Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 
 
Moderator: Lorna TEE, producer
Guest Speaker:

Mabel CHEUNG
CHANG Hing-kai
Lawrence CHENG
PANG Ho-cheung
Chapman TO
Derek TSANG
 
 

MODERATOR: Hello everyone, good afternoon. Thank you for your time. Today we are discussing "Hong Kong Cinema – Beyond Co-Production." We want to talk about alternatives other than Hong Kong cinema collaborating with Chinese cinema. Today we are quite honored to have some prolific filmmakers with us. First, we have Mabel Cheung. She is here representing Echoes of a Rainbow as its executive producer. Now let's take a look at the film's trailer.

 

First, we would like to congratulate Mabel. The film has received top honors at the Berlinale this year; and its box office has been spectacular. Let's talk a bit about the film itself, about its production, workings and such.

 

MABEL CHEUNG: Thank you. Well, for a long time we thought about this film. We just wanted to shoot it. The subject of the story is quite risky: it's not a very popular story. It's only about a shoemaker's humble family in the 1960s. We tried to look for investors, but people were not convinced. "No one would want to watch something from the past," they said, "It wouldn't do well in the China market either." And production budget was quite high, at a similar level to shooting commercial films. And our cast was expensive too, with Sandra Ng and Simon Yam. Even John Shum told us, "Let's hope we won't suffer that much of a loss." Later, we asked our actors for their lowest fees; we didn't get much of a fee ourselves either. We managed to cut down our budget from 16 millions to 12 millions, the lowest budget that we can accept in order to make a good production. Then John said to us, "Let's shoot it … let's go to the government." And the government gave us funding.

 

MODERATOR: So who else funded the project?

 

MABEL CHEUNG: It was Mei Ah, they also funded us. In the end, John's company, Dadi, also asked Mei Ah to finance us in this project. Mei Ah thought that DVD sales would help later on.

 

MODERATOR: So the final budget was $12 million. Is it from Hong Kong's Dadi Entertainment? Or is it from China?

 

MABEL CHEUNG: Both Hong Kong and China.

 

MODERATOR: Besides the Berlinale and Hong Kong, where will the film be shown?

 

MABEL CHEUNG: On April 16th it will be released in mainland China. Other territories are still being negotiated, hopefully Korea and Japan. Mei Ah is helping us with Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan.
 
 

MODERATOR: Please give a warm welcome to Chan Hing-kai. He is the producer and director of La Comedie Humaine. Let's take a look at the film's trailer.

 

Let's invite the director to tell us about the plot.

 

CHAN HING-KAI: I felt my last film, La Lingerie, was a bit too commercial. That was the year that marked the centenary of film. So I thought to myself, let's make a film about film.

 

I discussed it with my colleagues at work. We all thought, since our common friend was film, let's make a film about film and friendship. Actually, the film isn't very commercial.

 

MODERATOR: But the trailer is quite commercial.

 

CHAN HING-KAI: It's just edited that way. We wanted to break the rules a little. Besides support from the Film Development Fund, we also funded this project ourselves. A big thank you to Mr. Charles Heung of China Star who supported us with funding – although we had to bear the losses, if there were any.

 

MODERATOR: What was the budget for this film?

 

CHAN HING-KAI: At first we aimed for $7.5 million. If it weren't for the Film Development Fund, post-production would have been very difficult, along with certain scenes in the film. So I must say thank you to the Film Development Fund in that regard.

 

MODERATOR: So what was the final budget?

 

CHAN HING-KAI: Actually, I don't know because I don't do the numbers. But I imagine it would be about the same.

 

MODERATOR: Let's ask the executive producer later. Next we have Lawrence Cheng Tan-shui. He is here today as the producer of Break Up Club. Let us take a look at the trailer.
 
 

 

- End of Part 1 -

>>> Continue with Part 2