Kam Ping Hing was born in Shanghai on 11 July 1937 to a family from Wu County, Jiangsu, and grew up in Hong Kong's Sai Wan district. Educated at Fong Lam Primary School, Nam Chow Middle School and Fong Lam Middle School, he finished secondary six in 1958 and read electrical engineering at National Taiwan University, taking his degree in 1962 before choosing a life in the arts. He had already written modern poetry, winning a poetry prize from the journal Epoch Poetry Quarterly in 1964. Back in Hong Kong he joined the Modern Literature and Art Association and in 1963 helped found the literary fortnightly Hao Wang Kok, edited the film page of the Chinese Student Weekly and reviewed films for University Life and the Express; with critics such as Tsun Ming and Patrick Tam he championed auteurist criticism, becoming one of Hong Kong's earliest serious film critics. In 1968 he joined Cathay as assistant to director Liu Fang-kang, showed his short film at the first amateur film exhibition in 1969, studied at Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia from 1970, and on returning in 1971 was introduced by Dai Tian to assist King Hu while teaching film at the Chinese University's extramural department. He founded the Firebird Film Club in 1973. From 1976 he was a script editor at TVB and Commercial Television, working on series such as A House Is Not a Home; from 1981 he was a creative director at the Century Film Company. His screenplay for Nomad earned a Best Screenplay nomination at the 2nd Hong Kong Film Awards, and in 1983 he wrote and directed his first feature, Pale Passion. A judge at the Golden Horse Awards, the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Asia-Pacific Film Festival, he emigrated to Toronto in 1990, and in 2000 the Hong Kong Film Critics Society published his collected reviews as a book.
Kam linked criticism, poetry and film education: he ran newspaper film pages, co-founded Hao Wang Kok, championed auteurist criticism with Patrick Tam, founded the Firebird Film Club in 1973 and taught film at the Chinese University, cultivating readers and critics for Hong Kong cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.
Achievements
- 1963 · Helped found the literary fortnightly Hao Wang Kok and edited the film page of the Chinese Student Weekly
- 1973 · Founded the Firebird Film Club to screen and discuss experimental film
- 1983 · Nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2nd Hong Kong Film Awards for Nomad
- 1983 · Wrote and directed his first feature, Pale Passion (released in 1984)