Joe Hisaishi was the winner of The Best Original Score at this year's Hong Kong Film Awards for The Postmodern Life of My Aunt. One cannot but be amazed at how Hong Kong's movie industry is collaborating more with overseas talent, and each time these collaborations are better than ever. I still remember when people admired Joe Hisaishi about 10 years ago, . Back then Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind were blockbusters, and saying that you liked Mizayaki Hayao was a very trendy statement; you were even trendier if you said you loved Joe Hisaishi. At that time Hong Kong had yet to have large-scale music chain stores. You had to go to shops that were selling specially imported Japanese CDs to buy Hisaishi's work but they tended to be pricey.

Hisaishi is famous for his series of musical scores for Mizayaki Hayao's animated films – Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Tonari no Totoro and the recent Howl's Moving Castle, as well as other works such as Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return, Hana-Bi and Kikujiro. Hisaishi's signature style is the harmonic sense of space and tranquility in his music, and his scores have long been a major selling point for many movies.

However, The Postmodern Life of My Aunt is not the first Hong Kong movie for which Hisaishi provided a music score. Remember A Chinese Tall Story? Many Hisaishi fans would probably rather not remember that his work included this. As for The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, I've watched the movie but unfortunately I didn't think much of the music.

Perhaps distance is also one of the factors that gave rise to these masters. While Shigeru Umebayashi's music can be heard in some of Wong Kar Wai's films, or Toshifumi Hinata's in collaboration with Lee Lik Chi productions, you will find that under the unstoppable trend of globalisation, convergence in cultures and art forms happens every day and as a result overseas musical treasures can now be propagated locally. It's just that we didn't think of it like that when we listened to Laputa, And Then and Love Generation.

By Jan Mak

*Translation from Chinese article.