“If you don’t love film, don’t bother.” This was Hong Kong filmmaker Peter Chan’s advice to aspiring filmmakers at SGIFF.
Reflecting on a career spanning more than three decades, the director of Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996) and The Warlords (2007) spoke candidly about the hardships of filmmaking and the importance of remaining faithful to one’s creative vision.
Chan’s relationship with cinema began with his father, director Chan Tung Man. Growing up, he witnessed both his father’s enthusiasm for new projects and repeated disappointment with investors, studios and audiences. Although his father initially discouraged him from pursuing filmmaking, Chan eventually followed in his footsteps.
“I think he was both worried, but also happy, in a way, that we loved the same thing,” Chan reminisced. “That’s the very strong bond between my dad and I.”
Looking back on the different stages of his career, Chan offered a guiding principle: “Go with the flow and know when to stop.”
For Chan, this meant adapting to changing audience preferences without losing sight of his artistic convictions. In the 1990s, he co-founded United Filmmakers Organisation (UFO), producing urban romantic comedies grounded in realism, at a time when action films dominated Hong Kong cinema. His career subsequently took him across genres, from musicals like Perhaps Love (2005) to the historical epic The Warlords, a project he had never imagined directing.
Yet responding to the market did not necessarily mean surrendering to it. “You never know what the audience wants, but you know what you want,” he explained, emphasising the need to balance commercial expectations with personal interests.
Compromise, Chan suggested, was also an essential part of collaboration. Rather than viewing changes to his original plans as setbacks, he regarded them as opportunities to strengthen a film. “I don’t create the movie, I direct the movie,” he remarked, explaining that filmmaking involves listening to the interpretations of one’s cast and crew while knowing when to make the final decision.
With this year marking the 30th anniversary of his classic Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Chan also considered cinema’s ability to preserve the changing character of a city. He recalled the streets, shops, and phone booths of Hong Kong that had since disappeared, but remained legible in his films. “Those places are gone. However, the movie preserved those places, those moments, those emotions, those values, and those sentiments of the time,” he shared.
Beyond preserving memories, Chan was particularly interested in exploring the moral ambiguities of human relationships. Discussing The Warlords, his reimagining of Chang Cheh’s The Blood Brothers (1973), Chan explained his fascination with characters who defied conventional distinctions between good and evil. Rather than presenting a straightforward conflict between heroes and villains, he was more interested in exploring the tension between loyalty to one’s brotherhood and the steadfast pursuit of greater aspirations.
Although his films have traversed genres, Chan maintained that his underlying interests have remained remarkably consistent. As he grew older, the questions that preoccupied him changed, but filmmaking continued to offer a means of exploring them.
“Making every movie is answering some sort of life question that I had at that point of my life,” he reflected. “So in a way, I’ve been making the same movies in my mind for the last 36 years.”
Written by Phyllis Chan, edited by Daryl Cheong