Illustration by Alix Pentecost Farren.
There are few blockbuster filmmakers who are as industrious as Tsui Hark. A leading figure of the Hong Kong New Wave who has scaled the highest peaks of his national cinema, this prodigious multi-hyphenate has amassed more than 200 credits as either director, producer, writer, occasional actor, or some combination of all four. Often described as China’s answer to Steven Spielberg, Tsui was responsible for bringing Hollywood-style special effects to Hong Kong—literally, in the case of Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), for which he flew in a number of VFX artists who had worked on Star Wars (1977) and Tron (1982).
Tsui has always operated at the vanguard of cinematic technologies. To watch his post-millennial output is to be dazzled by the blockbuster possibilities of digital ones and zeroes. Like Spielberg, much of his work as director is confined to the past or the realms of fantasy, but unlike his American contemporary, whose work this century is suffused with political critique, Tsui’s most recent epics of historical (The Battle at Lake Changjin, 2021) or literary (Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, 2025) populism are pointedly careful not to upset the nationalist apple cart. (Ahead of our conversation, even my questions were rigorously vetted.)
Back in the day, Tsui would throw such caution to the wind: picture the burning tank that features prominently in A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (1989), released just four months after the Tiananmen Square Massacre; or the spiritual turmoil of China’s cultural icon Wong Fei-hung in Once Upon a Time in China (1991), the film that made Jet Li a superstar. Then there’s Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind (1980), a startlingly nihilistic youth movie that was banned by the state Censorship Unit for its political violence.
While Tsui has yet to make another film as confrontational as Dangerous Encounter, he has made up for it with the genre-hopping breadth of his output. As director, he leaps between comedy (Aces Go Places 3, 1984; The Chinese Feast, 1995) and time-bending romance (Love in the Time of Twilight, 1995), between fantastical melodrama (Green Snake, 1993), dizzying action (The Blade, 1995; Time and Tide, 2000), and whatever Tri-Star (1996) is. As a producer, he quickly became notorious for his meddlesome oversight, while simultaneously scoring smash hit after smash hit. John Woo reaped the rewards of his stewardship with A Better Tomorrow (1986), its 1987 sequel, and The Killer (1989)—all produced by Tsui—before the pair fell out, while the legendary King Hu lasted barely a month on The Swordsman (1990) under Tsui’s watchful eye.
Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark, 1986).
Tsui is of an age at which his most notable films are receiving anniversary restorations, with longstanding gaps in his expansive filmography finally beginning to be filled on home video. His 1984 masterpiece Shanghai Blues screened in Cannes in 2024 for its 40th, while the uncut version—with missing elements sourced from Tsui’s personal VHS copy—of Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind was recently released on Blu-ray in France. (A US disc that uses the film’s alternate title Don’t Play With Fire is imminent.)
To great astonishment, last year also saw the news that the home video label Shout! Studios had somehow gained the keys to one of cinema’s holy grails: the Golden Princess library, whose knotty business arrangements had kept many Hong Kong classics out of distribution for decades. With the floodgates now open, a number of Tsui’s films as producer and director are finally beginning to see the light of day, including the gender-bending masterwork often cited as his greatest, Peking Opera Blues (1986). Add to that Criterion’s recent 4K release of The Blade, hot on the heels of their 2021 boxset of the Once Upon a Time in China films, and it’s steadily becoming a great time to be a fan of Tsui Hark’s endlessly creative cinematic visions.
With my questions approved, I jumped on a video call with Tsui, whose energy belied his 75 years. Even with my allotted 60 minutes stretched to 75, an attempt at a career interview with so much ground to cover was probably a fool’s errand, and I ran out of time before getting to some personal favorites like his Jean-Claude Van Damme-starring, stylistic blitzkrieg Knock Off (1998), or his incandescent ghost story Missing (2008). Great company, Tsui spoke in English, and this interview has been edited for clarity.
NOTEBOOK: Let’s start at the very beginning of your filmmaking career. I’m curious about your experience studying film in Texas. You were in the US for a number of years. How did that come about?
TSUI HARK: Going to America was unusual. I didn’t have any money, so I was always in crisis. Every semester while I was in school there was a financial alarm. I would work for a summer and by the time I returned to school the money was already spent. I would always be looking for a part-time job, for somewhere to stay. It was a very unstable situation, and I was skeptical about whether I would be able to finish my studies. I was also concerned about how much I was learning.
