Born in Vietnam in
1951, Tsui Hark undertook cinema studies in Texas, USA in the seventies, and he became one
of the best directors from Hong Kong. 
His career
began in 1979. He was one of the HK " New Wave " leaders. The HK New Wave
movement was not related to the French one. New Wave directors were mostly people who have
studied abroad and worked for the local TV. They were willing to break with the
traditional Hong Kong cinema. During this period, Tsui Hark made 3 movies, Butterfly
Murders, We're Going to Eat You and Don't Play With fire (aka Encounter
Of The First Kind). They are still considered as wild features and present Tsui Hark
as an iconoclast.
Even if his first movies caught the attention of the
critics, they were commercial failures. This is probably because they were cynical and
sarcastic. In this context, Tsui Hark joined Karl Maka's company, Cinema City, which made
huge box office hits early Eighties. He finally got his first hit there, but Tsui Hark was
unhappy with such system aiming to make money at all artistic costs.
At the same time Tsui
Hark tried a crazy idea. He wanted to make a Chinese fairytale using modern special
effects. The project was very ambitious but difficult to make because of technical
challenge and pressures from producers and an uncontrolled budget. This movie was Zu:
Warriors From The Magic Mountain came out in 1983, but it was another flop, even if it
was an impressive movie, full of qualities. Afterward, Tsui Hark had to make a new
commercial movie, Aces Go Places III, for which he argued quite a lot with producer
Karl Maka.
As a result of this lack of freedom Tsui Hark had no choice
but to create his own production company: the Film Workshop. His goal was to help any
other directors who were willing to make different type of movies. The creation of this
news company was a turning point in Tsui Hark career.
From there, nobody could anticipate Tsui Hark's next move. He was seen as an eccentric in
the HK Film Industry. Indeed, he dared to play with the audience (Once Upon In China),
to experiment (The Blade) or to shoot mainstream and commercial features ( Tri-Star).
However, he was very well respected in the moviemaker world.
Early Nineties, Tsui Hark mixed film direction and
production, and he often broke into the work of other directors hired by the Film Workshop
Company. This strategy was often good. Even if the movies were not all successful and even
if lots of employees left the company because of Tsui Hark's bad temper.
Tsui Hark
managed to communicate his style and his views to the rest of the Hong Kong cinema. In
these circumstances the Film Workshop became a kind of a lighthouse where all the major
artists of the colony began to work or made their best movies. The best directors like
John Woo, Ching Siu-tung, Yuen Woo-ping, Kirk Wong, Ringo Lam shot great pictures
(sometimes with the help of Tsui hark). He transformed actors into superstars such as Chow
Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung, Jet Lee, Brigitte Lin, Jackie Chan and gave technicians a fame,
i.e. editor David Wu and action director Ching Siu Tung.
Tsui Hark way of filmmaking was very clever, but all Tsui
Hark's collaborators have often suffered from his despotic way of work. He revitalised
unhealthy and old-fashioned genres, i.e. gunfight features with A Better Tomorrow,
the fantasy movie with A Chinese Ghost Story, the swordplay genre with Swordsman
or the kung fu movies with Once Upon In China. In order to insert special digital
effects in his movies, he set up a SFX company, Cinefex. The Film Workshop was seen as a
franchise, creating the best movies of the Hong Kong cinema, and sometimes of the World
cinema.
In the mid-nineties, the economic crisis strokes the HK
film industry and unfortunately the Film Workshop was not spared. Tsui Hark tried new
things but even his last Swordplay movie, The Blade, was too dark and depressing to
make money. The animated movie A Chinese Ghost Story: The Animated Movie didn't
even attracted the Cantonese audience and Tsui Hark American movies (Double Team
& Knock Off) didn't managed to hit to the box office hard.
Tsui Hark became more and more radical by using a more
complex cinematographic language and by integrating a philosophical dimension to his
movies. He has therefore produced less commercial features, and he is struggling as well
to get local audience back to watch pure Cantonese movies in theatres whilst they are
being fed with world cinema.
Time and Tide, Master Q and Legend Of Zu were exploration into the
Chinese culture (traditional or modern), and have included the most sophisticated
techniques. Analysing the Box Office results, the local audience, however, don't seem
interested at all.
Tsui Hark has become a kind of marginal in the HK movie
industry. In the mean time, his fame has increased in the rest of the world, which is
pretty helpful to get some more investments. So far, he's managed to get the balance right
between foreign investments (from Columbia Tri-Star for instance) and his creative
independence. Such dangerous balance is hard to maintain and Tsui Hark has proved that he
is a producer/ director whose creativity has never run dry even after a lengthy career.
