History
The original HKCinemagic1 site was created in late 1998 by Laurent Henry and Thomas Podvin, and initially hosted on Wanadoo France, it began as a site dedicated to directors Tsui Hark and Wong Kar-wai. As the site expanded with new contributors coming on board and more articles being written, it was transferred to ifrance.com. A database of filmographies, identity photos and biographies was soon put in place by team member Jean-Louis Ogé.
In February 2003, along with editors Arnaud Lanuque, Stéphane Jaunin, Philippe Quevillart and David-Olivier Vidouze, Ogé created HKCinemagic2, an encyclopedia of Hong Kong cinema. The site containing photo galleries of casts and crew members focuses on the films of Shaw Brothers Studio, "gweilos" (foreigners) in the Hong Kong film industry and Category 3 films. The content on the two sites continued to increase and a French forum was installed, initially on Hiwit.com in June 2003. In May 2004, a bilingual French and English board was installed on Invision. As of March 2009, the Invision forum has more than 4,000 registered users.
After Laurent Henry left the project, HKCinemagic1 and HKCinemagic2 were merged, creating the current incarnation of Hong Kong Cinemagic (hkcinemagic.com). The new site was designed by Marc Delcambre, Jean-Louis Ogé and Thomas Podvin and was launched in November 2004. The database continues to grow and has become akin to resource sites such as IMDb and HKMDB. As with those sites, the database can be searched by film title or by person's name. For the 6 months up to February 2009, the site attracted an average of 17,700 visitors per month from the US alone.
Read more about this topic: Hong Kong Cinemagic
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