So in my senior year at university, one semester before graduation, I started working in New York City, at a place called New York Films. They were a documentary rental and production company that always seemed to be in financial difficulty. But I was happy to be earning a living working in film. One day I found out that I didn’t actually graduate from school; I didn’t get my degree. So I had to go back and finish my work. I thought a degree was very important, until later I found out that it didn’t matter at all. People look at your abilities rather than the record of your studies.
A career in filmmaking means that you don’t have to worry about making a living, that you can spend your time dreaming about your own worlds. I went to the States because I wanted to get into the film industry. The best result would be that I could become a director. When I left school, I didn’t know whether I should return to New York, because I had a job there, or go back to Hong Kong.
NOTEBOOK: Was the plan always to return to Hong Kong eventually to make films?
TSUI: I went to America because it seemed like that’s where all the decisions were made, but I had to return to Hong Kong because that’s where all my ideas came from. Hong Kong was the source of my inspiration, it was in my blood.
NOTEBOOK: You must have been watching a lot of American and world cinema as part of your studies. What were you especially fond of, and what effect do you think this exposure and training had on your sensibilities as a filmmaker?
TSUI: You can’t exclude things and expect to become a unique and original entity. We are mutually influenced. Cinema began by someone experimenting with a series of projected images to create the illusion of reality. There’s so much history there that it’s impossible to feel that you are original, and the path you are on as a filmmaker is the sum total of all the emotions and experiences you’ve had as a viewer.
Being yourself doesn’t mean that you have to exclude everybody else. You have all these wonderful directors that made movies that you really love. Are you influenced by them? Of course. But is your filmmaking really affected by them? I’m not sure. In my opinion, you can never do what they did. They did wonderful things that, even across your entire career, you can never hope to attain. You can spend your life loving their work, but sorry, it doesn’t mean that you can do the same things yourself.
The films I loved at school weren’t the commercial, popular movies. I was much more influenced by underground, experimental cinema. This was the kind of work that had courage, and the boldness of spirit to fight against tradition. Then later you find out that this is just a process that you have to go through, and that you’ve learned from the process. But I do still love a lot of the films that I first encountered back then. I was very affected by the work of Maya Deren. Meshes of the Afternoon [1943] is very original, and very passionate. Even today, I don’t understand what it means, but this is a film that has its own meaning, that gets its message across not through dialogue but through images and emotional involvement. When you see it, you become very affected by it.
Of course, there are other wonderful filmmakers like Kurosawa, Fellini, Bertolucci, Hitchcock, but someone I really want to mention is Leni Riefenstahl.
NOTEBOOK: Wow. Okay.
TSUI: She affected me a lot because I never realized that documentary could be made that way. For a while, I thought I could be a news reporter instead of a dramatic filmmaker. I thought I could be a very good documentary filmmaker. Even today, I think the same. It’s something I really think about.
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983).
NOTEBOOK: That fusion of Eastern and Western influences was made explicit with Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, which saw you return to the US to hire various special effects teams, including those who worked on Star Wars. The film is often cited as introducing American-style FX to Hong Kong cinema. Tell me about the genesis of this international collaboration. Was it born out of a need to solve a specific set of problems?
TSUI: It was really ambitious thinking. The Hong Kong film industry at that time was really restricted by budgetary limitations. You could never think about doing something like Star Wars because you wouldn’t have the money. So, if someone offers the opportunity to try something even close to that, it’s a miracle. And that miracle happened to me. I was given the chance by Mr. Raymond Chow of Golden Harvest. He gave me the opportunity to do anything I wanted to do, probably because he was thinking of different ways in which he could grow his company.
But the biggest thanks have to go to someone called Liu Liang-hua. She was behind the whole thing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her? She was the one who found Bruce Lee in America, and she lent me credibility with Raymond Chow by standing behind me. I took advantage of that opportunity and it opened a door to a different stage in my career.
