and surreal.

These movies seem to reflect a sense of uninhibited wildness, and their characters -- powerful eccentrics -- are outside social norms, taking only what's good for themselves and discarding the rest. The choreography is so stunning that it has left an indelible mark on western movies -- witness the recent mega-hit Matrix, where all Hong Kong techniques were applied to make the half Asian, half white Keanu Reeves, the movie's hero, look good. The American star, in fact, seemed the direct inheritor of Hong Kong's legacy.

But it is a legacy that's fading in Hong Kong itself.

It may be that every art form reaches a zenith -- and then must go down. For Hong Kong films, beyond geopolitics and economic woes, lies a core problem of vision.

Hong Kong, after all, is not a stable place. Wave after wave of immigrants mean that change is in fact the constant here. Not long ago, Hong Kong movie goers delighted in seeing globe-trotting heroes and heroines, fighting the bad guys and sipping wines in distant places. These days, that cosmopolitan gleam seems to have given way to a more realistic self assessment.

A new more down to earth identity is being invented. Even commercials show this. Not long ago, beautiful women floating through surrealistic landscape, would appear in ads for perfumes or luxury goods. Now, that pretty woman is a housewife tallying her expenses and wailing : "Why does entertainment cost so much?" The solution is to stay home and watch the advertiser's cable TV.

"There is a return to basic values here," sad Yuen Ying Chan, who teaches journalism at Hong Kong University. "Sure, there's still a lot of money, but the style is subdued due to the recession."

Daniel Ge, editor of Tofu, a trilingual pop art glossy magazine, sees Hong Kong splitting between East and West, growing schizophrenic as it tries to understand its own place in cultural history. "A typical Chinese would now watch an American movie at the theater then go home and watch Chinese Opera. Opera is now experiencing a revival, even among the young. But Kung Fu films are on its way out."