IN THE WORLD OF FILMS - especially in Asia - collaborations between countries are becoming commonplace. While making The Accidental Spy - filmed in Hong Kong - director Teddy Chen Tak-sam said dealing with a multi-national crew, not all of whom spoke English or Chinese, was a big headache.
On a smaller scale, Korean director Kim Young-jun also found communication his biggest hurdle when he was making Korean martial arts blockbuster Bichunmoo with a crew comprising Koreans, Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese.
'The language posed some difficulties, especially with the mainland Chinese crew. It did lead to some misunderstandings initially but fortunately, everyone was motivated to make the best movie they could so it all worked out fine in the end,' says Kim, in Hong Kong to promote Bichunmoo.
Based on a popular late 1980s six-part comic book series by female artist Kim Hye-rin, the movie is set in China during the Yuan Dynasty in the mid-14th century. It tells the story of a young man, Jinha (Shin Hyun-joon), who has been taught in the much-sought after 'bichunmoo' art of swordfighting.
He meets and falls in love with Sullie (Kim Hee-seon), the daughter of a Mongolian general who is responsible for the deaths of Jinha's parents. The star-crossed lovers are forced apart by circumstances and a series of misunderstandings. Interference by enemies causes their rift to widen further. At the time it was made, Bichunmoo , at four billion won (HK$28 million), was the most expensive film in Korean history (it has since been surpassed by Libera Me And The Legend Of Gingko which cost 4.5 billion won). It was the first period martial arts movie to be made in Korea in almost two decades and marked Kim's directorial debut.
'The pressure was always going to be there, no matter how much the film cost,' Kim says. 'But I tried to just concentrate on the fact that I had to do the work and figure out how to do it the best that it could be done. In the past 20 years, there haven't been many opportunities for martial arts films because everyone was concentrating on television dramas, and period pieces like these were almost more expensive.'
