Clara Law
Birth : 1957-05-29,
History
Clara Law Cheuk-yiu was born in 1957 in Macau. She is a graduate of The University of Hong Kong with a degree in English Literature. From 1982 to 1985, she studied directing and screenwriting at the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom. Her graduation film, They Say the Moon is Fuller Here (1985), won the Silver Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival. After returning to Hong Kong in 1985, she joined the drama unit of Radio Television Hong Kong’s (RTHK) television division and directed over twenty single-episode dramas.
Law turned her sights on film in 1988 and directed her first dramatic feature The Other Half and the Other Half. She then directed the Lillian Lee Pik-wah-scripted The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus the following year. In 1992, she won the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival and the European Art Theatres Association’s Best Picture award with Autumn Moon. Her 1993 period drama Temptation of a Monk was selected to compete for the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival and won Best Picture at the Cr�teil International Women’s Film Festival in France.
In 1995, Law relocated to Australia with her husband Eddie Fong while continuing her filmmaking career. Her 1996 film Floating Life was awarded the Silver Leopard at Locarno while collecting Grand Prix Asturias and Best Director prizes at Gij�n International Film Festival. While 2000’s The Goddess of 1967 won Law the Best Director award at the Chicago Film Festival, a young Rose Byrne—then a little known Australian actress—was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at Venice for her performance in the film. Letters to Ali, Law’s 2004 documentary about the life of a young asylum seeker in Australia, was selected as one of the 100 greatest films in the history of Australian cinema. She eventually returned to Chinese-language cinema with the Hong Kong- Chinese production Like a Dream (2009).
Law’s husband, Eddie Fong, is also her long time collaborator. Most of her films were written and produced by Fong. In 2010, they made the short film Red Earth.
Screenplay
A filmmaker and a piano student, who first meet in Australia, try to make sense of a past imbued with mystery in Macau and an uncertain future in Hong Kong.
Director
A filmmaker and a piano student, who first meet in Australia, try to make sense of a past imbued with mystery in Macau and an uncertain future in Hong Kong.
Script
Fan Ruyi, a detective, finds himself framed after getting a top secret mission. Along the way he meets a blind performer and a powerful warlord's daughter that further complicates his quest to clear his name.
Director
Fan Ruyi, a detective, finds himself framed after getting a top secret mission. Along the way he meets a blind performer and a powerful warlord's daughter that further complicates his quest to clear his name.
Writer
In a hotel room, a man is waiting for a mysterious woman, with whom he would watch the sunset. However, as he is stood up, the sun never goes down, scorching the earth day after day.
Director
In a hotel room, a man is waiting for a mysterious woman, with whom he would watch the sunset. However, as he is stood up, the sun never goes down, scorching the earth day after day.
Director
Four short films by four Hong Kong directors.
Writer
While on a business trip in Shanghai, a man sees a woman he has had recurring dreams of.
Director
While on a business trip in Shanghai, a man sees a woman he has had recurring dreams of.
Director
A woman and her family find themselves trying to get a young refugee boy out of a harsh Australian detention centre.
Writer
A rich, young businessman travels to Australia with the intention of buying a 1967 Citroën DS. Once he arrives, things do not go to plan, and he must drive the DS into the outback alongside a blind young woman in order to track down its seller.
Director
A rich, young businessman travels to Australia with the intention of buying a 1967 Citroën DS. Once he arrives, things do not go to plan, and he must drive the DS into the outback alongside a blind young woman in order to track down its seller.
Screenplay
An aging Hong Kong couple move to Australia with their two youngest sons. They stay with a daughter who has already begun a successful career. Meanwhile their eldest daughter lives in Germany and their eldest son remains in Hong Kong. The film explores the different ways the family members cope with isolation and alienation.
Director
An aging Hong Kong couple move to Australia with their two youngest sons. They stay with a daughter who has already begun a successful career. Meanwhile their eldest daughter lives in Germany and their eldest son remains in Hong Kong. The film explores the different ways the family members cope with isolation and alienation.
Visual Effects Supervisor
Private investigator Jacky Cheung is adrift. He has separated from his wife (Kathy Chow) and misses his young daughter. His next assignment seems fairly simple: he must track down a troublesome teenage girl (Mavis Fan) and return her home to China. Powerful behind the scenes forces soon become apparent, however, and plunge our intrepid hero into greater trouble than he's ever known.
