Po-Chih Leong
| Po-Chih Leong | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Leong Po-Chih December 31, 1939 England, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Director |
| Known for | The Wisdom of Crocodiles |
Leong Po-Chih (梁普智; b. 31 December 1939) is a Chinese–British film director.
Leong, one of three children, was born in England in 1939. He attended the London Film School, before embarking on a philosophy degree. After graduation he was taken on by the BBC as a trainee film editor and later worked on a variety of productions, including the long-running series Panorama. He went to Hong Kong to help set up the film unit at the new television station TVB. As an executive producer he also directed a number of entertainment programmes, including The Star Show. He left TVB in 1969 to form Adpower, one of the first commercial production companies in Hong Kong.
Leong's first film, Jumping Ash (1976), an action film set in a drug underworld starring Josephine Siao, was one of the two top-grossing films of the season, and, at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Festival, was described as "the advance guard of the (Hong Kong) New Wave". He went on to direct a range of genres from drama to action movies, comedies, horror and satire, in both English and Chinese. Banana Cop (1984) was the story of a British–Chinese policeman who returns to Hong Kong to seek help with a case, was the genesis for his first British film Ping Pong (1986), made for UK's Channel 4, the first English feature film set in Sohos Chinatown.
After Banana Cop, Leong turned to history for inspiration and made the award-winning movie Hong Kong 1941 (1984), starring Chow Yun Fat, set in Hong Kong during the early days of the Japanese invasion.Hong Kong 1941 was an oblique comment on the 1984 deal between Britain and China about Hong Kong's future. Leong and his film maker daughter, Sze Wing Leong, directed and filmed the effect of this deal up to and beyond the handover in Riding the Tiger (1997-1998), an eight part, observational documentary series for the UK's Channel 4.
...
Wikipedia