Invisible Asian cinema

I have been looking at a number of artists' profiles, including those of many Asian actors and others involved with various national and trans-national Asian films here on AnD.  Something I have noticed that puzzles me a great deal is how few of these individuals list any Asian films as their favorite movies.  There is something a touch scary about this.  I mean, if young Asians who work inside the film industry do not cite any Asian films as favs, what does this portend for the future of Asian cinema?  Speaking as an American, I have to say Hollywood is greatly overrated.  Most of what Hollywood produces isn't worth wasting any time on.  Sure, these empty calories look appealing and taste great (well, at least for the first bite or two), but this "product" is fairly mediocre, and standardized for the lowest common denominator like American fast food.  No one's going to feed their mind, their soul or their heart on 98% of what comes out of Hollywood.  I don't want Asian cinema to become some sort of Hollywood lite, aping the worst of Hollywood without making room for that rare thing, the creation of a really great  movie, even inside of the system.  (I'm not talking about independent American films here.  They are a whole other beast and play by a different set of rules, thereby achieving somewhat different results.)  Please, value your cinematic heritage.  Hong Kong, China and Japan have produced great cinema with distinctive national and regional characteristics.  All three film industries have great directors and actors.  There are dozens of films that stand comparison with the best produced anywhere in the world in the past 100 years.  With the easy availability of most of these films on DVD (and half of them, it seems, in pirated versions on YouTube) it saddens me to see so little appreciation of these great works of cinematic art among their native audience.

Maybe things aren't that bad.  Perhaps people are just afraid of appear unhip if they cite local films.  I hope so.  But isn't that, too, a sad thing, to feel ashamed of your local culture, fearing it doesn't measure up to some foreign standard (that isn't worth emulating in many ways anywhere).  So, celebrate your great directors, stellar actors, art directors, action directors, and cinematographers.  The best of them are greatly admired by the rest of the world (look at how many of them have been lured to Hollywood where they now produce sub-par work for three times what they made at home).