Ahead of the Cult Gala screening of The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom we spoke to the noted Hong Kong director…
We sat down with Jacob Cheung, a veteran of the Hong Kong film industry who has been making films there for over 25 years, for a brief chat about some of his older films, whilst he was visiting the London Film Festival with his new film The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom. Unfortunately hasty – each interviewer only being allotted ten minutes with him – there wasn’t time to ask all of the questions I would have liked (including what happened to his musical version of the White Haired Witch?!), but in his answers below, you get an idea of the humble and curious nature of this director who has a unique body of work behind him, as well as a few glimpses into the industrial conditions of Hong cinema in the early 90s.
Would like to start by asking a question about some of your earlier films, including Beyond the Sunset (1989) and Cageman (1992) which focus on older people and show a sympathy for their emotions and the way they live which is pretty rare not just in Hong Kong cinema but cinema in general. Could you comment a bit on this and why some of your films have this focus?
What you mentioned are my 2nd and 4th works. As far as Cageman is concerned, the original idea came from a newspaper editor. (At that time, early 90s) the editor came to me and told me that many older people, and also underprivileged people, were having a lot of social problems, problems that society had overlooked. They needed support, they needed to raise awareness and they needed people to understand their problems, so this newspaper editor had written about this situation and he came to me and he hoped that I could help him to raise awareness of this issue. I read his report, went to see what was actually happening and decided to make this film. This was how it came about.
Also, when I made this film, I realised that the problems that the elderly faced and the housing problems in Hong Kong were actually a social problem, and as a filmmaker, I cannot do much about it. This is something that the government should do and is a concern for the government. So I used the handover of Hong Kong to China as a metaphor, in the sense that all of us, every individual, is being trapped in a cage, a sort of a cage as a metaphor. I tried to tackle that in this way because I thought that as a filmmaker tackling a social problem, I didn’t have a very clear direction.
The way you portray a neglected social reality, in this case of the people who were forced to live in cages, whilst simultaneously making the film entertaining, reminded me of a film Lung Kong might have made. I was wondering if Lung Kong influenced you or if you saw many of his films when they were first released, and how you consider his place in Hong Kong film history?
Lung Kong has just recently passed away. Actually people would relate my film, or compare my film, or my film would remind people of the film… you know there’s a film in the 70s about 72 households living….
The film by Chor Yuen? – (The House of 72 Tenants (1973)).
Yes, that one. Cageman reminds people of that film rather than of Lung Kong. But I’m much less experienced than great directors like Lung Kong so I am really reluctant to be compared with him, I cannot be compared with him. But as far as social problems are concerned, they are more or less the same all the time, there are social problems recurring all the time. So it is only natural that this would remind you, or remind other people, of these kinds of films.
And about (my 2nd film) Beyond the Sunset, it was because there were so many emigrants (at that time), and immigrants in Hong Kong. Younger people emigrated leaving older people behind. What are they going to do? It seems that there is a hopelessness in this, a despair in this. So I wanted to use that film to encourage people to be hopeful, and also to remind people to do something about it because it is a problem that younger people are pursuing their future whilst older people are being left behind.
Some of your films focus on people at the bottom of the society and also problems in society. Was it difficult to keep making these types of films in Hong Kong’s commercial film industry? Who was funding these types of films you were making?
Actually, Hong Kong has always been driven by market economy and its film industry is also like that as well. As long as people are interested in a certain topic they would pay to watch it, disregarding what it is, or what its subject matter is. This is something which makes the Hong Kong film industry a very lively one. Back then in Hong Kong, there was this company called Sil-Metropole (who, according to HKMDB, are still active and have produced films such as Throwdown and Cold War more recently), literally in Chinese it is “Silver Capital,” and they were backed by the communist party. The communist party were always interested in, not only propaganda, but (using film) as a means of communication and therefore they were willing to fund me to make this kind of film, as a means of communicating certain social issues that they would like to be raised.
But things have changed now, because back then they were very willing to support filmmakers who were interested in social issues but now, the whole economy has changed, so they don’t necessarily want to support this kind of film any more.
The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom plays at the 58th BFI London Film Festival 2014 as the Cult Gala Screening.
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