One night in Shanghai in 1937, Tung Kwok-man (Kenny Bee) and Shu Pei-ling (Sylvia Chang) meet in the dark under a bridge to escape a Japanese air raid. They vow to reunite under the bridge once the war is over, but they are separated before they can exchange names. After the war, they return to Shanghai and, by a twist of fate, end up living in the same building, unaware of their previous encounter. Shu takes in a homeless girl named Stool (Sally Yeh), who falls in love with Tung, and a love triangle quickly ensues.

Shanghai Blues was the first film produced by the Hong Kong-based Film Workshop, which was established by director Tsui Hark and producer Nansun Shi. Unlike mainstream big-budget comedy films from Cinema City, which Tsui frequently worked with, the film focuses on character development and features a solid dramatic structure, but nevertheless still retains an element of comedy typical of Cinema City films, such as caricatures and slapstick scenes in confined spaces. Following the victory in the war of resistance against Japan, the world was still in chaos, and the protagonist left Shanghai at a time of profound social change. The film was premiered two weeks after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 and is testament to Tsui’s palpable sense of the times.

The screening on 16 November will be followed by a panel discussion with filmmakers and film critics that have worked with Tsui Hark, moderated by M+ Curator-at-large of Hong Kong Film and Media Li Cheuk-to.

Tsui Hark (b. 1951, Vietnam) spent his early years in Vietnam before moving to Hong Kong, where he completed his high school education. He then moved to the United States where he graduated from the film programme at the University of Texas at Austin. After a short spell of work in the US, he returned to Hong Kong and became a director at TVB. Later, during a brief stint at Commercial Television, he directed The Gold Dagger Romance (1978). The Butterfly Murders (1979), Tsui’s feature film directorial debut, was hailed as one of the early examples of the Hong Kong New Wave. Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980) faced censorship from the colonial government for its uncompromising vision. Tsui would break ground with Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) by introducing Hollywood special effects to the wuxia genre. For much of the 1980s, Tsui was one of the creative masterminds behind the hitmakers Cinema City.

In 1984, he and Nansun Shi founded Film Workshop, which launched with the critically acclaimed Shanghai Blues. Tsui and his company found much success in several popular long-running film series, including A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), The Swordsman (1990), and Once Upon a Time in China (1991). In a career spanning over four decades, Tsui has not stopped finding new ways to reinvent himself as a director, writer, and producer. His take on the wuxia genre has continued to evolve in The Blade (1995) and the Detective Dee series. His Chinese war epic, The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014), impressed audiences in China and abroad for his creative storytelling and eye for spectacle.