
Directing
Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang
Born 1957-10-09 · Hong Kong, China
Stanley Kwan Kam-Pang is a Hong Kong film director and producer. Kwan landed a job at the TVB after receiving a mass communications degree at Hong Kong Baptist College. Kwan's first film was Women (1985), which starred Chow Yun-Fat, and was a big box-office success. Kwan's films often deal sympathetically with the plight of women and their struggles with romantic affairs of the heart. His 1998 film Hold You Tight won the Alfred Bauer Prize and Teddy Award at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival. Kwan came out as a gay man in 1996 in Yang ± Yin, his documentary looking at the history of Chinese-language film through the prism of gender roles and sexuality. He is one of the few openly gay directors in Asia and one of the very few to have worked on these themes.
Acting credits
7.3Based on the tragic true story of China's first prima donna of the silver screen, Ruan Lingyu, chronicling her rise to fame as a movie actress in Shanghai during the 1930s.
Center Stage
1991
7.5After suffering a stroke, an altruistic maid announces that she wants to quit her job and move into an old people's home.
A Simple Life
2012
NRNaked Nations is a deeply human, joyful, poignant and heartbreaking film about freedom and its many manifestations, fragility and limits, a film about life, depression and difficult decisions. But above all, a film about love.
Naked Nations – Tribe Hong Kong
2024
NRIn 2013, the Golden Horse Film Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary. The ministry of Culture commissioned director Yang Li-chou to make a documentary about the history of Golden Horse. What is unique to this film is that it's not an ode to celebrities but about the role cinema plays in ordinary people's lives. It's a love letter to cinema, filmmakers and audiences.
The Moment: Fifty Years of Golden Horse
2016
8.0One of Hong Kong's most influential filmmakers, Ann Hui, becomes a “star” for the first time in Man Lim-chung's directorial debut. A forerunner of the New Wave, Hui’s tumultuous, forty-year career is an unequivocal testimony to her unyielding dedication to filmmaking, and her expedition into the metamorphic city. This biopic probes into the acclaimed director’s idiosyncratic world, where we witness her rashness and goofiness, as well as her humanistic concerns for the everyday nobodies which make her films so moving.
Keep Rolling
2020
A documentary feature film that ties four narratives - from China, India, Scotland, and Tunisia - together with countless insights from venerable filmmakers and ordinary moviegoers. An aspiring actress in Mumbai battles to break into Bollywood; two friends in Scotland take a mobile film festival across the highlands; a young crew in Hong Kong embarks on the shooting of its first film; a Tunisian director anxiously anticipates the premiere of his controversial film at a major festival. These stories are woven together with scenes from video stores, projection booths, studios, cinemas, and slums into a vivid meditation on the power of cinema to shape our world.
Cinema Is Everywhere
2011
6.5A tribute to the legendary Japanese film director featuring the reflections of filmmakers Lindsay Anderson, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Aki Kaurismäki, Stanley Kwan, Paul Schrader, and Wim Wenders
Talking with Ozu
1993
10.0A personal memoir reflecting upon director Stanley Kwan's career and identity, set upon the backdrop of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. Kwan adopts a complicated cinematic structure which includes excerpts from his previous films, his '97 stage play, and the soundtrack to Wong Kar-wai's "Days of Being Wild."
Still Love You After All These
1997
Behind the camera
7.2A love story between a country boy in Beijing to study and a wealthy businessman set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.
Lan Yu
2001
7.3Based on the tragic true story of China's first prima donna of the silver screen, Ruan Lingyu, chronicling her rise to fame as a movie actress in Shanghai during the 1930s.
Center Stage
1991
7.4Amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong, a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family fall in love and embrace death by suicide pact. Fifty years later, her ghost returns to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself.
Rouge
1987
7.9A young woman living with cerebral palsy discovers newfound independence and self-acceptance through her encounters with a specialized organization that helps people with disabilities explore their sexuality.
Someone Like Me
2025
5.3Two women are bound for the same plane, one of whom makes the flight while the other does not. In a cruel twist of fate, the plane crashes, killing everyone on board, and leaving the friends and family of the two women to talk about what was and what could have been.
Hold You Tight
1998
6.2Although new friendships and new love await her, a college freshman discovers that university life is not as simple as she had hoped.
So Young
2013
6.3Chronicles the love life of a man, Zhenbao. He has a steamy fling with the wife of a friend, the saucy and exciting Red Rose. Even though he feels happy with her, he knows he will not end up with her. To maintain his reputation, he marries an antiseptic, frigid but classy lady of a prim and proper background. Dissonance abound when he finds his bride irritating.
