For two months over the summer of 1986, photographer Basil Pao watched sunrise at the Meridian Gate, the largest gate at the Forbidden City in Beijing. As part of the team working on The Last Emperor, the early starts were par for the course, but he didn’t mind the lack of sleep. Working for Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci was a dream come true.
As an 18-year-old art student in Los Angeles, Pao had sneaked into a cinema with a friend to watch Bertolucci’s 1970 expressionist masterpiece The Conformist – they were broke and didn’t have the money for tickets – and the experience changed his life.
“It was the first perfect film I’d ever seen and hugely influenced my whole way of looking at things,” says Pao from his home on Cheung Chau, an island 10km (6 miles) from Hong Kong Island.
The chance to work with the Italian director came 15 years later when his fiancée Pat showed a friend pictures of their engagement party. That friend was Joanna Merlin, Bertolucci’s casting director in New York. She arranged a meeting between Bertolucci and Pao, in part because he looked a little like Pu Yi, the last ruler of the Qing dynasty.
When they met at the Mandarin Hotel, Pao shared how he’d sneaked into the theatre and, without skipping a beat, Bertolucci said, “You owe me US$3.50.” They laughed and it was the start of a lasting friendship. Then 33 years old, Pao was cast as Pu Yi’s father, Prince Chun, which meant spending a lot of time either on horseback or on his knees kowtowing.
When he wasn’t wearing the heavy dragon robes, he served as one of a handful of assistant directors – “Bernardo’s eunuchs” – and helped with the film extras. Initially this involved tasks such as finding the horses for the Imperial Guards and, as the film went on, he ended up helping assemble some of the 19,000 extras that appeared in the crowd scenes.
Once they started shooting, producer Jeremy Thomas realised one stills photographer wouldn’t be enough and asked Pao to also do “special stills”. Many of those images are now on show at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club in an exhibition called “The Last Emperor Revisited”.
“Bernardo was yelling for me, ‘Where is he? What are we doing?’ It was very chaotic,” says Pao.
The behind-the-scenes photographs Pao took during the filming of The Last Emperor were eventually published all over the world and established him as a photographer.
“It was amazing working with these incredibly talented people, they were fantastic. I remember eating lot of spaghetti because the Italian crew couldn’t move without pasta,” says Pao.
Original Link: SCMP
At the quiet end of Gough Street, in Hong Kong’s Central district, stands a pocket-sized shop easily overlooked. A wooden bench outside tempts passers-by to pause, and if you peek through the picture window, you’ll likely catch a glimpse of two chocolatiers perfecting their craft. Hakawa Chocolate is one of just five bean-to-bar makers in Hong…
Flight review: Kenya Airways B787-8 Premier World
Thoughts of North Korea and its citizens’ wardrobes are likely to conjure up images of drab dresses or military uniforms.
Britain leaving the EU will have a lasting impact for Europe. But what about Hong Kong, a territory with close ties to the country? Kate Whitehead speaks to expats to get their view.
The Namibia-born, Cambridge-educated conservation expert has been tracking the desert lions of Namibia for 35 years. He talks about how he has built a relationship with the big cats and why he doesn’t sleep at night
A fall on a beach left Animals Asia charity founder Jill Robinson with a fractured vertebra and a diagnosis of severe osteoporosis Known as the silent disease, it is caused by a drop in bone density. Lifestyle changes can build it back up, as can exercise, a doctor and a therapist explain In October 2018,…