Law Bun, born Luo Jin-pei on 27 April 1923 in Macao to a Kaiping family and raised in Shanghai, graduated from the Lester School and Henry Lester Institute of Technical Education before moving to Hong Kong for engineering classes at the Far East Flying Training School. Returning to Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, he founded the Universal Publisher with friends, issuing Blue Books and other magazines. Settling in Hong Kong in the late 1940s, he expanded the publisher into titles such as Wuxia World, Universal Literature and Art and Universal Screen, and launched the Hong Kong Daily News in October 1959. In 1961 he co-founded Hong Kong Film Company and adapted the wuxia novel The Secret Book to the screen, later renaming the studio Sin Hok Kong Luen (Hong Kong Film Company). Its films were mostly drawn from his own publications and usually produced by his wife Ho Lai-lai, with him co-producing occasionally. The couple became known for lavish new-style wuxia films, including four episodes of The Azure Blood and the Golden Pin (1963–64) and The Mighty Snow Sword (1964), three of The Ghost with Six Fingers (1965) and two of Paragon of Sword and Knife (1967–68), while The Green-Eyed Lady (1967) drew praise for its rebellious heroine. The studio also made comedies, an Old Master Q series and the Black Heroine Mulan Hua spy films, releasing more than 40 films over about a decade and nurturing talents from director Chan Lit-bun to writer Ni Kuang and star Suet Nei. He later built a publishing group that listed in 1988 with him as chairman, sold it in 1992 and moved to Canada. His autobiography appeared in 2006, and he died in Vancouver on 21 May 2012.
Law Bun fused publishing and filmmaking, drawing on his own wuxia novels and comics to pioneer Hong Kong's new-style martial arts cinema of the 1960s. In roughly a decade his studio released more than forty films and became a cradle for on- and off-screen talent, from Suet Nei and Kenneth Tsang to writer Ni Kuang. The newspapers and publishing house he ran supplied popular reading for decades and left a deep mark on local popular culture.
Achievements
- 1959 · Launched the Hong Kong Daily News, expanding his press and publishing business.
- 1961 · Co-founded Hong Kong Film Company and adapted the wuxia novel The Secret Book to the screen.
- 1988 · His publishing group became a listed company, with him serving as chairman.