The Cinematheque

“Tsui has emerged as the most influential figure of the ​’80s and ​’90s … It is his particular genius to combine the flavour of very ancient narratives with jarringly futuristic tones.”

Geoffrey O’Brien, New York Review of Books

The cinema of Tsui Hark (b. 1950) is its own kind of history of the medium. Through his career, one can chart the trajectory of Hong Kong and mainland Chinese cinema, with chapters separated by the dawn of the Hong Kong New Wave in the early 1980s, the near-fatal blow of the handover in 1997, and then the expansion of cinema resources—as well as the starving of independent filmmaking and exhibition—in China in the 2010s.

Like any mass entertainer, Tsui has chosen to adapt. But for a crucial time, he led a once-in-a-century outpouring of inventive, anything-and-more film craft. After a handful of censor-baiting genre pictures that directly challenged the status quo of Hong Kong filmmaking, he established the Film Workshop, his own production company, in 1984. This transition from combative films like We’re Going to Eat You and Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (both released in 1980) gave way to a fast-paced model within which he would make his more personal films (like 1984’s Shanghai Blues), fire off quick genre successes to pay the bills, and mentor (and occasionally infuriate) new directors—in particular John Woo and Ching Siu-tung.

This was the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, an unprecedented confluence of forces—political, artistic, and economic—that produced a near-total cinematic rejuvenation. Tsui, along with talents like Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, and Wong Kar-wai, had resources, freedom, and a demanding audience. The period’s end has left no clear inheritors, except for a long tail of nostalgia for a time that, perhaps even more than the Hollywood studio system, allowed for artistic flourishing for actors and directors alike. (A glance at Tsui’s call sheet includes stars like Maggie Cheung, Jet Li, Brigitte Lin, Sally Yeh, Anita Yuen, and Joey Wong.)

Tsui was born in Guangzhou, China, raised in Saigon, Vietnam, then educated (briefly) in Austin, Texas, before he began to work in Hong Kong. His films can now be viewed as exemplars of genre literacy and action film craft—he was singled out on this basis by film scholar David Bordwell in his seminal text Planet Hong Kong—while his multi-continental appeal could even be seen in microcosm when his films were released in North America. In a city like Vancouver, they would often play Chinese theatres, but also attract the interest of college students and arthouse patrons. As one critic in San Francisco reported, ​“Any film by Tsui Hark picks up a devoted, often boisterous following among cinema cognoscenti.”

In interviews, Tsui foregrounded the duty a filmmaker has to an audience, sometimes deflecting questions with an anti-intellectual pose. ​“Cinema shouldn’t be taken so seriously,” he said. ​“It’s entertainment, and its purpose is to fill those gaps of feeling when you’re bored and frustrated with life and want to feel better.”

But his workaholic tendencies and competitive spirit weren’t fuelled by box-office success alone. Whether the culinary art of The Chinese Feast, the ancient myth of Green Snake, the martial arts of Once Upon a Time in China, or the historical ruptures in Shanghai Blues and Peking Opera Blues, Tsui clearly believed that cinema could only sustain itself by building on storied traditions. Typically for Hong Kong genre cinema, broad humour, pulp romance, and strenuous, esoteric achievement live shoulder-to-shoulder, but these are just the ingredients. Tsui’s ambitions aren’t to aim low, but instead strive toward a limit test—can something pleasurable and beautiful and boundary-pushing stand the test of time?

This Hong Kong-focused retrospective covers only 11 years of Tsui’s five-decade career. Yet it contains worlds of technique, twists of irony, and totalizing clarity that most directors today can’t hope to access. Following retrospectives in Hong Kong and Italy’s Far East Film Festival, as well as re-releases of his work in France, The Cinematheque is excited to present the first retrospective of Tsui’s films to happen in Vancouver. Many titles will screen from recent restorations—including, for this Year of the Snake, Green Snake on opening night—with the series augmented by a presentation on 35mm and a special event co-presented with the Chinese Canadian Museum. Tsui and his generation of Hong Kong filmmakers moved fast, broke rules, and had little time to look back—this series offers a chance to see, in detail, the ways his work transformed and expanded the field of popular filmmaking.

“At his best Tsui is one of the most imaginative stylists in contemporary cinema.” David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong

“A major talent, an artist with a zest for the grand entertainment tradition of international cinema who brings a sardonic and topical wit to his glosses on popular culture.” Pat Aufderheide, Film Comment

“The [Hong Kong New Wave’s] most pivotal and controversial figure … There is scarcely a genre that Tsui Hark has left unturned, often upside down: take your pick of surreal fantasy, Godardian pulp art, poetic gangster romance, kung-fu allegory, or broad comedy.” Howard Hampton, Film Comment

“I know the 180-degree rule as well as the Americans, but for me it’s a rule that belongs to the past.” Tsui Hark