Christopher Doyle (born 2 May 1952 in Sydney, Australia) is a Hong Kong-based cinematographer and director. He left home at eighteen and worked as a merchant seaman, taking a string of odd jobs in Israel, Thailand and India, later studying art history at the University of Maryland and Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he took the name Du Kefeng, meaning roughly 'like the wind'. In the early 1980s he worked as a cameraman and editor for a television station in Taiwan and, invited by director Edward Yang, moved into film photography, first shooting a feature in 1981. He won his first Hong Kong Film Award for Best Cinematography at the 6th awards with Soul (1986) and a second at the 10th with Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild (1990); Ashes of Time (1994), Fallen Angels (1995) and 2046 (2004) brought him the same prize, and Port of Call (2015) gave him a seventh win, at the 35th awards — a run of wins across nearly three decades. In 2003 he took the 22nd award for Zhang Yimou's Hero, and in 2000 In the Mood for Love earned him the Technical Grand Prize at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival. He wrote, directed and shot Away with Words (1999), and also shot Happy Together (1997), Temptress Moon (1996) and Chen Kexin's American Dreams in China (2013); Ondine won him Best Cinematography at the 13th Shanghai International Film Festival. Beyond cinema he has published photography books and worked in installation art and commercials, with work shown at international exhibitions and festivals, collaborating across Hong Kong, Taiwan, the mainland and the West. He is known for handheld camerawork, saturated colour and unconventional framing.
With handheld camerawork, saturated colour and unconventional framing, Doyle rewrote the visual language of Hong Kong cinema; his work with Wong Kar-wai turned cinematography from a narrative tool into the emotion itself, and the style was widely borrowed across Asian and international film-making.
Achievements
- 1986 · Won Best Cinematography at the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards for Soul
- 1991 · Won Best Cinematography at the 10th Hong Kong Film Awards for Days of Being Wild
- 2000 · Won the Technical Grand Prize at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival for In the Mood for Love
- 2015 · Won Best Cinematography at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards for Port of Call, his seventh such win