Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark ({{zh-cpw|c=徐克|p=Xú Kè|w=Hsü K'o}}) (born Tsui Man-kong on January 2, 1951) is a New Wave film director in Hong Kong who is also a highly influential producer, often likened to Steven Spielberg for a similar galvanizing effect on his country's cinematic scene.

Mogul and trendsetter

In 1984, he formed the Film Workshop production company along with wife and sometime producer Nansun Shi, making it home base for a tirelessly prolific roster of directing and producing projects. Here he also developed a reputation as a hands-on and even intrusive producer of other directors' work, fueled by public breaks with major filmmakers like John Woo and King Hu. His most longstanding and fruitful collaboration has probably been with Ching Siu Tung. As action choreographer and/or director on many Film Workshop productions, Ching made a major contribution to the well-known Tsui style (Hampton, 1997).

Related Topics:
John Woo - King Hu

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Film Workshop releases became consistent box-office hits in Hong Kong and around Asia, drawing audiences with their visual adventurousness, their broad commercial appeal, and hectic camerawork and pace. Tsui has the knack of trend-setting in film genres. He produced John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986), which launched a craze for the hardboiled gangster film or "Triad" movie, and Ching Siu Tung's A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which did the same for period ghost fantasies. Zu Warriors and The Swordsman (1990) brought back the long-out-of-favor wuxia film.

Related Topics:
Box-office - Asia - Film genres - John Woo - Gangster film - Triad

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In fact, Tsui's "movie brat" nostalgia is one of the main ingredients in his work (Teo, 1997). He often resurrects and revises classic films and genres: the murder mystery in The Butterfly Murders; the Shanghai musical comedy in Shanghai Blues (1985). Peking Opera Blues (1986) plays with and pays tribute to the traditions of the Peking opera that his mother took him to see as a small boy (Bordwell, 2000) and which had such a strong influence on Hong Kong action cinema. The Lovers (1994) adapts an oft-retold, crossdressing period romance, best known from Li Han-hsiang's 1963 opera film The Love Eterne. Chinese Ghost Story remakes Li's supernatural romance The Enchanting Shadow (1959) as a special effects action movie.

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The pattern is also seen in perhaps Tsui's most successful work to date, the Once Upon a Time in China series (1991-97). Here he revived the martial arts folk hero Wong Fei Hung, played in the first three installments by Jet Li. This series is the clearest expression in his oeuvre of Tsui's Chinese nationalism and his passionate engagement with the upheavals of Chinese history, particularly in the face of Western power and influence (Teo, 1997).

Related Topics:
Martial arts - Wong Fei Hung - Jet Li - Chinese nationalism - Chinese history

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Tsui also dabbled in acting, mostly for other directors. Notable roles include one-third of the comic relief trio in Corey Yuen's female cop/kung fu hit Yes, Madam (1985) and a villain in Patrick Tam's darkly comic crime story Final Victory (1987), written by Wong Kar-wai.

Related Topics:
Corey Yuen - Patrick Tam - Wong Kar-wai

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In the face of an industry downturn in the '90s, he produced two expensive and unpopular movies that proved he could fold the caustic cynicism of his early work into his blockbuster formula. Green Snake (1993) was an erotic and darkly apocalyptic take on a favorite Chinese fairy tale. The Blade (1995) was a gory, deliberately rough-hewn and anti-heroic revision of the 1967 wuxia classic The One-Armed Swordsman.

Related Topics:
Downturn - Fairy tale

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