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SCMP Reporter

WHEN Bruce Willis bursts on to Hong Kong cinema screens next Thursday in his latest action romp, Die Hard With A Vengeance, audiences will flock to see him, box office dollars will flood in, and Terry Lai will have a good reason to rejoice.

  Back on November 11, 1969, when Ms Lai founded Intercontinental Film Distributors (HK) - a small family company that sub-titled kung fu movies in a cramped Mongkok office and sold them to the West - she could have had no idea that a quarter of a decade later she would be responsible for shaping the way Hong Kong is entertained.

  Today, Ms Lai and her husband, Rigo Jesu, run a family of companies employing more than 70 and deal with the biggest products Hollywood has to offer. Mr Jesu is co-chairman of IFDL.

   IFDL is one of the largest independent film distributors in Hong Kong - independent from major studios like Warner Bothers or Columbia.

  This week, IFDL will release the latest Die Hard film, later in the summer it will be Disney's latest animation blockbuster, Pocahontas, and, after that, it will be Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone.

  IFDL holds distribution rights to the products of Disney Studios and also has a number of other spin-offs involved in the entertainment industry.

  These include a video distribution company, Intercontinental Video, an in-house advertising agency and electronic promotion firm, Perfect Advertising and Production Company, and one that handles television movie sales in Asia, Intercontinental Communications.

   In addition, there is a booking agency, Intercontinental Amusement, a concert promotion firm, Jesu International Entertainment, and a sub-titling company, A. Jesu Subtitling.

  'I started with four employees including myself in an old five-storey building in Prince Edward Road with no elevator,' Ms Lai said.

  'I used to do everything, from the beginning to the end but, now, I really don't have to do the basic work because we have developed a strong team.

     'I spend most of my time in the United States, seeing what they [producers] can come up with. If they have a script and a cast, they will call me up and say, 'What do you think? Will this work in your Asian market?' '   Ms Lai is a big player in distribution and film production.

   Independent film-makers these days find themselves under enormous financial pressure and, to raise funds, they often pre-sell distribution rights before production begins.

   Thus, a distributor often commits hundreds of thousands of dollars on the strength of a script, the cast or a director.

   In this way, the distributor is working hand-in-glove with the producers - bringing its knowledge of individual markets to bear on the film-maker's creative decisions.

    IFDL bought the rights to Die Hard With A Vengeance three years ago when no one knew for sure whether the film would be produced.

 The growth of IFDL has gone hand in hand with the development of Hong Kong's film market.

   In the late 1960s, when Ms Lai began selling dubbed kung fu films, she started selecting films to distribute in Hong Kong independently of established distributors.

   Initially, Hong Kong got to see 'Spaghetti Westerns' and Jean-Paul Belmondo gangster flicks from France. But, by the early 1980s - Mr Jesu joined in 1980 - IFDL was concentrating on distributing quality films.

  Having distributed re-runs like Rocky (which flopped on its original Hong Kong release), Ms Lai was handed a first-run film in the shape of Midnight Express and has not looked back since.

  By the mid-1980s, IFDL distributed Rambo, Amadeus, Year Of The Dragon and a Superman sequel all in the same year.

 IFDL has also been at the centre of the film revolution in Hong Kong by bringing better films to an audience whose expectations have become greater.

  'In the old days, pretty much any film you bought would succeed,' Mr Jesu said.

  'In those days, the Hong Kong audiences were not as selective. They would just show up - they liked the air-conditioning, a place where they felt safe for one and a half hours and a place where they had a chicken wing.

   'But, as the Hong Kong public became more affluent and sophisticated, people began to demand more.' 



HK entertainment comes of age