Director
Insurrection deposes the tyrannical first emperor of China during the evil Qin Dynasty. Warrior/general Xiang Yu and the cunning peasant Liu Pang join forces to win through civil war. Xiang Yu's weakness for Lady Yu combine with Liu Pang's treachery result in Liu founding the legendary Han dynasty
Director
Four women filmmakers examine sexuality in this anthology. Segment 1 is entitled "Let's Talk About Sex" and is the story of an aspiring actress whose day job is as a phone-sex operator. Tiring of listening to callers' fantasies, she finds a caller who is willing to listen to hers. Segment 2 is called "Taboo Palor" and tells the story of two lesbians, who, for variety, pick up a man for sex. He ends up getting more than he bargained for. Segment 3 is "Wonton Soup." Here an Australian-Chinese man tries to rekindle his affair with a Chinese woman by returning to their roots: both in the kitchen and in the bedroom.
Director
Adrian (Tim Lounibos) is a Chinese Australian visiting his Hong Kong girlfriend Ann (Hayly Man). The relationship is already in deep trouble because both are suffering from an identity crisis. Adrian is “yellow on the outside but white in the middle.” The solutionhe thinks is a crash course for Adrian by his uncle on lovemaking techniques using a thousand-year-old Chinese sex manual. Naturally, Adrian's newly acquired skills do not work. The problem, as it turns out, is not that Adrian is “not Chinese enough” but that, according to Ann, he does not know “wonton soup does not exist in Hong Kong.” The young couple's real problem, Law seems to suggest, is that they live in an eclectic and transnational cultural environment yet they are not aware of its implication for their mosaic identities. Wonton Soup is Law's contribution to the omnibus film Erotique, a collaborative effort by four women directors from four continents that bills itself as “women's erotica”.
Director
Near the beginning of the Tang dynasty, in 7th century China, General Shi Yan-sheng is tricked into leaving the crown prince unguarded. The crown prince is murdered by one of his brothers who then becomes emperor. Shi retreats to a monastery, perhaps to hide, perhaps to plan a coup. When his loyal troops as well as the princess he desires are slain, he seeks refuge in a remote, abandoned monastery where an aged abbot schools him with practical, earthy teachings. The emperor's forces pursue Shi: first a woman, then a general seek to overpower him with lust and might. Over the course of the film, the reds of battle give way to blues of meditation.
Director
A Japanese tourist, Tokio, meets a 15-year-old Hong Kong girl and her grandmother left behind in Hong Kong while their family emigrates to Canada.
Director
Five young men threw themselves with heart and soul into the work force. They have different approaches and different life styles.
Director
Li Hung is a desperate mother who tried for years to obtain an American visa to study to create a better life for her husband Nansan and her son. But after a short time, she loses contact with her family, and her husband, Nansan smuggles himself to New York to find her.
Director
A woman is cursed with beauty in China and becomes prey for men. Raped by the prefect of her ballet school and sent to work camp, she escapes to decadent Hong Kong by marrying a wealthy banker. She finds herself drawn to sadomasochistic affairs and in flashbacks discovers she is the reincarnation of a famous courtesan of ancient China.
Director
Clara Law's debut feature deals with her common theme of emigration as two people, man and woman, from separate couples, have to room together while their spouses are in America to finalize the Canadian citizenship process.
Writer
In the early 1980s, director Clara Law Cheuk-yiu left her position as a producer at Radio Television Hong Kong’s TV division and became the first Chinese student at the National Film and Television School in the UK. Her graduation project, They Say the Moon Is Fuller Here, became a feature-length film and won the Silver Plaque award at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.
In the early 1980s, director Clara Law Cheuk-yiu left her position as a producer at Radio Television Hong Kong’s TV division and became the first Chinese student at the National Film and Television School in the UK. Her graduation project, They Say the Moon Is Fuller Here, became a feature-length film and won the Silver Plaque award at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.
Director
In the early 1980s, director Clara Law Cheuk-yiu left her position as a producer at Radio Television Hong Kong’s TV division and became the first Chinese student at the National Film and Television School in the UK. Her graduation project, They Say the Moon Is Fuller Here, became a feature-length film and won the Silver Plaque award at the 1985 Chicago Film Festival.
