TIME FLIES I didn't realise that it had been 25 years since we launched Film Workshop. [Hong Kong International Film Festival artistic director] Lee Cheuk-to asked me last year whether we were going to do anything to celebrate - and I was very surprised; the time's gone by so fast.
SHOP TALK Film Workshop's name says it all - it was set up [by Shi and her husband, director Tsui Hark] to make different kinds of films ... the mission remains the same. I can't recall exactly why and how this idea came up. Back then, Tsui was signed up to work at different companies as a director and somehow we decided to create a company with a formal structure where filmmakers could come and make movies. We didn't really begin all this with some grand manifesto.
GUILTY FEELING I studied computers [in Britain] and [having] returned to Hong Kong, went to work in television in 1975. A lot of television directors began leaving for a career in film in the late 1970s and I did think about doing the same thing but I felt I was just not cut from that cloth. At most I thought I could only become a second- or third-rate director. But I do love films and I felt I had skills that I could contribute to the scene - just not in terms of writing or directing.
I remember having spent a few years in television and feeling really empty; the amount of work I did there in a year amounted to what other people would do in three years. [Budding film company] Cinema City had just launched and since their people knew Tsui, I began mixing with them. Back then, Cinema City was just three people: Karl Maka, [Dean] Shek Tin and [Raymond] Wong Pak-ming. And they asked me to join them, to help them out, but I told them, 'No, could you please let me have a rest?'
Somehow they took that as a yes. They said I could start work any time I wanted and I insisted that they should let me ready myself. But they had their way of doing things: they just started paying me, so that I would feel guilty about it and go to work. And I did.
STRONG CONTRASTS It was a great time - everybody had their strengths and the passion about what we did was overwhelming. We would look at a film and talk about it in very different ways and we would respond to new pitches differently. Maka, Shek, Wong and [Eric] Tsang [Chi-wai] were all more streetwise; they sensed things academic-types like us couldn't; they could capture the audiences' pulse better. But in terms of style, content and messages ... they were more commercially oriented. The new wave [in which Tsui was considered a stalwart] was more about the message, the look and the feel.
