Daniel's Action Web: TSUI HARK (biography)

sui Hark (original name Xu3 Wen2 Guang1), born in Vietnam in February 1951. At the age of thirteen, he started filming 8mm movies. In 1966, Tsui Hark relocated to Hong Kong. Three years later, he completed his education at the University of Texas. In 1970, he co-directed a 45-minute documentary "From Spikes to Spindles". 1975 saw Tsui Hark moving on to New York where he became an editor for a local Chinese newspaper. He was also involved in the development of a community theatre group and worked on several oriental-slanted cable t.v. projects.

A Chinese Ghost Story Tsui Hark returned to Hong Kong in 1977 and begun work as a television producer for TVB. In 1979, he made his directorial debut with "The Butterfly Murders". Tsui Hark should be noted for introducing Hollywood-style special effects to the Hong Kong film industry. This came in the form of his 1983 swordsfighting fantasy "ZU: Warriors from the Magic Mountain".

Tsui Hark was producer for THE KILLER In the following year, Tsui Hark established Film Workshop (Dian4 Ying3 Gong1 Zuo4 Shi4) and his works include directing "Shanghai Blues" (1984), "The Working Class" (1985) and "Peking Opera Blues" (1986). In addition, he was also producer to John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow" (1986) and Ching Siu Tung's "A Chinese Ghost Story" (1987). Tsui Hark was instrumental in reviving the "swordsfighting" and "kung-fu" film genres in the early 1990s. Shanghai Grand The "Once Upon a Time in China" movie series made Mainland actor Jet Lee a mega-star and "Swordsman II" revived the career of Taiwanese actress Lin Ching Hsia. Tsui Hark has completed, BLACK MASK (a.k.a. LEGEND OF DARKMAN) his last movie in Hong Kong before leaving for the States to film THE COLONY.