How 2 of the best films about 1980s New York were shot by Hong Kong’s Mabel Cheung – The Illegal Immigrant, and An Autumn’s Tale starring Chow Yun-fat
- As a film student in New York, Mabel Cheung befriended gangsters and illegal immigrants, and used them as actors in her 1985 movie The Illegal Immigrant
- An Autumn’s Tale, for which the director drew on her experiences in the city, stars Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung. Both films show 80s New York warts and all
Two of the best films about living in New York in the 1980s, when much of the city was derelict and dangerous, were made by a Hong Kong director.
The Illegal Immigrant (1985) and An Autumn’s Tale (1987) were directed by Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting, who drew on her experiences working in New York’s Chinatown while she was studying film at New York University (NYU).
Both films are shot in a semi-documentary style in New York locales such as Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Adding more realism, The Illegal Immigrant used non-professional actors who drew on their knowledge of life in the city, with some even playing themselves.
Neither film shrinks from depicting the violence, crime and poverty that blighted New York during that decade. The films quickly established Cheung as a director of note in Hong Kong.
“An Autumn’s Tale delves into the director’s personal experiences and is made with genuine feeling,” wrote the Post’s Terry Boyce in 1987, in a review that echoed the thoughts of most critics.
How did a Hong Kong director come to make two critically acclaimed films in New York? Cheung, who was born in 1950, originally wanted to be a media reporter, and took a course in English and Psychology at Hong Kong University to improve her writing.