Freddie Wong
Film Critic, Hong Kong
Freddie Wong was co-founder and first president of the legendary Phoenix Cine Club in 1973. Since then, he became an important film critic and a well-known figure in the Hong Kong cultural scene. In late seventies, he studied filmmaking in Paris at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français. After graduation, he served as assistant director to Alain Corneau’s Série Noire (1979).
On returning to Hong Kong, he was programmer of Hong Kong International Film Festival for 10 years, from 1979 to 1983 and then from 2000 to 2006. In between, he worked as film programme manager of Hong Kong Arts Centre, and then business development manager of Edko Films Limited and director of Broadway Cinémathèque. He is currently a director of the Hong Kong Film Critics Society which he co-founded in 1995 and served as president from 1999 to 2001.
In 2009, the French Ministry of Culture and Communications awarded him the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his hard work and contribution to film culture and film appreciation related to French cinema. In 2013, he was the chief editor of The Ultimate Guide to Hong Kong Film Directors (1979—2013) , published by the Hong Kong Film Directors Guild. Apart from part-time teaching at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University, he has published four books (in Chinese) since 2019, including Travel in Cinema : A Cinematic Travelogue, Notes on Japanese Cinema, World Cinema as Seen From Cannes, and Notes on Chinese Language Cinema :A Hong Kong Stance.