Cinespot : An Exclusive Interview with Hong Kong Director Choi Kai-kwong

An Exclusive Interview
with Director Choi Kai-kwong
(Part I)

Foreword

In 2003, our first guest is director Choi Kai-kwong. The primary topic of this interview is director Choi's latest film Lai Man-wai - Father of Hong Kong Cinema. This documentary was made in 2001 and has been screened in a lot of film festivals around the world. In our interview, director Choi was also nice enough to talk about his career as a movie director, his previous works and a prospect of the future of Chinese cinema. The content is really profound and enlightening, and it also provides some invaluable experience for those who want to start a career in the film field. We would like to thank director Choi for sharing his invaluable time with us.

Please enjoy the interview!

* The interview was conducted in Cantonese.

Who is Choi Kai-kwong?

Choi Kai-kwong is a veteran filmmaker in Hong Kong. He graduated from college in the US and returned to Hong Kong to start his career in the early 1970s. After spending some time in the TV business, he broke into the film field. His films include Encore (starring Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung), Teenage Dreamers, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Grow up in Danger, Amnesty Decree, Naughty Couple and Lai Man-wai - Father of Hong Kong Cinema. He is also the screenwriter of Jackie Chan's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Patrick Tam's The Sword.

Similar to Ann Hui and Tsui Hark, Choi Kai-kwong is one of the representative figures of the Hong Kong New Wave cinema in 1980s. Recently, he is planning to shoot a feature film, the subject will be Lai Man-wai.

If you want to learn more about the primary topic of this interview - Lai Man-wai - Father of Hong Kong Cinema, you can go to this page to read a review written by our staff, or simply logon to the official website of this movie for a complete overview.

Lai Man-wai - Father of Hong Kong Cinema

Cinespot: Apart from the reason listed in the booklet that comes with the DVD, how did you come up with the idea of making this documentary? How did your cooperation with Law Kar begin?

Choi: When I was teaching at the Hong Kong Academy For Performing Arts at that time, Hong Kong Art Development Council was just established. Once I heard that there were funds available for artists to apply and make films, I started to conceive the idea of a documentary film about Hong Kong Cinema. The cultural contribution of Hong Kong cinema is enormous, but there were not too many documentaries made on this topic, I thought there's a need to produce this kind of film. As for Mr. Law Kar, we actually started to work together and establish Film Culture Centre of Hong Kong in 1977. After so many years of intimate cooperation, we became good partners, and that explains why we would like to work together again in this documentary.
When we started the project, we first wanted to choose a filmmaker as our subject. Chinese people have a tradition, that is, we love to study and research on historical figures that had passed away. This time, we wanted to overthrow this tradition and base our film on a filmmaker that is still alive. Therefore, renowned masters like Lee Han-hsiang and King Hu became our targets. Unfortunately, both of them passed away before our production actually started. Eventually, we decided to start out from the beginning of Chinese cinema, and locked on our target to Lai Man-wai. In fact, Law Kar has done some research and written some articles on Lai before, moreover, after some conversations with the offspring of Lai, especially Lai's son Lai Sek, we believed that it would not be too difficult to research and locate interviewees, and so we finally made the decision to start the shooting and apply the fund from Hong Kong Art Development Council.

Cinespot: We all know that you are feature film director. But this time you had to handle a documentary, so did you encounter any difficulties? How did you solve the problem? Was there any unforgettable experience?

Choi: Although I have made more feature films than documentaries, I did begin to learn about documentary early when I was studying films at San Francisco State University. As a matter of fact, the film department at SFSU has a very nice documentary background. After I graduated from there, my first job was a photographer/reporter for a television studio in San Francisco, where I was mostly doing news and documentary. Then after I returned to Hong Kong and started my career at TVB, my first post was to produce a documentary called Wonderfun, which is about all the funny things in Hong Kong, and then later when I moved to RTHK, I was the producer of a documentary series called Hong Kong Connection. To a certain extent, you can say I have quite a lot of experience in making documentary.
The reason why I didn't make too many documentaries in the past was because of the lack of market for documentary in Hong Kong, it definitely has nothing to do with the importance of this genre nor my interest. It is really a big regret that our impressions on documentaries are mostly from national geographics or those Hong Kong Connection-alike documentaries, or even those government propaganda films. In fact, there are many types of documentaries, for instance, there are the types about investigation, biographical, and docu-drama (reenactment of historic events), they are all very popular overseas, but none of these documentaries are well developed in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland. Therefore, I hoped the production of my biographical documentary could create some positive impulse for the development of this genre.
As for difficulties, we didn't have enough money. Our funds were only enough for us to make a 1 hour film, we didn't know that the materials about Lai Man-wai was so fruitful initially. Actually it would not be too hard to finish the film by following the original schedule, but it would be a waste of all the materials we found, as well as a big regret for the Chinese cinema history, that's why we eventually decided to extend the production schedule and do our best regardless of how much money and time we got. We had to search for new sponsors too, like, we tried to explain to people that we were making a meaningful movie, and persuade them to volunteer. That was especially important during the post-production period. We would like to thank Lai Sek for being our volunteer cinematographer and providing camera and equipments, his help really means a lot to us.

