Wong Kar-Wai Overview

The combination of stunning visuals and edgy, sensitive storytelling in the work of Wong Kar-Wai has spread a new dawn across the horizon of Hong Kong film. Originally a graphic design student, Wong fell in love with photography and was influenced... [more]

The combination of stunning visuals and edgy, sensitive storytelling in the work of Wong Kar-Wai has spread a new dawn across the horizon of Hong Kong film. Originally a graphic design student, Wong fell in love with photography and was influenced by such names as Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Richard Avedon. He briefly worked as a production assistant for television drama serials, then progressed to scriptwriting, notably for a popular soap opera/thriller. When he finally left TV production, it was to write ten feature films in just five years. His most recent pictures, "Chungking Express" (1994), "Fallen Angels" (1995), and "Happy Together" (1997), have focused on urban alienation and people with such dissolute and pointless lives that they are unable to connect emotionally with others. His incisive and de-glamorizing camera paints cities as claustrophobic cages in which people pace like trapped animals. This unflinching vision lends his work a bleak, nervy atmosphere of unfulfilled longing, loneliness, and desperation. "Happy Together" garnered Wong the 1997 best director award at the Cannes Film Festival. [show less]