Biography
Fruit Chan was born in China but in 1969 he immigrated with his parents to Hong Kong. As a child, Chan, watched a soviet film that sparked his interest and love for movies. In Middle School he held a part time job that allowed him to work in a theatre projection room. His first film screening was of a traditional Chinese opera directed by no other than John Woo. He continued his interest in film later on at the Hong Kong Film Culture Centre, a small film club, where he studied script writing and directing. In 1982, after only one year of working at the Hong Kong Film Culture Centre he started his career in the film industry. He began his career as an assistant director to David Lai Dai-Wai in the film Mid-Night Girls. He later worked as an assistant director to mainstream directors Jackie Chan, Kirk Wong, Ronny Yu, and Shu Kei. His lucky break came in 1991 when a film he was working with stopped its production. Chan took this as an opportunity; he used the same studio to direct Finale in Blood starring Hong Kong film star Andy Lau. However, the outcome of the first of his own films was highly praised by the critics rather than the public. In 1994 he collected a total of 500,000 HKD and film-materials left over by other productions to begin directing his award winning Made in Hong Kong. After Made in Hong Kong came out he was thought of as the hope for Hong Kong cinema by fellow Hong Kong filmmakers for challenging the stable model of Hong Kong filmmaking. He had become the first filmmaker to, independently of the big studios, challenge the genre of Hong Kong films and make realistic films about the political and social situations going on in Hong Kong at the time. The film was the first part to a trilogy that included The Longest Summer and Little Cheung.
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