Tsui Hark may be a 61-year-old industry veteran with more than 60 films under his belt,but he still has the heart of a young fan. Crammed onto his neat office shelves are Godzilla figurines,comic books,action figures,Asian deity statues and books on everything from Stanley Kubrick to Chinese travel. Tsui has been jetting between Hong Kong and Beijing to finish post-production work on The Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate,a 3D action film that was promoted during the Cannes Film Festival in May,and is due for worldwide release at the end of the year. He will be working again with action star Jet Li,who first gained wide attention through Tsuis six-part Once Upon A Time In China (1991-1997) epic. He also received a lifetime achievement award recently at the 10th New York Asian Film Festival. The festival highlighted some of his older films,like the original New Dragon Gate Inn (1992). Some news reports have hyped the new Dragon Gate (2011) as the worlds first 3D martial arts film. (That is,unless you count Kung Fu Panda 2,and most devotees of the genre do not.) But Tsui,who is known for drawing heavily on cinematic history,was hesitant to call it a real first. There were 3D films around when I was a kid, he said. Remember those red and blue glasses? Of course,its very different now. The old one made you feel kind of dizzy. But Im very careful saying that anything is entirely new. Most new generation 3D films have relied heavily on animation or computer effects,but Tsui wanted to preserve the live action and outdoor shoots of traditional martial arts epics when they began shooting in Beijing late last year. The delicate new digital cameras struggled to keep up with him. The sand storms of Northern China blew dust into the rigs and cameras. Also,the low temperatures froze up the batteries and the lubricants inside the machines. Tsui said. At one point,we had to wrap the cameras in layers of cloth. Particular attention was paid to the fight scenes. If the action is too fast,it can look flattened on the screen, Tsui explained. With 3D,its even more important that the action is seen moving through a particular depth and space. Tsui said that he did not want the technology to overwhelm or dictate the choreography. Tsui was born into a large family in Chinas Guangdong Province,and lived in Vietnam as a child before moving to Hong Kong as a teenager. When Tsui emerged as a leading name in the Hong Kong New Wave in the late 1970s and 1980s,he was one of the few to do historic martial arts films,like Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain (1983),which was also screened at the New York festival this month. People would ask me,Isnt the New Wave supposed to be about films with modern subjects? But I felt that Chinese culture,art and history were amazing,and filled with wonderful stories, he said. Maybe some people thought I was old-fashioned,but I did it because nobody else was doing it. Still,Tsui directed and co-wrote an iconic work of the New Wave,which was defined by vernacular Hong Kong Cantonese slang,gritty urban backdrops and an unblinking look at modern society. Dangerous Encounter Of The First Kind (1980) was censored by the then-British government for its graphic depictions of youth violence. More than 30 years later,the full,uncut version was screened publicly in Hong Kong for the first time on June 4,during the Noir film festival. In November,he will begin filming The Taking Of Tiger Mountain. He has begun to write the screenplay for another Detective Dee movie. Joyce Hor-ChunglauNYT
