Alex Law Kai-yui (19 August 1952 – 2 July 2022) was a Hong Kong director, screenwriter and producer. He left S.K.H. Kei Oi Primary School in 1964 with a government special scholarship, finished Form Five at Diocesan Boys' School in 1971, graduated from the University of Hong Kong in English and Chinese in 1976, and then studied film at New York University, where he met his classmate Mabel Cheung. The two were creative partners for four decades, generally writing scripts she directed and taking turns at directing and producing; their films, often about the Chinese diaspora, include Illegal Immigrant, An Autumn's Tale, Eight Taels of Gold, Now You See Love... Now You Don't, The Soong Sisters and City of Glass. In 1987 he wrote the screenplay for An Autumn's Tale, starring Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung, winning Best Screenplay at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards. In 1988 he directed Painted Faces, telling the story of Peking-opera master Yu Jim-yuen and his apprentices; it won him the Golden Horse Award for Best Director, Sammo Hung won Best Actor at the 8th Hong Kong Film Awards for the film, and Law also took the Golden Horse Award for Best Original Screenplay, a prize he won again in 1998 for City of Glass. In 2010 his autobiographical Echoes of the Rainbow, set in 1967 on Wing Lee Street in Sham Shui Po and starring Simon Yam and Sandra Ng, won Best Screenplay at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards and took the Crystal Bear in the Berlin Film Festival's Generation section. He also received the Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild's outstanding director award for the film and taught film at universities in Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou and Taipei. He died of a sudden heart attack on 2 July 2022, aged 69.
Law and Mabel Cheung wrote about the Hong Kong diaspora and family memory with quiet feeling; Echoes of the Rainbow turned Wing Lee Street and 1960s Sham Shui Po into a talking point and fed the debate over conserving the area, and his scripts stand for a humane tradition in Hong Kong cinema.
Achievements
- 1987 · Wrote An Autumn's Tale, winning Best Screenplay at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards
- 1988 · Directed Painted Faces, winning the Golden Horse Award for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay; Sammo Hung won Best Actor at the 8th Hong Kong Film Awards
- 2010 · Echoes of the Rainbow won Best Screenplay at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards and the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival