Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark (, Từ Khắc, born 15 February 1950), born Tsui Man-kong (Từ Văn Quang), is a Hong Kong film director, producer and screenwriter.

Tsui started his secondary education in Hong Kong in 1966.

He proceeded to study film in Texas, first at Southern Methodist University and then at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in 1975.

He claims to have told his parents he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a pharmacist, and that it was here he changed his given name to Hark ("overcoming").

After graduation, Tsui moved to New York City, where he worked on From Spikes to Spindles (1976), a noted documentary film by Christine Choy on the history of the city's Chinatown.

He also worked as an editor for a Chinese newspaper, developed a community theatre group and worked in a Chinese cable TV station.

He returned to Hong Kong in 1977.

Upon turning to feature filmmaking, Tsui was quickly typed as a member of the "New Wave" of young, iconoclastic directors.

His debut film, The Butterfly Murders (1979), was a technically challenging blend of wuxia, murder mystery and science fiction / fantasy elements.

He often resurrects and revises classic films and genres: the murder mystery in The Butterfly Murders (1979); the Shanghai musical comedy in Shanghai Blues (1985).

His second film, We're Going to Eat You (1980), was a blend of cannibal horror, black comedy and martial arts.

Tsui's third film, Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980), was a nihilistic thriller about delinquent youths on a bombing spree.

Cinema City & Films Co. was instrumental in codifying the slick Hong Kong blockbuster films of the 1980s.

Heavily censored by the British colonial government, it was released in 1981 in a drastically altered version titled Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind (or alternatively, Don't Play with Fire).

It was not a financial success.

However, it helped make Tsui a darling of film critics who had coined the New Wave label, and who were hopeful for a more aesthetically daring cinema more engaged with the realities of contemporary Hong Kong.

In 1981, Tsui joined Cinema City & Films Co., a production company founded by comedians Raymond Wong, Karl Maka and Dean Shek.

Tsui played his part in the process with pictures like the crime farce All the Wrong Clues (1981), his first hit, and Aces Go Places 3 (1984), part of the studio's long-running spy spoof series.

Tsui has directed several influential Hong Kong films such as Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), the Once Upon a Time in China film series (1991–1997) and The Blade (1995).

In 1983, Tsui directed the wuxia fantasy film Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) for the studio Golden Harvest.

Tsui imported Hollywood technicians to help create special effects whose number and complexity were unprecedented in Chinese-language cinema.

In 1984, Tsui formed the production company Film Workshop with Nansun Shi.

He also developed a reputation as a hands-on and even intrusive producer of other directors' work, fuelled by public breaks with major filmmakers like John Woo and King Hu.

His most longstanding and fruitful collaboration has probably been with Ching Siu-tung.

As action choreographer and/or director on many Film Workshop productions, Ching made a major contribution to the well-known Tsui style.

Film Workshop releases became consistent box office hits in Hong Kong and around Asia, drawing audiences with their visual adventurousness, their broad commercial appeal, and hectic camerawork and pace.

With Tsui having been called the 'Steven Spielberg of Asia', Film Workshop became the 'Amblin of Hong Kong'.

Tsui also has been a prolific writer and producer; his productions include A Better Tomorrow (1986), A Better Tomorrow II (1987), A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), The Killer (1989), The Legend of the Swordsman (1992), The Wicked City (1992), Iron Monkey (1993) and Black Mask (1996).

He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema and is regarded by critics as "one of the masters of Asian cinematography".

He produced John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986), which launched a craze for Heroic bloodshed movies, and Ching Siu-tung's A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which did the same for period ghost fantasies.

Peking Opera Blues (1986) plays with and pays tribute to the traditions of the Peking opera that his mother took him to see as a small boy and which had such a strong influence on Hong Kong action cinema.

In the late 1990s, Tsui had a short-lived career in the United States, directing the Jean-Claude Van Damme–led films Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998).

Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and The Swordsman (1990) birthed the modern-day special effects industry in Hong Kong.

In fact, Tsui's "movie brat" nostalgia is one of the main ingredients in his work.

The Lovers (1994) adapts a retold, cross-dressing period romance, best known from Li Han-hsiang's 1963 opera film The Love Eterne.

Both films were commercially unsuccessful and critically panned; Tsui himself was unsatisfied with his lack of creative control and returned to Hong Kong to continue his career, where he found commercial and critical success with blockbusters such as the Detective Dee film series, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011), and The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014).

Tsui was born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam, to a large Chinese (Hoa) family with sixteen siblings.

Tsui showed an early interest in show business and films; when he was 10, he and some friends rented an 8 mm camera to film a magic show they put on at school.

He also drew comic books, an interest that would influence his cinematic style.

By the age of 13, he and his family immigrated to Hong Kong.