[footage of Bruce pummelling Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon]

V.O.: For me, the appeal of the genre was less the kung fu or the swordfighting than the spectacle of male bodies in action, very often half naked. The master of the genre was Zhang Cher, who discovered stars like Wong Yu, Di Long, David Chiang, and Fu Shung. Actually, Bruce Lee wasn't really my type. I preferred Wong Yu, an ex-swimming champion from Guang Jo. Unfortunately, I can only show these images from his films. Shaw Brothers, the company which produced them in the 60's, wouldn't allow us to use any clips.

CHANG CHEH: At that time, Chinese cinema was unique in the world. No other film industry gave top billing to women. Women stars in western films still come second today. Back then, even Ingrid Bergman got second billing. I felt the Chinese emphasis on women stars was strange, so I set out to make very masculine films. It was one way to move Chinese cinema forward. 'Martial chivalry' films were an old Chinese genre. They showed swordplay for its own sake. But King Hu and I set out to make more of fight scenes. We tried to make the fights express ideas and themes. Realism didn't come into it. We explored our fantasies.

[an amiable, brotherly clip from The Slaughter in Xian, 1990]

V.O.: One of the action stars who became popular in Zhang Che's films was Di Long.

TI LUNG: Men relate to each other much as they relate to women. I agree with Chang Cheh about this. Men have their own charisma, their own way of moving, that can be attractive, too.

PEGGY CHIAO, CRITIC: Those Chang Cheh films are all about male bonding. He worships the male body. All those muscles, all that nudity. It's all very sexual. I think it's his vision of male paradise! Very interesting.

CHANG CHEH: It's my reading of a Chinese tradition, nothing else. No Chinese reader thinks of homosexuals when he reads a book like The Three Kingdoms. Nobody thinks the heroes of Water Margin are gay.

V.O.: There's a strong emphasis on phallic weaponry, bodily penetration and even disembowelment in many of Zhang's films. I asked him how much he was aware of the symbolic undercurrents.

CHANG CHEH: Freud tells us that everything has sexual origins. He finds sexual symbolism everywhere. Swords, knives, even guns can be male sexual symbols.

[A foreboding clip from The Slaughter in Xian starts.]

CHANG CHEH: I don't know if it's true or not.

[As the Slaughter in Xian clip continues, a man is graphically impaled by being lowered onto a two-foot-long spike.]

V.O.: I wondered what considerations Zhang had in mind when he cast his action heroes, especially when he introduced newcomers, like Wong Yu.

CHANG CHEH: Wang Yu and Ti Lung were traditional hero types, tall and well-built. The exceptional one was David Chiang. I chose him because I liked him, and I liked the fact that he wasn't a traditional hero. Men in old Chinese films were weak, book-reading types. The swordplay genre gave us the classical hero type: tall, well-built, square torso. David is nothing like that, so I took a risk with him. There's an attractive sense of evil about him, too.

[two clips from A Better Tomorrow]

V.O.: John Woo was Zhang Cher's assistant director on several Shaw Brothers films in the early 70's. He started directing kung fu films himself soon after, but the films which eventually led him to Hollywood were his gangster thrillers of the mid-80's: A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and A Bullet in the Head.

CHANG CHEH: I doubt I had any direct influence on John Woo. Maybe we have similar tastes. Maybe that's why people compare our films. He's obsessed with love/hate relationships and inner turmoil. That's why his A Better Tomorrow resembles my Blood Brothers [a film John Woo worked on]. The parallels are obvious.

V.O.: In The Killer, John Woo shows the intense bond which develops between a charismatic hitman and the cop who sets out to catch him. Scenes like this one, in which the cop helps the hitman to extract a bullet from his arm seem consciously homoerotic. I asked John Woo if he saw it that way himself.

JOHN WOO, DIRECTOR: Any homo-erotic feelings in this are unconscious. There may well be some, I'm not sure. I just set out to express emotion very directly.

[clip from The Killer, in which Danny Lee says, "His eyes are so intense. Easy to empathize. Eyes full of passion."]

V.O.: I wondered if John Woo would feel able to include scenes like these in the Hollywood films he makes now.

JOHN WOO: To make films here like the ones I made in Hong Kong -- films on male bonding or 'martial chivalry' -- I'd have to work outside the mainstream. Otherwise, no way.