In Hong Kong, in our industry, there was no tradition of post-production work when it came to things like special effects and optical work. It had never been done before in our industry. So I thought that I needed to knock on the doors of people who had done things like that in Hollywood. Hollywood felt like something that you would never be able to get access to. It was somewhere far from my world. But they were extremely friendly. They came over to Hong Kong to help me out with Zu for a period of time. Not for the whole film, but during that time I learned so much. I realized that some things can be done in a certain way, and that other things can be done that have never been done before. That was the inspiration that I got from these people. Zu had a lot of shots to deal with. They came over to help me with some of them, but it wasn’t enough. So I had to discover other ways to solve some problems. I made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes became jokes in the industry that were passed around. But I thought it was worth it, because you have to go through that process in order to learn from your mistakes. It opened my eyes to how motion pictures could be made in a very silly way—silly, but wonderful.
Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, 1991).
NOTEBOOK: You returned to this world in 2001 with The Legend of Zu, this time embracing digital effects technology, which has defined the aesthetic of much of your work since the millennium. Do you relish the freedoms afforded by CGI, or are you nostalgic for the textures and challenges of practical effects?
TSUI: I’m frequently asked about artificial intelligence. Do I think of A.I. as an enemy or a friend? I think we’re simply facing a different kind of invention. I remember when I first got a computer, people used to comment that this was the beginning of me cutting myself off from my friends. Then, not long after, everyone started carrying cell phones, and they started looking at those instead of seeing the world. I think whenever we’re faced with something like that, you can’t let it affect your life, or let it affect your whole career. They are not gods. They are not holy spirits that you worship in the temple. You can make use of the technology at that specific time, but it can also backfire because these things are inconsistent and quickly become obsolete. Once everyone has access to the software or the apps, then suddenly everyone can do it. It’s a double-edged sword.
I think the most important thing is that you don’t make technology the most important element in making a movie. People talk about cinema being diminished day by day because of the competition from other media. The theatrical business is going down, and maybe cinema will soon be history. But I think the creative side of movies depends too much on a personal vision, not the technical side of things. CGI has nothing to do with someone’s capability to make a good film or not.
When you can’t find the money to use these technologies, you find an alternative path to walk. Sometimes, that ends up being a better way. A lot of great films were born that way: the filmmakers couldn’t do something because of a lack of money and conditions, but then they found an alternative solution, leading to a classic that we keep looking at and talking about.
NOTEBOOK: Speaking of A.I. and classic films, what did you think of the news last year that the China Film Foundation intends to update Once Upon a Time in China and all the Bruce Lee films using artificial intelligence?
TSUI: A.I. can help to make a film look better and get rid of artefacts due to poor preservation. But the most important thing is that you have to keep Bruce Lee clean, and exactly the same as he was before. You cannot change Bruce Lee. One of the problems with A.I. is that it creates something different from what it was in the beginning. You don’t see the reality of the situation any more.
That’s one of the big worries with A.I.: its ability to separate you from reality. It can stop you from distinguishing what is real or not. Some people may not care, but it’s scary when you’re not able to tell whether that’s actually Bruce Lee or a computer-generated simulation.
But it’s become a very common tool. As soon as A.I. starts replacing creativity, that will be the death of the industry and all manner of professions.
Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind (Tsui Hark, 1980).
NOTEBOOK: Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain was a critical hit, but it was a real departure from your first three films. Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind, especially, is a ferocious movie. Where did the rage in that film come from?
TSUI: Those feelings were not unique to me. There was a lot of turmoil and instability in the world back then; a lot of questioning of the need to adhere to regulations and traditions. The kind of rage in that film exists in everyone, to different degrees. If you wanted to say something about the world at that time, that was a natural expression.
Back then, I was looking for something that could fulfill my urge to make movies. I felt like I was becoming an unexceptional person by making unexceptional movies. So I had to do something about it. I wanted to express my innate personality, making audiences share my compassion and my feelings through provocation. I still feel that way now, it’s just taken on a different means of expression. The films may not be saying “kill everything,” but it’s still in my nature to want to destroy things. If something bothers you a lot, you want to get rid of it.
When I look back at Dangerous Encounters now, I think it wants for depth. The anger that I wanted to share with the audience would have lasted longer in their memories if the film had a little more depth. Every time you go to see a movie, you should be getting a new perspective on who you are. That has to be the most important thing about the work you create. You want to reach an audience’s humanity, to trigger an angry or romantic response that helps them remember who they are.
We're Going to Eat You (Tsui Hark, 1980).
NOTEBOOK: Like your previous film We’re Going to Eat You [1980], it’s a very political picture. How do you think the politics in your filmmaking have evolved over the years?