Cinespot: How much footage have you shot actually? Is there any deleted scene that you would really want to include in the movie?

Choi: We have shot about 40 hours of footage. According to our original script, we found out that it was too long, so we modified the script immediately. After the first cut, it was still too long, so we edited again, and finally it became the version you see now. Talking about deleted scene, there are really many valuable and meaningful footage that we were forced to discard.

Cinespot: Will you do an extended version later?

Choi: Probably not, it's because we don't have the labor and resource to work on it. Moreover, making it too long may not be a good idea. The reason why we have divided the movie into five chapters with each part occupying about twenty minutes each is that we wanted to provide an easy way for TV studio to broadcast it. They can show one chapter a time. Film schools can also present this movie to the students by showing it in chapters followed by group discussion.

Cinespot: We've read some newspaper coverages saying that most of the people who have showed interest in this documentary are either Westerners or film scholars, there didn't seem to be too many local audiences. Would you feel disappointed about it? We certainly think this is a very meaningful movie that should be appreciated by any Hong Kong audience. So have you ever considered the question of target audience during the production?

Choi: We have more or less expected that already. Just like what I said above, our film culture is not broad enough, any films that don't fall under the category of feature length narrative film are not valued. We really hoped Father of Hong Kong Cinema can act as a pioneer to arouse the attention of the audience to documentary. At the same time, we would also like to promote Lai Man-wai and the history of Chinese cinema to overseas audience, that explains why we have included removable subtitles of four foreign languages (English, French, German and Japanese) on the DVD.
As for target audience, we have also expected that our audience would be mainly derived from the regulars of film festivals. Our goal is to attract anyone who loves films as well as contemporary Chinese history, so we tried to include a lot of materials about history and invaluable historical footage. The film should be able to reflect the chaotic period from 1900-1953 in China and how Chinese people, that were represented by Lai Man-wai, were affected by the evolution of history.

Cinespot: If you consider Lai Man-wai's contribution to the development of Chinese cinema, he was definitely worth to be regarded as the father of Chinese cinema. Why did you name this movie "Father of Hong Kong Cinema" instead?

Choi: We wanted the movie to reflect Lai Man-wai's unique character. He was not a bombastic person who liked to crave the spotlight. If you asked him whether he should be called "Father of Chinese cinema", I am sure he would say no. Another reason that we didn't want to use this title is because his achievement was greatly ignored in mainland due to the fact that Lai was a member of GuoMinDang. Perhaps it was related to politics, the information about Lai was either suppressed or buried. It might seem provcative to the people in mainland if you suddenly tell them Lai Man Wai was the father of Chinese cinema. That's not the situation we would like to foresee.
Personally speaking, I certainly think Lai Man Wai could be regarded as one of the fathers of Chinese cinema. His achievement did not only expedite the development of Hong Kong cinema but also Chinese cinema (Most of the classics of Chinese cinema in the 1930s were made by Lai Man Wai's company). In mainland, film scholars and critics are also beginning to understand that Minxin and Lianhua's movies in the 1930s had enormous contribution to the development of their leftist cultural cinema. No matter which direction the movies are, or the audience, the filmmakers, most of them realized that the movies promoted by Lianhua and Lai Man-wai were meaningful and noteworthy. His movies did not only alter the audience, but also influenced the culture in a significant way.
In short, I think whether he was the father of Chinese or Hong Kong cinema is not an important issue. The most important point is what his achievement or contribution is, that is, what he had done. Therefore we wouldn't stress too hard on this question.

Cinespot: In the second part of the documentary, you mentioned a movie called Mulan, which was supposed to be a mega budget production at that time. I am sure many audience would like to see the film itself, but only stills are shown instead of the original footage. Does that mean the negative of this movie was lost already?

Choi: Yes, our search was in vain. It was probably related to the turbulence of war at that time. Many artworks were lost during the world war and civil war. Even some of the old movies footage in the documentary was not discovered in mainland. We found them in some local Chinese cinema in South America and the US indeed. Those copies were probably purchased from China and stored after they were screened. Up to date, we are still unable to locate the negative of Mulan.

In Part II of the interivew, director Choi talks about his career as a movie director, his previous works and a prospect of the future of Chinese cinema. Please click here to go to Part II!