Acclaimed Asian filmmaker Peter Chan Ho-sun, director of “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” and “The Warlords,” said he will probably use AI in his filmmaking but “definitely not AIGC,” or AI-generated content, and that the two-hour feature will hold its ground against short-form and vertical dramas, at least in his lifetime. Speaking at an In Conversation event at the Singapore International Film Festival, Chan was asked by an audience member whether he had ever doubted his decision to go into the film industry. His advice to aspiring filmmakers: “This is probably the toughest time for film, but do I believe this medium is going to be lost and gone to short-form entertainment?
No.” He said he would probably use AI as a technique, the way the industry already uses CGI and special effects, noting that CGI has relied on AI for years without calling it that. Movies are still made by people,” Chan said. Young audiences’ shrinking attention spans have them turning to short and vertical dramas, Chan said, while at the other end, people are listening to podcasts that run for hours, and Christopher Nolan did podcasts around the world to explain his purist approach of making “Oppenheimer” the way movies were made in the ’50s.
So I believe that movie will be around for a long, long time,” he told a rapt audience at the Grand Ballroom, Marina Bay Sands. Chan’s latest film, “The Road Not Taken,” premiered in Toronto. It’s about a broken family that has all sorts of problems a family could have,” he said.
The story centers on a couple in the middle of divorce proceedings when the wife, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s, no longer remembers the divorce and drifts back in her mind to the time they fell in love in their 20s. A harsh grandfather and the couple’s relationship with their Gen Z daughter complete the picture. The daughter in the film is 20, the same age as Chan’s own daughter, who is training to become an actor.
Chan’s partner is actor Sandra Ng. The English title comes from the Robert Frost poem, which Chan called his life motto, while the Chinese title, “Ming Tian Hui Geng Hao,” translates as “Tomorrow Will Be Better.” “There’s really no right path,” he said. You make it right.” While researching the film, Chan visited an Alzheimer’s care institution in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, where he picked up an eight-word Mandarin phrase that he used to sum up his career: go with the flow, and know when to stop.
In the ’90s, when he was making romantic comedies at United Filmmakers Organization (UFO), the company he co-founded, gangster pictures and wuxia ruled Hong Kong screens. That same flow later carried him to “The Warlords,” which he described as his biggest film. That was never, ever in my agenda for my entire life,” Chan said.
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