Interview with Stanley Kwan on Yang & Yin: Gender in Chinese

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Cinema, by Linda Lai and Kim Choi, from Hong Kong Panorama 96-97

Interview with Stanley Kwan on Yang & Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema

Interviewed by Linda Lai & Kim Choi

Collation by Linda Lai
Translated by Anita Lee

Stanley KWAN was born in 1957 in Hong Kong. In 1976, he entered the Department of Communications at Baptist College and enrolled at TVB's artiste training class. The following year, he worked part-time at TVB before becoming a full-time production assistant. In 1979, he left the station to become an assistant director to Peter Yung, Ronnie Yu, Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, Yim Ho, Leong Po-chih and Tony Au. He made his directorial début in 1985 with Women, followed by Love Unto Waste (86), Rouge (88), Full Moon in New York (89), Centre Stage (92), Siqin Gaowa Special (video, 93), Two Sisters (TV, 93), Red Rose White Rose (94) and Yang and Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema (docu video, 96).

During the hour-long interview, the interviewers experienced with Stanley Kwan, through his recollection of days gone by, his course of breakthrough, which was rough but also quite comforting. There was also his friendship with Edward Lam. Unconsciously, Kwan saw Yang & Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema as the material embodiment of his own "coming out."

INTERVIEWER: How was the script of Yang & Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema conceived and developed?

STANLEY KWAN: Cinema celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1995. BFI [British Institute] invited 18 directors from various places, each to make a film of 52 minutes long, about the development of their respective cinemas in the past one hundred years. The Chinese cinema section was intended for Shu Kei, but he was busy with Hu-du-men. So Tony Rayns suggested that BFI should contact me, and I agreed to take over. I have never made a documentary before. Though BFI asked us to portray history, it also asked the directors to do it in a personal way. According to BFI, the film should not be a documentary, but a film about cinema made by a certain filmmaker. As I have only made fiction films (except for commercials and short films), I started out thinking about Hong Kong's New Wave, Taiwan's New Cinema and contemporary cinema of mainland China. But then I realized that it was like rushing into a Chinese herbalist store, pulling out every drawer of the medicine chest, and then taking bits and pieces here and there. But what was the final prescription, I just didn't know. So I talked to Edward Lam. When we went to the Berlin Film Festival with Centre Stage in 1992, a German director asked us to make a short film for a project called Erotic Tales. The participants would come from 12 different places. I developed some ideas with Edward, and told him that I wanted to talk about my father.

INTERVIEWER: From what you said, were you trying to deconstruct your mixed feelings for your father when you were making this film?

STANLEY KWAN: True. You see, there were no father images in my previous films. So we thought that it might be possible to look for father images in other films, to fulfill my expectations for my father.

INTERVIEWER: Now that production is finished and the film has been screened, do you feel that you have successfully dealt with your feelings about your father? Or are you still a bit confused?

STANLEY KWAN: I think I have dealt with those feelings successfully. I don't have any more hang-ups. Some people asked me if I would feel more at ease after I have "come out". Or if homosexuality would become the subject matter of a large part of my future films. I don't think so. I think with my character, I value the process of experiencing and deconstructing my own problems, more than having to make a contribution to the gay movement. Doing this film does not mean declaring that I am going to do something for the gay movement. I don't want to give myself a label -- that I am going to make gay films, or use my films to promote the gay movement.

INTERVIEWER: In the later part of the film, there is a conversation between you and your mother. You asked your mother very frankly how she looked at the relationship of you and your partner. Some people would focus on this part of the film, and even "magnify" this part, as if "coming out of the closet" is your chief aim in the film.

STANLEY KWAN: I don't know if friends were joking when they said after seeing the film, "the first part of the film is an hors d'oeuvre, while the plate de résistance is really the conversation with your mother." What I thought was without this conversation, the audience might not understand my intention. I've come to dislike obscurity more and more. Subtlety is different from obscurity. When I make fiction films, there is always subtlety because it is close to me. I definitely don't like obscurity; I don't evade the issue by beating around the bush. Without this conversation, people would have asked me why I was looking for such a thing with this subject matter. They would have been very obscure. But what kind of an answer would they have expected from me? An obvious one or an obscure one? What kind of answer should I have given them?

INTERVIEWER: Are you comfortable with what you have done?

STANLEY KWAN: Yes. But I became very concerned about my mother's feelings. After the film was aired on television, I got very sensitive. I was all ears every time a relative phoned us up. The only thing I want to apologize to my mother is that she has to face up to things that I need not.

INTERVIEWER: When I was watching the film, I felt that she was giving you her support with the best of intentions. She is also like all mothers, who go out of their ways to understand and accept their children, no matter how much they disagree with them. I have a feeling that she is like this.

