May Fung
One day some enlightened individual may make a film about May Fung Mei-wah's life. Who knows, maybe she'll make it herself. As one of Hong Kong's pioneering and most experimental video artists, Fung has an intriguing body of work that charts fascinating moments in Hong Kong's history. As an active curator and art educator at the Arts Centre and the Polytechnic University, she has helped shape an emerging generation of artists and although she prefers to stay behind the scenes ('I'm always happy to be on the fringe. I don't care how popular or unpopular my work is') her story is one that deserves to be studied.
Furiously racing to finish the programme for today's 'Creative Cities' conference at the University of Hong Kong (which Fung had a big hand in organising), Fung is scribbling at a desk when I find her. She is wearing a June 4 protest T-shirt and a silk scarf is tied around her neck. An angular bob shapes her grey streaked hair - pretty funky for a 50-year-old.
Fung was born in the servants' quarters of a British family on the Peak. Her mother worked as an amah and her father the cook. Her family moved often before settling in a squatters' village in Chai Wan.
Her love affair with the camera began aged six. 'We were very poor and had no toys, so the only entertainment was to play in the street. Then there was cinema. When I did well at school, my father would give me money for the cinema.' She became 'obsessed with moving images', and a fan of European art movies by the age of 16. In 1974, aged 22, she spotted an advert for the Phoenix Cine Club. Traipsing to the society's meeting in a Yau Ma Tei primary school, she stumbled across a vibrant film community which organised regular screenings, meetings and workshops. When the Department of Extra Mural Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong announced its first certificate course in film-making, Fung recalls: 'I thought, 'Aha! I can make films myself!' So I applied and was accepted.'
In the 1970s and early 1980s, she experimented with Super-8 format films, developing mostly silent or mono-track shorts. Her themes were becoming both personal and political. When the market for the 8mm film shrank, she switched to a new medium: home video. 'It was the watershed, at the time I treated it as a temporary step, as I had always dreamt of making a big movie, but video soon grew on me.'
In 1986, the Phoenix Cine Club closed and in its place, Fung formed Videotage with Ellen Pau, Wong Chi-fai and Comyn Mo. The video-art collective began by using the Happy Valley home of local theatre collective, Zuni Icosahedron. Here Fung became inspired by theatre, and started to take her video to the stage.
By putting video in a three-dimensional context, Fung found she could inspire her audience in a new way: installation. 'When you watch a screen you are in the dark. It's passive for the audience,' she says. 'For installations you have to walk around, it's sculptural and architectural.'
Branching into every field of video art, the veteran artist has completed some intriguing projects, including a documentary about the first female taxi driver in Kowloon in the 1970s, touching on issues such as the environment and politics.
When Para/Site Art Space staged a retrospective exhibition for her in May, people from all walks of Hong Kong's artistic life visited.
Fung says of her career: 'It's been like a river. I've known all the way through that moving images are the thing for me. It's what I advise young people - find something you love.'
