Clement Cheng Sze-kit (born 1974 in Hong Kong) is a Canadian Hong Kong film director and screenwriter. He emigrated to Vancouver with his family after primary school and grew up steeped in Hong Kong cinema. He studied interior design at university and worked as a radio DJ in Canada before dropping out and returning to Hong Kong to enter the film industry, attending a directing and screenwriting course taught by Ann Hui, Wong Kar-wai and Wong Jing. He began as a DJ, interior designer, English advertising copywriter and art department hand, then moved into screenwriting and assistant directing while also directing commercials and music videos, and he worked on the screenplay of The Moss (2008), among other films. In 2010 he co-directed Gallants with Derek Kwok, financed by Andy Lau; it was his first feature and, set in a run-down old martial-arts gymnasium and telling of the friendship between washed-up masters and young men, it blends nostalgia with comedy and stars veterans such as Chan Koon-tai, Bruce Leung and Teddy Robin alongside younger actors including Wong You-nam. The film won best film of 2010 from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society and best screenplay from the Hong Kong Screenwriters' Guild, was named on the Wall Street Journal's Asian top ten list, screened at more than twenty international festivals, took the audience award at the New York Asian Film Festival and earned him several international best new director nominations; in November 2010 he travelled to Canada for the opening of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival to share his experience of making it. The same year he made his second feature, Merry-Go-Round, for the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, which topped a cross-strait critics' poll of Chinese-language films for 2010. Gallants later won four prizes, including best film, at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards. Cheng has said he regards Hong Kong martial-arts films and comedies as an important local tradition, and Gallants was his tribute to that era.
With Gallants Cheng paid tribute to 1970s Hong Kong martial-arts films, casting veterans such as Chan Koon-tai and Bruce Leung and drawing fresh attention to old-school action cinema; his later Merry-Go-Round, made for the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, blended social-welfare themes and showed the room between independent and commercial production.
Achievements
- 2010 · Co-directed Gallants with Derek Kwok, which won best film from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society
- 2010 · Directed his second feature, Merry-Go-Round, for the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals
- 2011 · Gallants won four awards, including best film, at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards