As one of the Hong Kong film industry's most respected grandees, Wong Tin-lam has a confession to make: he doesn't go to the cinema much any more, even though there's one right downstairs from his apartment in Mei Foo Sun Chuen. Perhaps it's understandable, given his physical condition: his sharp and spirited demeanour, remarkable for an 80-year-old, is betrayed by a bad right leg and a huge belly.
'I rarely watch films these days - unless they're on television,' he says. A few boxed sets of Korean and Chinese soap operas grace the shelves in the flat where Wong lives with his two daughters. The retired filmmaker's living room hardly looks like a cinephile's lair.
Not that it matters, given Wong's other confession - that nothing he's seen in recent years has impressed him that much anyway. 'There are a few fine ones, but films I especially like? There haven't been any yet,' he says. And that includes those made by his son, Wong Jing. 'His films have been ... passable,' he says, in the deprecating tone a parent uses when countering any praise of a child's work. 'He has made progress in what he's done - he's been improving bit by bit.'
Yet although Wong Jing's stock has nosedived since the turn of the millennium - the tacky, lowbrow fare he honed to perfection is no longer the box office gold that it was during the 1980s and early 90s - Wong senior's output has undergone a well-earned critical reappraisal in recent years, rescued from late-night television slots and lionised as part of Hong Kong's cinematic heritage. The Hong Kong Film Archive is running a retrospective of Wong's films, screening 22 movies selected from his prodigious output over a career that stretched from the early 50s to the late 70s.
Wong says his strength lay not only in being attentive and hard-working, but also in his knack for delivering for his paymasters. He says one of his prime concerns was 'not only to entertain the audiences but the financiers as well'.
'My sense of satisfaction always stemmed from things like being able to finish a two-instalment piece in nine days. These things kept the boss happy, and they continued to look for me later on.'
