Peter Pau's long journey from bored banker to Oscar winner
Born into a family of Hong Kong actors, Peter Pau decided to stay behind the camera and has forged an award-winning career spanning 32 films
In the two years that Peter Pau Tak-hei worked as a young banker in Hong Kong he watched more than 200 movies. His passion for film won out and a career change saw the banking industry's loss become the entertainment world's gain.
Three decades later, Pau's resume includes 32 films for which he was director or cinematographer and six Hong Kong Film Awards. Atop that list is an Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2001, when he became the first Hongkonger to win the best cinematography award on the industry's grandest stage.
Pau, 62, was born into a movie family in Hong Kong. His father Bao Fong and elder sister Nina Paw Hee-ching are actors.
However, he took a different path in his early years. At 19, he set off for Guangzhou where he taught English for seven years. He then returned home to work at Bank of China Hong Kong for two years. That's when he sought refuge in films to escape the boredom of his life as a banker.
At 27, he decided on the career switch and enrolled in a four-year course at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1983. Over the next decades his work on the 32 films garnered 18 nominations for industry awards at home and abroad. His new film, Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal will be shown on the mainland on Thursday, the fist day of the lunar new year. Pau put his talents to work as producer, director, cinematographer and visual effects supervisor. The film features a Chinese ghost fighter as superhero and stars Chen Kun and Li Bingbing.
Pau shared his thoughts on filmmaking with the South China Morning Post.