Dir: Allen Fong
Scrs: Chan Chiu, Lilian Lee, Alfred Cheung
Prod Co: Fenghuang
Cast: Shi Lei, Chu Hung, Yung Wai-man, David Lo, Ching Hor-wai
1981 / Colour / D Beta / Cantonese / 93min

 

Father and Son  , winner of Best Film and Best Director at the first ever Hong Kong Film Awards, is a monumental work of the New Wave, signaling not only the film industry's recognition of the movement's artistic accomplishment but also its acknowledgment of the newly emerging mode of filmmaking. The film is at once an intimate portrayal of a close-unit family and, with its chronicle of living conditions and differences between the post-war immigrant generation and its local-born offspring, a broad-stroke examination of changing Hong Kong. Director Allen Fong, reviving the cherished social-realism of 1950s Cantonese cinema while also indulging in occasional strokes of stylisation, masterfully strikes a balance between timely urgency and timeless humanism.