Peter Chan : Some of the solutions I’ve tried for a few years were working with fellow Asian filmmakers, and that was my way of coping with the fact I still wasn’t conformable with the mainland censorship. Now it’s more and more relaxed. Even a film like Perhaps Love, would have been difficult a few years ago. Look at Comrades, everybody enjoyed the film, even the party officials, they all liked the movie. Even the older party officials have seen the movie. But the film was banned in China. It was sensitive because it portrayed mainland Chinese leaving, going to HK. But there was nothing political with the movie, I didn’t even write about the June 4th, 1989 issue [Ed.: The Tiananmen Square massacre]. That wasn’t a part of the movie, but the film was sill not uncensored. The thing is I was very nervous about how censors would affect contemporary movies.
If you’ve noticed, most of the co-productions are period movies. In period movies, you have no dispute. It’s not about reality of life and between what is really happening on the street [of our modern cities] and what is portrayed on the big screen, there is a big difference.
But that has changed a whole lot. Maybe not enough, because there isn’t a rating system, there is no PG or whatever. Which means you cannot make horror films, you cannot make scary movies, or violent movies. There are a lot of talks about it, but it still hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen soon.
The HK filmmakers know from day one that unless you extend your film influence outside HK, HK should not have the right to make movies for the 6 millions people [living in HK]. There are just not enough people to watch movies to justify an investment. [In the past] HK was benefiting from the fact it was the Chinese filmmaking capital for Chinese overseas all over the world. But that has stopped. In the last five-ten years, it’s gone. It’s totally gone. Right now, our biggest hope is China, which has still a certain amount of censorship going on, even though [things are] better.
So I was working with Asian filmmakers. Are those really HK movies? They are not really HK movies. But even Perhaps Love isn’t a traditional HK movie. But it doesn’t matter; I still think that the spirit of HK filmmakers is very much evident inside Perhaps Love. Even though the story is about the mainland. But the approach is very specific because I am from HK. If I were from mainland, I think the story would have been very different. |