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 HKCinemagic 2

Statistics :
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Conversations with Peter Chan Ho Sun
Perhaps Love 5/7 - Page 5
Info
Author(s) : Thomas Podvin
Date : 27/10/2008
Type(s) : Interview
 
 Intext Links  
People :
Teddy Chen Tak Sum
Jacob Cheung Chi Leung
Stephen Chow Sing Chi
Allan Fung Yi Ching
Kaneshiro Takeshi
Lee Chi Ngai
Eric Tsang Chi Wai
Movies :
Dumplings : Three... Extremes
The Eye
Shaolin Soccer
Sleepless Town
Companies :
Applause Pictures
Cinema City & Films Co.
D&B Films Co.
Golden Harvest
Golden Princess Film Production Limited
Shaw Brothers
United Filmmakers Organization (UFO)
 
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Applause Pictures
HKCinemagic : You co-founded Applause Pictures in 2000 with Teddy Chen and Allan Fung to work with other Asian filmmakers.
Peter Chan : Yes, that was a vital reason. And also, the ambition was that we could think down the road of doing something that people don’t usually do. It’s just to show people that anything could be done, because if we don’t try every different ways, even if we fail, the HK film industry would shrink, shrink, shrink.

It was to experiment new ways. I am not saying that an Asian film would be like the only thing that can be done, because as you know with language problems and culture problems, an Asia film would always be a niche. And make a niche movie is difficult you know in an industry. The more you try, the more examples you get, you actually teach yourself more ways of survival. Look at The Eye or Three[Ed.: an omnibus movie directed by three Asian directors] for instance. You know how many horror movies started after Three? A lot. And that was when people thought that horror movies wouldn’t work. We probably didn’t make a lot of money with Three, but we survived, we recouped our investment. And we put three directors together, and we introduce foreign directors to local territories. At least maybe the horror film genre will last two or three years. It will go around. It will come back and then go. But at least we thought of something for the market to stop it from dying.

The UFO years
HKCinemagic : What is the difference between UFO (United Filmmakers Organization) and Applause?
Peter Chan : UFO is essentially a totally HK-centric company, because UFO was founded in the last days of the HK Golden Days in the early 1990s. That was back in the time we didn’t have to think about foreigners. That was a time when HK was like Hollywood now, where you make film for HK people, and the rest would just watch. Because all of Asia is very familiar with the HK background. It’s like, we are not New Yorkers but we watch movies made in NY and LA, because we are very familiar with that background and that set of actors.
Tom Cruise is loved by Chinese; you don’t feel he’s a foreigner. Because Americans aren’t foreigners any more. So HK, back in the 1980s and 1990s wasn’t foreign to the rest of Asia. Back in those days we could make a movie that would work in HK. If it worked in HK, it would work everywhere else. So we only had very focused projects.

I just really needed to walk down Tsim Sha Tsui [Ed.: a HK district in the Kowloon side in the mainland, opposite the HK island] and I knew what movie I could make. If I saw somebody doing something at a bus stop, that inspired me to make a movie and people in Korea, Japan or Thailand would watch it.
But today, I cannot walk down Tsim Sha Tsui and find inspiration. Because what happens in Tsim Sha Tsui is irrelevant to the rest of the world. So today at Applause, we have to think of so many things, I have to flight to everywhere. It’s very tiring, half of the time you’re finding inspiration and half of the time you are busy making deals, to make sure that these films could be exported before you make them.
That’s the difference between Applause and UFO.

HKCinemagic : Is UFO still in activity?
Peter Chan : UFO comprised first of three, then five, then six people: filmmakers, writers, directors and producers. By 1996, when I wrapped Comrades, I knew that the HK film industry was coming to an end, and we couldn’t deny it. The whole industry stopped in 1997 --that was the bottom line.

All the professional investors, long time film investors, like Golden Harvest, Golden Princess that financed Cinema City, or D&B, all those studios closed down. Shaw Brothers even closed down earlier, in the mid 1980s. So Golden Harvest began to be a distribution company. They don’t produce movies anymore; they instead ask you to make movies to supply them. So we knew that, from that day on, the HK film entertainment industry was replaced by videos, by mostly videos and music.

Producers want to buy videos from the Golden Harvest or Cinema City [catalogues]. But now, they don’t make movies, so what are they going to do with their videos? ?They’ve got to invest money to make movies. They put money to make big movies, with the idea they can benefit from the video distribution. These people have a very small mind --they’ve a video mind. Even Stephen Chow’s movie Shaolin Soccer is financed by Universe [Ed.: a major DVD/VCD distributor from HK]. The bottom line for them is video. No matter how big the movie is, they only think about video exploitation. And video is like bucks to us filmmakers. Videos are the most stable source of returns, of recoupment for film investors. You cannot do without it because it’s the only stable source of revenues. So we need that money to make movies. At the same time, video is the movie biggest enemy. You cannot live without it but you’ll die eventually with it. So it has become a very unhealthy situation. So when I decided to leave, I didn’t decide to go to the US, I only decided to take a break and observe and see what was gonna happen before I jumped back to HK.

So I was in L.A., I decided to make a film with DreamWorks [The Love Letter] and then I came back to HK to Applause. But when I left, a year after Comrades, Chee Li [Lee Chi Ngai], my partner in UFO left to go to Japan to do a movie, Sleepless Town with Takeshi Kaneshiro. When both of us left, there was still Jacob Cheung in UFO, who eventually left a year later. And then Jane the writer left, Chen left.

What was left of UFO was just the administration and Eric Tsang the producer. The label is still there because they didn’t want to get rid of the label, but all the creative elements left. So technically UFO isn’t closed down, but the people who have made UFO are all gone.

 
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