My left feat

More than a few eyebrows were raised when it became known that Samson Chiu Leung-chun would be making a film to tie in with the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. More pragmatic observers were intrigued by the short time Chiu had to deliver the goods (the film began production in March). Others were amused by the film's original title, Call Me Mr Left. That's left as in left-wing, which is more obvious from the film's Chinese title, Lo Chor Ching Chuen. (Lo Chor is Cantonese for 'old lefty', a term for local patriots with an unwavering love for socialist China.)

Backed by Sil-Metropole - a Hong Kong-based, state-owned production studio - the film tells the story of a lifelong leftist called Chor Heung-kong (played by Anthony Wong Chau-sang), a projectionist who has spent his adult life working in a mainland-owned cinema.

Like most old-time left-wingers in Hong Kong, Heung-kong finds his dogged belief in socialism increasingly at odds with the world around him, particularly with a new generation (embodied by his entrepreneurial son, played by Ronald Cheng Chung-kei) drawn to a 'greed is good' ethos as Hong Kong's economy begins to soar in the late 1970s.

It's appropriate that Chiu filmed most of the movie in old, state-owned cinemas in Hong Kong. And it's at Sunbeam Theatre - a venue that was known as a bastion of patriotism in the fervently left-wing district of North Point - that Chiu has set up shop on a week- day afternoon. One of the theatre's many wood-panelled offices, unchanged since the 1960s, has been turned into an office for the business run by Heung-kong's son, the China Hong Kong Trading Company.

'The film's about the survival of a pro-left company in the commercial world,' Chiu says, referring to the cinema where Heung-kong works. 'It's an epic - a grass-roots epic. It's something that's rarely done in Hong Kong, perhaps other than Comrades, A Love Story,' he says, referring to a 1997 film by his longtime associate Peter Chan Ho-sun that traces the romance between two newly arrived mainlanders in Hong Kong through the 80s and early 90s.

Although in the middle of a hectic schedule - the shooting involves scenes that span four decades - Chiu is more elated than exasperated on set. Describing his task as 'mission impossible', the director says the film will be Hong Kong's answer to Cinema Paradiso (which also focuses on a projectionist in a small cinema). But Chiu is reluctant to talk about politics. Call Me Mr Left is more a pun on the protagonist's surname than a reference to his political leanings, he says.

'Nobody cares about the politics anyway,' says Chiu. 'It's a film about the handover, yes, but it's also a story about an individual's life. Stories about the handover are inevitably about everyday lives - and that's what I want to focus on.'