Scud, born Cheng Wan-siang (Danny Cheng) on 20 March 1967, is a Hong Kong film director. Born in Guizhou on the mainland and raised in Guangzhou, he was largely brought up by his grandmother there and only joined his parents and brother in Hong Kong at thirteen. His grandfather was a Kuomintang official who, as there were not enough boat tickets for the whole family during the Chinese civil war, went alone to Taiwan and never saw his family again before his death in Kaohsiung naval hospital in 1973. Scud worked his way through school but was unable to continue his studies; he spent twenty years in the information-technology industry, took a computer science degree from the Open University of Hong Kong and then worked for multinational companies. He later stepped back from corporate life and moved to Australia to rethink his direction, returning to a long-held interest in music and literature, and founded Artwalker Limited, an independent production company; his first film, City Without Baseball (2008), was a collaboration with director Lawrence Lau. His features include Permanent Residence (2009), an opening film of the 33rd Hong Kong International Film Festival; Amphetamine (2010), which closed the 34th edition and competed at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival; Love Actually... Sucks! (2011); Voyage (2013); Utopians (2016); Thirty Years of Adonis (2017); Apostles (2022); Food for the Undead (2023); and Naked Nation: Hong Kong (2024). Voyage won an Artistic Achievement Award at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival, where he also became the first recipient of the Q-Hugo Award and was honoured by the festival. Drawing heavily on his own life and feelings, his films carry a strong autobiographical streak. He announced the end of his sixteen-year film career on 17 April 2022, and in 2024 the 53rd Rotterdam International Film Festival mounted a focus programme screening all ten of his films.
Scud is one of the few Hong Kong directors to make gay themes his creative mainstay. His films Permanent Residence, Amphetamine and Voyage repeatedly opened or closed the Hong Kong International Film Festival and appeared at festivals in Berlin and Chicago, bringing Hong Kong's gay desires and bodily writing to the international art-cinema circuit.
Achievements
- 2008 · Directed his first feature, City Without Baseball.
- 2013 · Voyage won an Artistic Achievement Award at Chicago, where he received the first Q-Hugo Award.
- 2024 · The 53rd Rotterdam festival mounted a focus programme on his ten films.