Red Rose White Rose
1994
6.7Four young people spend their time living the wild life - until one of them is brutally murdered in a burglary. The survivors come under the scrutiny of an eccentric cop, and their underlying fears and regrets slowly but surely emerge.
Love Unto Wastes
1986
5.718-year-old Ai loves baking, even if she's not that good at it. She dreams of some day baking the perfect pastry, until she meets Miao Miao, a shy exchange student from Japan, who happens to be sort of a pastry expert.
Miao Miao
2008
6.6The unlikely pairing of a spoiled millionaire venture capitalist scouting for extreme wedding tour locations and a grounded science photographer en route to chronicle the Aurora Australis lights face the ultimate 75 day test for survival and redemption after their twin engine craft crashes during a debilitating snowstorm over the vast desolate nether-regions of Antarctica.
Till the End of the World
2018
6.8A group of disparate characters find themselves trapped overnight on a island somewhere off the coast of mainland China. The circumstances force them to overlook their preconceptions of one another, and they forge a kinship that goes to the heart their identities.
The Island Tales
2000
5.9A person's life is destined to be shorter than that of a city. Having spent her whole life in Shanghai, Qiyao has her moments of prosperity and her fair share of loneliness. She finally fades and disappears but Shanghai remains a metropolitan city. Shanghai in the 1930s is glamorous and seductive.
Everlasting Regret
2005
3.5Yuan Xiuling, a former star and has-been actress plans to return to the spotlight of the theater a year after her philandering husband died. She decides to star in Two Sisters, written and directed by transwoman An Ouyang. But, her biggest rival, He Yuwen, a rising actress, also stars in the play.
First Night Nerves
2019
7.0Liang Pao-erh joins the carefree Spinsters' Club when she discovers her husband is having an affair. Despite the seemingly happy front that her sisters put on, beneath it all, each of them secretly yearns for a man in her life.
Women
1985
4.0For 10 years, Ani, a young wife and mother, has sported the same hair style. She has a humdrum life and a platonic relationship with young Mr. Ahua, her hairdresser. She leaves home after he loses his job. There is love and new beginnings.
Hands in the Hair
2005
8.5Stanley Kwan's 1992 short film starring Josephine Siao and Maggie Cheung
Too Happy for Words
1992
6.9Junhao declares to go to Sicily to learn opera and ends the relationship with his fiancée, Xiaoyou. In disbelief, she determines to learn the truth behind his sudden decision. Lee Joon-gi has teamed up with Lin for his first Chinese film.
Never Said Goodbye
2016
8.2Three friends begin a contest to find Karen, a particular girl they all like. The limits: one month, and no advertising or radio. The prize: the losers withdraw and the winner gets free reign to woo her.
Love Is Not a Game, But a Joke
1997
7.9Three Chinese women with vastly different backgrounds get acquainted and become friends amid the social desolation of New York.
Full Moon in New York
1989
6.5The film gets under the skin of a very marginalized group: recent immigrants to Hong Kong from Mainland China. Belying the expectation that they will belong in a territory now returned to China's sovereignty, they find themselves lonely, frustrated, poor, and employable only in the most menial jobs, from elevator service staff to prostitution.
Love Will Tear Us Apart
1999
5.5An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading directors and academics, the film examines topics such as male bonding in kung fu movies, depictions of same-sex bonding and physical intimacy, the emphasis on women's grievances in melodramas, and the career of Yam Kim-Fai, a Hong Kong actress who spent her life portraying men on and off the screen.
Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema
1998
6.0It’s 1994 and Lu Tu (Ethan Juan) is the youngest concierge ever at five-star Chinese hotel; smart, loyal and honest, he’s respected by his fellow employees and lauded by his superiors. When he’s tempted with an invitation to run a new hotel in the Big Apple, everyone around him looks to take advantage of the move, including a love interest (Du Juan) who may not be as trustworthy as she seems.
New York, New York
2016
NRFour short tales set in contemporary Hong Kong.
Quattro Hong Kong 2
2011
5.7A boat load of illegal Chinese immigrants make it to the California coast. But many of those on board are in a sad state. One of them (Tony Liu) makes a run for it and jumps overboard. He knows what lies ahead for the unlucky few who have manged to survive. The illegal heads for the city to look for a certain individual. Simon Yam stars (in a low key role) as a former triad who's trying to go legit (for some shady ulterior motives. The illegal knows what Simon is all about and wants him in a big way.
Dragon Killer
1995