Charlie Choi (born 1983 in Hong Kong), who also writes under the pen name Cheuk Nei-yee, is a Hong Kong film and independent film practitioner. She entered the industry in 1999 and has since worked as a wardrobe assistant, producer, screenwriter and assistant director as well as an office assistant at a film company. In 2012 she drew attention by uploading a self-financed trailer for a feature, The People on the Way, to YouTube and using it to crowd-fund the film. In 2013 she first worked with the Hong Kong online platform goyeah.com, writing and directing the micro-film Selling Memories, a suspense romance adapted from a novel by the Hong Kong author Shum Suet, which continued to circulate online. Her other writing and directing credits include two 2014 shorts: one won best actor and a cultural creativity award at the fifth Golden Flower international micro-film competition, while the other screened at Fresh Wave 2014, the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival 2015, Jumping Frames 2015, the Cannes Short Film Corner in 2015 and a Polish film festival. Her first feature, PG Love, produced by Patrick Kong, opened in Hong Kong on 25 February 2016 and runs about a hundred minutes; the same year she co-wrote and served as art director on the musical drama Concerto of the Bully, directed by Fung Chi-keung. She also contributed an episode to a 2009 Asian independent film series, Egg Tarts. Moving from online fund-raising and short-film festivals to a theatrically released feature, her career reflects one route by which young Hong Kong filmmakers of the 2010s entered the industry.
Starting from online short films and crowd-funding, Choi's 2013 micro-film for goyeah.com showed how an internet platform could distribute short-form cinema, while her shorts reached venues such as Fresh Wave and the Cannes Short Film Corner before she made a commercial feature in 2016, illustrating the varied paths of a new generation moving from independent work into the mainstream industry.
Achievements
- 2013 · Wrote and directed the micro-film Selling Memories with goyeah.com
- 2014 · Wrote and directed a 2014 short that won a cultural creativity award at the fifth Golden Flower international micro-film competition
- 2016 · Her first feature, PG Love, opened in Hong Kong