TSUI: We’re Going to Eat You is not a serious film at all. I was just making fun of the horror genre. It’s a comedy! It’s not philosophical and doesn’t have any deep meaning, it was just a parody.
When I made that movie, I didn’t really pay much attention to its commercial potential. I was just challenging everyone’s values when it comes to looking at a movie like this. But then I thought, Is this what people are really looking for in their entertainment, or can we give them something else? It was adapted from the work of a famous Chinese writer, and was about people eating people unconsciously. They’re killing each other without knowing why they’re doing it. It was about villagers who cannot accept outsiders, and so they make them disappear. And that’s related to what is happening now. Some people can’t accept that things are changing, they want to keep the old ways. I’m not implying that the new ways are good or bad, but we need to evolve with the times. We need to live with the processes of civilization and humanity, otherwise rigidity and conservatism will destroy our nature. I’m talking about all these things in the movie, but it was totally unserious.
NOTEBOOK: Shortly after Zu, you made two of your greatest films in Shanghai Blues and Peking Opera Blues, the first of which recently celebrated its fortieth birthday with a new restoration. Did you watch a lot of screwball comedies while you were studying in the US, and were you thinking of these American films from the 1930s and 1940s while you were developing Shanghai Blues?
TSUI: I’ve always been fond of comedy as a genre. I’m a comedy person. I watched a lot of screwball comedies, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, and then a lot of classic Japanese, Chinese, and Indian comedies too. They’re really entertaining. But Shanghai Blues originated from an experience I had with a friend, who told me about a singer who lost her diamond rings on stage. She was meant to start singing, but then looked at her fingers and saw that her rings were missing, so she started screaming instead. I thought that was very funny.
I kept thinking about this character, wondering why she was on stage and how she lost her rings. Soon enough, the story came to me when I decided to set it during the Second World War. That period gives us an opportunity to look at human nature in a global sense. Once I had that, the story started to take care of itself: what was this woman’s reality? How did she make her livelihood in this world? That’s the great thing about creativity, it all comes from you. Once you’ve got a trigger that makes everything click into place, it all pours out. And that’s how Shanghai Blues came about. It doesn’t relate to the diamond ring at all, or the scream on the stage, because it turned out I didn’t have room to put that in the film once the story had taken off by itself.
There were a lot of problems with that film though, because it was supposed to be a low-budget movie. Which means there are lots of scenes, locations, and special effects that you have to give up. I didn’t have the money to do any special effects properly, so I had to do them very cheaply, using things like papier-mâché and cardboard miniatures. But that was really interesting; that’s real movie-making. You make every effort you can to share an emotion with the audience. The world needs this film’s humour and optimism to make it more lovable and livable. The world is so chaotic, it’s hard to tolerate sometimes.
Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 1984).
NOTEBOOK: Sylvia Chang and Sally Yeh are wonderful in Shanghai Blues. Do you prefer writing for women?
TSUI: I don’t like to think of it that way, because it will limit my ideas. But it’s a bit like baking a cake. You don’t know how it’s going to taste in the end. Sometimes the women’s parts turn out more tasty than the men’s parts. When people tell me I write better parts for women than men, it makes me feel like I need to work harder on my writing for men!
NOTEBOOK: Peking Opera Blues is fascinating for its exploration of gender identity, something that recurs throughout your filmography. Tell me a little about your interest in subverting gender roles.
TSUI: I know people in real life who are not defined by social criteria. Some people say that a woman should be like this and a man should be like that, but in real life they’re not! And these unique people I know who refuse to be defined that way are usually so interesting. People who don’t follow the rules or go by social standards have a unique attitude towards life, and I respect that. So I don’t think of myself as subverting anything.
NOTEBOOK: You had some huge early successes as a producer at Film Workshop, including A Better Tomorrow and A Chinese Ghost Story [1987]. And you’ve earned a reputation over the years for being very hands-on when you’re producing. Tell me a little about your relationships with directors when you have your producing hat on.
TSUI: I’ve always been warned about my hands-on habit. I used to think it was a necessity of my role as a producer, but I’ve tried to get out of the … what should I call it? … the curse of my habit. I never know if I’m a good producer or not, because sometimes the projects turn out wonderful, and other times I worry that I’ve ruined them. But I do know what I’m talking about. If there’s something I shouldn’t have put my hands on, I try to get out of it. And then if I think I need to do something about something, then I’ll just do it. It’s often hard to distinguish which films I should get fully involved with and which ones I shouldn’t.
