Ching Siu-tung - Biography

Born in 1952, Ching Siu-tung is the son of Cheng Kang, a scenario writer / director of the Shaw Brother , who is known for Fourteen Amazons. Bad pupil at the school, his parents registered him at the " East Drama School " to learn the Pekinese opera, art which mixes dance, acrobatics and martial arts. At the end of his formation, he entered as stuntman in the Shaw Brother where his small size makes him an ideal bodydouble of the female roles. But the films in costumes being on the decline at the end of the Seventies, he had to go to television and became director of fights for TV series. He met there the future directors of the new wave, for example Patrick Tam, with whom he would direct the fights of the wu xia pian, The Sword, in 1980. The same year he worked on the action scenes of Don' T Play With Fire, whose the young director Tsui Hark wanted to exacerbate violence..

In 1982, Ching Siu-tung directed his first film, Duel To The Death, a wu xia pian describing the confrontation between two schools of martial arts, one is Chinese and the other is Japanese, to show the supremacy of their reputation. This first cinematographic experiment presents already several constants which belong to the Ching Siu-tung's style that is very linked to wu xia pian, kind in which he would be specialized, he never directed kungfu movie. Because he wants to show fights between knights who have supernatural capabilities, which is the spirit of the mangas of his childhood. He used to use the special effects (in particular, the cables) with an extremely tight plan division, an always mobile camera and generally extreme focal distances. By stylizing the action in this manner, Ching Siu-tung wants to represent movements, lots of colors and images, in which it is useless to seek logical unfolding. The moments of lull, dialogues or the result of the combat give information necessary to the good comprehension of the story.

Beyond his work of choreographer, already very marked on Duel To the Death, Ching Siu-tung shows, even in his first film, a very marked taste for the cinema B. If he preserves at certain moment a noble approach of the kind, respecting the chivalrous values, introducing some references to the artistic universe, like the puppet show for example, he also likes to integrate bloodshed or mild nutters effects, freeing his imagination : ninjas on paper kites, swordmen moving under-ground, flying knights, speaking birds.. During his career, he remains attached to a basically impure cinema, using surprises and contrast particularly amusing when he succeeds in judiciously mixing the paradoxical ingredients with which he likes to compose his films.

After the commercial failure of Duel To the Death, Ching Siu-tung directed two years later Witch From Nepal. He chooses this time a contemporary subject that could allure a public wearied by films in costumes. But like his later attempts, he did not manage to integrate his taste for imagination into a contemporary context. Either, in this first attempt, the fantastic universe emerges in an artificial way in the story, or, in Wonder Seven (1994) which he directed or Blacksheep Affair (1998) in which he directed the fights, surrealist processing gives a toon-like look to a realistic environment. In unspecified time and space, his idea of cinema opened out without difficulty. But when the story takes place in a contemporary universe, his idea is very strange because it can't be easily integrated into a realistic environment.

Doubting after the new commercial failure Witch From Nepal, Ching Siu- tung has the good idea to try to work with Tsui Hark, then creating his own production society, the Workshop. If at the beginning Tsui Hark planned to create an alternative to the system of the studios to help the directors to finance their projects, his strong personality would oblige his collaborators to make a choice : either to submit or to leave. Ching Siu-tung chose the first solution. Tsui Hark would work with him, using his talents of choreographer on most of his productions (Peking Opera Blues, A better tomorrow 2, Roboforce..), thus this new style, a mixture of the two ideas would give them a little something that is one of the marks of recognition of the Workshop style during the Eighties. he would also enable him to direct Chinese ghost story in 1987. If Tsui Hark gave him only little freedom, being implied on all the steps of the development of the project, he helped him to find an accuracy of tone, that, alone Ching Siu-tung didn't always find in his first films.

Pivot of the Workshop between 1986 and 1993, Ching Siu-tung directed Terracotta Warrior in 1989, a film that Tsui Hark did not produce. Divided into two parts, he directed a love story in medieval China which continued in the Thirties under the form of an account of adventure. These two ages correspond to the two universes which nourish the imaginary of Ching Siu- tung. One is a past sublimated by fantasy, and the other is one period located at the beginning of the century, very "Indiana Jones". In this improbable mixture of adventures, historical events and fantastic, he can free his taste for the serie B, the marvellous and the fantastic adventures. Twice, with The Raid (1991) and Dr. Wai (1996), he tried this type of history.

But he is more well-off in the universe of wu xia pian. After a sucessfull return of the kind made by Tsui Hark with Swordsman in which CST took part as a director of the engagements, he directed a sequel, always under the control of Tsui Hark, but being more free. He could express himself fully on the scenes of action and could finally concretize the work made on Duel To The Death, directing fast amazing scenes, where his most insane ideas would find their more beautiful expression. After the success of Swordsman 2, Ching Siu-tung multiplied the projects between 1992 and 1993. Dragon Inn (1992), Swordsman 3 (1993) or Heroic Trio. But he used and misused the same effects in too many films, and in particular on those produced or directed by Wong Jing like Royal Tramp I &II (1992), Holy Weapon (1993), he precipitated the wear of the kind and his style, and the public abandoned films in costumes.

If in 1995 he made the choreography of A Chinese Oddyssey, one of the last wu xia pian successfull, he tried to be renewed with Wonder Seven (1994) and Dr. Wai (1996) to answer new waitings of the public. But out of the wu xia pian and out the Workshop, Ching Siu-tung has great difficulties to convince. Too much specialized, director / choreographer with a too typified style, he was at the end of the Nineties in a situation close to what he knew at the beginning of his career. Lately he directed a clip of Mylène Farmer. But, like his colleagues working with the occident, his style was diluted to preserve only one exotic imagery of the characters flying. CST was often relegated to the second plan, but his action was determining in the development of the " Hong Kong Touch ". Let us hope that this clip is not the end of an exceptional career.

Laurent HENRY (May-June 99)