Wong Kar-wai

(Wang Jiawei)

b. 1958, Shanghai

Film director

The Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai is best known for his innovative uses of cinema to capture experiences of urban life and their relations to Hong Kong’s historical connections with mainland China and Britain. Wong moved with his family to Hong Kong when he was five years old. He studied Graphic Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic and worked as a production assistant at Hong Kong Television Broadcast (HKTVB). In the 1980s, Wong first worked as a scriptwriter and then as a film director. Wong left HKTVB in 1982, and over the next five years scripted about ten feature films, ranging from comic romances to violent melodramas.

Wong has been hailed as one of Hong Kong’s most innovative contemporary directors. As Tears Go By (1988), his directorial debut, was conceived in 1986, during work on Patrick Tam’s The Final Victory (1987). Rapturously received by critics, the film firmly established Wong Kar-wai as a talent to watch. This promise was more than fulfilled by Days of Being Wild (1991), his second feature as director and screenwriter, which boasted a phenomenal cast and created a great deal of interest on the international film festival circuit, receiving numerous awards. Since 1994, he has completed seven more pictures: Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Happy Together (1997), In the Mood of Love (2000), The Follow (2001) and 2046 (2001).

Further reading

Abbas, Ackbar (1997). Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Chow, Rey (1999). ‘Nostalgia of the New Wave: Structure in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together’ Camera Obscura 42:30–49.

Dissanayake, Wimal and Wong, Dorothy (2003). Wong Kar-Wai’s Ashes of Time. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Lalanne, Jean-Marc, Martinez, D., Abbas, A. and Ngai, J. (1997). Wong Kar-Wai. Paris: Editions Dis Voir.

Payne, Robert (2001). ‘Ways of Seeing Wild: The Cinema of Wong Kar-Wai’. Jump Cut 44 (Fall) (online journal). Available at http://www.ejumpcut.org/ejumpcut.org/archive/jc44.2001/index.html

Tambling, Jeremy. Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Tong, Janice (2003). ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Dsplacements’. In Chris Berry (ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. London: BFI, 47–55.

Yue, Audrey (2003). ‘In The Mood For Love: Intersections of Hong Kong Modernity’. In Chris Berry (ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. London: BFI, 128–36.

REN HAI