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Lam Ringo
Life Time
8 December 1955 - 29 December 2018
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Ringo Lam's films may adore crowds of Hong Kong film fans, but they still have trouble remembering the director's name. Lam is a low-key person who does not like to advertise himself, unlike his rival friends Jackie Chan, John Wu and Tsui Hark. In the West, they usually talk about imitation of Tarantino and even plagiarism. Ringo Lam thinks it's more praise than he's ever heard. When he was very young, Lam went to a party and met a girl there. She asked what his name was. In Hong Kong, it was fashionable
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Ringo Lam's films may adore crowds of Hong Kong film fans, but they still have trouble remembering the director's name. Lam is a low-key person who does not like to advertise himself, unlike his rival friends Jackie Chan, John Wu and Tsui Hark. In the West, they usually talk about imitation of Tarantino and even plagiarism. Ringo Lam thinks it's more praise than he's ever heard.
When he was very young, Lam went to a party and met a girl there. She asked what his name was. In Hong Kong, it was fashionable to wear Western names, but Lam said he did not have one. They went dancing. The Beatles were playing and the girl said, OK, I'll give you a name. Do you like Ringo? Lam shrugged his shoulders and said, Why not?
Before he began studying acting, Ringo rarely went to the movies. He studied for a year, then worked as an actor for another six months, but then he realized that he didn’t like it when someone pointed a finger and told him what to do. Then he took on the other side of the camera, first as an assistant producer, then as a director on television. Television didn't suit him either. Ringo spent the next three and a half years studying filmmaking at York University in Toronto. He returned to Hong Kong without a degree but with Canadian citizenship. But it took another two intense years before he made his first film, Esprit D'Amour. He has a very different style. He has a heroic style, I have a realistic one. Very different. And my movie is more real. If I remember correctly, my characters never jumped during the shooting!