Chu Fung was born in Shanghai in 1936, with ancestral roots in Taicang, Jiangsu. Her father was the renowned director Zhu Shilin. The family moved to Hong Kong in 1947, but she completed her secondary schooling in Beijing and then studied Chinese language and literature at Nankai University in Tianjin. After graduating she returned to Hong Kong and joined Phoenix Motion Picture Company, where she cared for her father and learned directing from him. She began as an apprentice assistant director on Let's Get Married (1962) and Three Men and a Girl (1963), and later took formal assistant director duties on Tung Hsiao Wan (1963) and Garden of Repose (1964), while also studying screenwriting. In 1970 she wrote and co-directed, with Tang Long, the youth musical Storm Petrel. As Phoenix's output shrank in the 1970s, she pressed on, directing The Sisters (1973), co-directing The Heroic Defenders (1978) with Jiang Han, and co-directing the documentary Acrobatic Knights (1974). Mud Child (1976), which she co-directed with Chen Jingbo and based on real events, drew critical praise. In the 1980s she directed Two Wrongs Make a Right and A Hair Breath's Escape (both 1980), and wrote and directed the documentary Circumscribing Around Dunhuang (1984). She then turned to planning, working on Code Name Flash (1987) and Kungfu Vampire (1993). She also wrote lyrics for The Golden Eagle (1964) and The Painted Skin (1966). After retiring in 1991 she worked on television productions on the mainland, and in 1999 co-authored, with her younger brother Chu Yan, the book Zhu Shilin and Cinema.
Chu Fung kept writing and directing as Phoenix's output shrank, and her 1976 Mud Child, drawn from real social events, brought a realist concern into Mandarin-language filmmaking. In later years she documented her father Zhu Shilin's life, and the book she co-authored became an important text for the study of post-war Hong Kong cinema.
Achievements
- 1970 · Wrote the screenplay for the youth musical Storm Petrel and co-directed it with Tang Long
- 1976 · Co-directed Mud Child with Chen Jingbo, a film based on real events that won critical recognition
- 1999 · Co-authored Zhu Shilin and Cinema with her younger brother Chu Yan, documenting their father's film career