INTERVIEW Comrades, Almost A Love Story The Warlords
Asian co-production, but that has died down recently. Do you think co-pro- ductions will prevail? I think it’s very diffi cult because we now have this giant called China. I can’t tell you how many of my ex-collaborators in Korea, Japan and Thailand are calling me for advice because they’ve got inves- tors from China asking them to make movies in Chinese. [Korean director] Hur Jin-ho is now making the biggest movie of his life in Chinese with a Chi- nese actress. Also the reality is that these days peo-
ple are either watching Hollywood films, or there’s been a revival of the local industry, and I think there’s a very marginal window for co-productions. It’s even hard for Hong Kong to co-pro- duce with China or Taiwan and have the fi lm perform in more than one territory.
Wu Xia
10 years and I believe we can make mov- ies that are comparable to any Holly- wood standard.
Q Which areas need most develop- ment in China? I think they are doing incredibly well and learning incredibly fast. I wouldn’t be too surprised if in a year or two they have a very good tracking and polling system in place. A few months ago, when Love Is Not Blind was a sleeper hit in China, everyone was surprised, but it’s not right to be surprised. You didn’t win if you don’t know why you won.
Q How do you go about the develop- ment process? Do you mix elements from different industries such as Hol- lywood and Hong Kong? I’ve always called myself a producer fi rst before I call myself a director, and even when I direct I do have my producer’s hat on very firmly. I would say that I always start my fi lms with the packag- ing because I’m a producer. So I would look at the market trend and try to develop something along that vein. But during the process of development, my director side kicks back in and tries to fi nd something that’s personal within that framework. I need that to sustain my interest in the two to three-year jour- ney of development and production.
www.screendaily.com Q How do you decide whether to
direct or produce? When you produce, is it because somebody else brought the project to you? Sometimes, but I wish that happened more often. Lots of the films I’ve pro- duced, I’ve developed myself and then hired a director. Sometimes when I pick up something, I know immediately whether I can direct it or not. Body- guards And Assassins is a good example. I contributed to the fi lm because I know I can make that kind of movie. But even if Teddy Chen didn’t want to direct, I wouldn’t have directed it, because some- how the sensibility was too patriotic and sugar-coated for me. On the other hand, Wu Xia started off
as a completely commercial movie, but during development we found a lot of interesting points to the character played by Takeshi Kaneshiro and added a lot of thriller elements into the story. And it indeed became a very personal movie, though it didn’t start out that way. It was also an important step for me because most of my fi lms have been very narrative-driven and seldom do I rely on that kind of camera work and technical flashiness in my films. So I took a gamble and I think it paid off because it will really help me be a bit more daring and risk-taking in my future fi lms.
‘We should make lower budget movies and encourage talented young Hong Kong
film-makers’ Peter Ho-sun Chan
Three
Kong cinema? Or to be more precise, Cantonese-language fi lm? In that sense we’re worse off than any other country we’ve been talking about because there is no way we can make movies with a population of seven mil- lion. In fact we should count our bless- ings, because the only reason we had an industry and became internationally recognised in the first place was because of the political and strategic location of Hong Kong. Does that mean we should forget
about Hong Kong film? No, because I think Hong Kong is a very special place with a special set of values and those qualities will be subliminally visible in any Hong Kong fi lm-maker’s work, even if the film is made in China or Holly- wood. We should just bite the bullet and keep working on Hong Kong movies but think of it as preservation of Hong Kong culture rather than a commercial endeavour. We should make lower- budget movies with finance from the Hong Kong Film Development Council and private investors and encourage tal- ented young fi lm-makers to defi ne the next generation of Hong Kong fi lm. When they mature, they will end up servicing Hollywood or Beijing, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them from going away. But at least there will be a generation of young fi lm-makers coming out of Hong Kong that will con- tinue that tradition and, wherever they work, that sensibility will still exist.
s March 2012 Screen International 9 ■ Q So where does all this leave Hong Q You set in motion the trend of pan-
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