A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (Tsui Hark, 1989).
NOTEBOOK: You produced some incredible films for John Woo, before parting company on A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon, which you directed yourself. Woo later directed his own variation with Bullet in the Head [1990]. It seems there are a lot of conflicting stories out there about the reasons for your split, so I was wondering if you could talk a little about what happened there?
TSUI: That incident involved a lot of outside factors. John Woo had gained a great reputation by that point, and he was able to start looking at going into international productions. Meanwhile, I was hugely entangled in an industry production crisis that was going on at the time. He didn’t want to do episode three. He thought we’d already reached the end of it. And I agreed! But I was tempted to say more about this character by looking into his past. Then I realized I was wrong. It didn’t turn out how I expected.
John Woo had his own way of developing films with his company, and that’s why we separated, in a way. Of course, there’s no separation without negative feelings. That came about from him thinking I was interfering with his creativity, that sort of thing. And I agree that I did have that problem. It happens to everybody in the creative industries, though. You never know whose idea is right or wrong until you see the results.
A few years later we got together and talked about it, and we felt that this was now in the past and there were more important things coming up. Later, I tried to do as much as possible in terms of helping him out. We managed to maintain our friendship, and we both feel, just like the characters in A Better Tomorrow, that we’re brothers.
NOTEBOOK: From the climaxes of Peking Opera Blues and Once Upon a Time in China, to The Blade and Time and Tide—you’ve directed some breathtaking action set pieces. Tell me a little about how you put these sequences together? Do you storyboard?
TSUI: I only use storyboards when I have to use special effects, because people need to know the budget and what the technical requirements will be. Otherwise the producer, or the person in charge of the money, gets very insecure. You need storyboards when you want to create a spectacular shot. I always tell the storyboard artists that spectacular doesn’t mean there needs to be thousands of people, spectacular can just mean a close-up of an eye. A pupil alone can do a lot of things to an audience’s response.
There have been different trends in action throughout the history of the genre. Every new trend creates a new sensation, and this has to be designed by necessity. Each one creates a new reality. Look at Jurassic Park [1993]. Suddenly dinosaurs are in front of you, walking around. You want to create difficult action that has never been seen before in the movies. Like when Jackie Chan slides down thirty floors from the roof of a building. You’d never seen that before.
The romantic element of the action itself is also hugely important. People want to be a part of the action, and there’s often a romantic element that causes people to love the scene. But everything always changes, according to the times, because so many people try to imitate the new trend. And then it dies off because people have seen too much of it. You have to try to start a new trend with every movie, because you’re always going to face the same problem.
The Blade (Tsui Hark, 1995).
NOTEBOOK: The Blade is an astonishing action picture, and a film that seems to resurrect the nihilistic energy of Dangerous Encounter. It’s your spin on Chang Cheh’s The One-Armed Swordsman [1967], but it’s a film that seems set on tearing down and brutalizing what came before. How did the project evolve into something so dark and subversive?
TSUI: It’s interesting because I wanted to go back to a documentary style. It wasn’t easy, because so much relies on your cameraman being able to catch a sudden moment. It’s like being in the middle of a riot, where everything relies on capturing the moment a policeman strikes a demonstrator amid the chaos. It’s not something you can plan. But with a movie, you have to plan, because otherwise the performers won’t know what’s going on, and that’s dangerous. So you have to imitate unplannedness while actually planning very carefully.
We ended up using an intercom system where I was talking to the cameraman, telling him to catch a glimpse of the guy emerging from the alley swinging his sword, before quickly panning away to the girl running away. It was chaotic, but fun.
I didn’t have any dialogue in the script. The dialogue was invented by the performers, and that was very challenging for them. They had to figure out what to say, which was particularly hard in the emotional scenes. It was an experiment, and other people have tried it since, with very good results.
NOTEBOOK: Your films have been getting bigger and bigger in recent years. Do you have any desire to make smaller-scale pictures like those from earlier in your career?
TSUI: I always want to go back to low-budget filmmaking. The industry is shrinking and it’s a dire situation. People are suffering. The theatrical business is sinking, with competition coming from other media. The cinema circuit is shrinking. It’s a very bad time for movies. But nothing is worse than war. War is a terrible thing to happen to human beings. Although I do think that creativity always emerges after suffering.
