Biography
Tammy Cheung was born in Shanghai in 1958 and moved to Hong Kong at an early age. She studied
sociology in Hong Kong and film studies at Montreal’s Concordia University. In 1986, she founded the
Chinese International Film Festival in Montreal, showcasing films made by Chinese film‐makers and
films with Chinese content, and was director of the Festival from 1986 and 1992. She made her
directorial debut in 1999 and together with her collaborator and cinematographer Augustine
Lam she founded Reality Film Productions in Hong Kong in 2002, a production company that produces
and distributes social documentaries. Her works include Invisible Women (1999), Secondary School
(2002), Rice Distribution (2002), Moving (2003), War (2003), July (2004), Speaking up (2005); Village
Middle School (2006) and Speaking up 2 (2007). Rice Distribution won the Grand Prize and Open
category Gold Award at the 2002 Hong Kong Independent Short Film & Video Awards 2002. Her films
utilize the observational approach characteristic of American documentarist Frederick Wiseman’s
Direct Cinema style. Cheung is an engaging story‐teller, motivated by a wish to critique many of the
inadequate social structures in Hong Kong, and to enable viewers to empathize with ordinary people
and their aspirations. Tammy Cheung’s work has been presented in film festivals in Amsterdam, Rome,
Seoul, Toronto, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore and major cities in China.