STANLEY KWAN: Certainly. But I feel that my mother, being who she is -- a 60-year-old plus woman without too much education, who has worked hard all her life and who has never had too many chances to know the outside world -- has already achieved a lot.

INTERVIEWER: How did you decide on the film clips?

STANLEY KWAN: Actually, I had decided on which directors to approach when I discussed the script with Edward Lam. It was all planned. Like Ang Lee, I had decided on him at the very beginning, and it was to be quite a lengthy coverage.

INTERVIEWER: Beside the interwiew with Zhang Yimou, who else's have you left out?

STANLEY KWAN: Jiang Wen's, Ann Hui's and Wu Yigong's.

INTERVIEWER: King Hu's name appeared on the acknowledgment list.

STANLEY KWAN: I thanked him for giving us many films, though we ended up not using a lot of them. There are also segments of actresses of the older generation that we didn't use, like Li Lili's. For me, the 30s is the golden age of Chinese cinema. So I have interviewed many more film workers who are still alive but are not so well-known, like Huang Shaofen, and some cinematographers and recordists.

INTERVIEWER: In the film, you put forward the relationship of your sexual orientation, family background and film experience.

STANLEY KWAN: My desire and my feelings for my father in my youth took effect on my cinema-going experience, not filmmaking experience. I loved to watch Wang Yu, and I imagined touching Wang's arm when I was touching father's thigh. I carried a water bottle in my school days. When I drank from it, I imagined kissing Wang. When I gave my father a massage, I watched his back and thought of Wang's martial arts films. That's pretty much the relationship between cinema and my family. Turning to my filmmaking, even though I still have the same feelings, I have not projected them onto my films. On the other hand, my own sexuality was mainly projected onto female characters. So the relationship is different for different stages.

INTERVIEWER: In your future films, will you look at your subject differently even if you still tell stories about women?

STANLEY KWAN: Yes. I often said that it is very important for a director, an actor or anyone doing creative work, to know how to get close and at the same time stay at a distance. When you get close, you give your passions and experiences. But you need to pull yourself away after a certain period of time. For me, I am beginning to learn this -- to get close and stay far away, at the same time.

INTERVIEWER: How do you evaluate the films you made in the past? Those with women as subject matter?

STANLEY KWAN: I think I have indulged too much in female characters. Rouge is an obvious example: whatever pain the character Fleur suffers I also suffer, and whatever pain I suffer I want Fleur suffer with. From now on, I will be more relaxed. I think I can relate my own feelings with my characters. But I want to start trying not to force my own feelings on my characters as frequently as before. I hope to make progress in this aspect.

INTERVIEWER: Did you prepare your mother psychologically before shooting?

STANLEY KWAN: No, didn't. I'm sure it is not only today that my mother learned that her son is gay. But Chinese people just find it difficult to talk about it. I have an upcoming project about how a mother handles the fact that her son is gay. Both the producer and scriptwriter have talked with my mother. I was not present when they did the talking. I told them before that they could be straightforward and could ask questions directly. Because I think mother and I both know it in our hearts. In the end they still chose to beat around the bush, and let my mother tell them something. But in the relationship between me and my mother, like the conversation at the end of the film, there's nothing to struggle against.

INTERVIEWER: You emphasized in the film that Chinese cinema handled gender and sex much earlier and in a more open way than foreign cinema. Could you elaborate your argument?

STANLEY KWAN: Frankly speaking, I'm not very familiar with the early history of foreign cinema. I think it is more like wishful thinking on my part. Talking with people involved in the former Shanghai film industry, I felt quite strongly that the values portrayed in the Chinese cinema of the 30s, set against the political climate, moral standards and social conditions of those years, were inducive [sic] to something more open and free.

INTERVIEWER: Is there anything in particular that you were unhappy with after finishing this film?

STANLEY KWAN: Yes, the fact that I could not have got hold of clips from Shaw Brothers productions. I consider it a defect. They let me look at some of their films in their archive. I saw some movies about revenge, like The Golden Sparrow [sic] , and I told them which segments would be suitable. They didn't say "no" until very late, when I had to leave for Venice. If I had known it earlier, I would have shot the part on Zhang Che (Chang Cheh) differently.

INTERVIEWER: Finally, please talk about your working relationship with Edward Lam.

STANLEY KWAN: I can become very stubborn at some stage. But before that, I am "easy". I think Edward and I have a good chemistry going. He likes giving people a kick, and because of this, I would ask myself what would happen if I moved a step forward.

INTERVIEWER: Are you entering a stage where you will engage homosexuality as subject matter?

STANLEY KWAN: This comes quite naturally.

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