Mabel Cheung was born in Hong Kong on 17 November 1950 to a Kaiping family and is one of the leading figures of the Hong Kong New Wave. She attended Ying Wa Girls' School on the Mid-Levels from primary through secondary level and then read psychology at the University of Hong Kong; after graduating she studied literature and drama at the University of Bristol in Britain, where she also worked for the BBC as an assistant director on documentaries. From 1978 to 1980 she directed television programmes for Radio Television Hong Kong, including episodes of the acclaimed drama strands Lung Ha Shan Ha and under the eaves and a children's series, and in the 1990s she directed for Asia Television, including a 1993 documentary tribute to the philosopher Mou Zongsan. She went to New York University to study film in 1982, and in 1985, strongly recommended by Shaw Brothers, directed her debut, The Illegal Immigrant, which won her the Hong Kong Film Award for best director. Her 1987 romance An Autumn's Tale became a hit and won best film, while her 1989 drama Eight Taels of Gold earned five nominations, together forming her celebrated emigration trilogy. She co-wrote Alex Law's 1988 screenplay for Painted Faces, which took a Golden Horse award for best original screenplay, and her later works include the Soong-sisters portrait The Soong Sisters (1997) and the two-generation romance City of Glass (1998). In 2010 she produced Echoes of the Rainbow, which won a Crystal Bear at the Berlin festival; from 2011 to 2021 she directed the documentary To My Nineteen-Year-Old Self, following Ying Wa students, which collected best-film awards from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild and the 41st Hong Kong Film Awards. Appointed to the Film Development Council in 2007, she became its vice-chair in 2021 and has headed the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild since 2019. Her long-time partner was Alex Law, who died in 2022.
Mabel Cheung's emigration trilogy - The Illegal Immigrant, An Autumn's Tale and Eight Taels of Gold - offers a delicate writing of displacement and nostalgia, while later works such as The Soong Sisters reach into historical subjects; she is a representative woman director of the Hong Kong New Wave noted for literary storytelling. With her creative partner Alex Law she long supplied Hong Kong cinema with films that combine local sentiment and artistic temperament.
Achievements
- 1985 · Won best director at the fifth Hong Kong Film Awards with her debut feature, The Illegal Immigrant
- 1987 · Won best film at the seventh Hong Kong Film Awards for An Autumn's Tale
- 2022 · Co-directed a documentary that won best film at the 41st Hong Kong Film Awards