Mabel Cheung and Alex Law are long-time movie partners, sharing writing, producing and directing chores. Their collaboration has given us such hit films as An Autumn's Tale and The Soong Sisters. In Jackie Chan: Traces of a Dragon, they recorded the revelations of Jackie Chan's parents, accounting for a life of danger, hardships and emigration which Jackie Chan himself knew little about. Filmfestivals.com met the dynamic duo to talk further about their fascinating discoveries...

Could you tell me about the very birth of the project which seems to date back to 1999?

Yes. Back in 1999 at the time of Chinese New Year, Jackie Chan came to us and said: "Would you like to go to my home in Australia to visit my father, because my father is prepared to tell me family secrets..." There had been rumours circulating around that Jackie was not his father's biological son. And that he had other siblings in China, and that his surname was not even "Chan". So we were intrigued and said: "Why not?"

Vacation with Jackie Chan in Australia would be great fun! So we went to Jackie's home with him to record the whole procedure of his father telling him the secret of his family. Jackie himself had never heard this story before. It was the very first time for him.

Alex Law : He heard the same thing for the first time along with the two of us. He heard many things for the first time. That is why sometimes you can see tears in his eyes when he heard about how his mother suffered, how his two brothers became beggars in China, those sort of things. He was very moved himself.

Mabel Cheung: I think that's a very good thing that he heard those stories for the first time himself. So we could capture his true emotions. I put him always there, besides his father, to catch his reactions, because I knew it was also his first time listening to these stories. So we tried to capture his true emotions as the stories unfolded. Which is a very good thing, because you can see, sometimes he's surprised, sometimes he's touched. You can also see sense the father/son relationship. To Hong Kong audiences, Jackie Chan is a big hero. A very tough guy. But to his father, he's just a little boy. So his attitude when he is with his father is completely different. He's like a little boy wandering in his father's stories. And sometimes his father would say: "You silly boy!" (Laughs) Very authoritative! So you can see a different side of Jackie Chan, a side which people have never seen before. (Smiles)

As you said, you discovered many things, many secrets…

Mabel Cheung: The most surprising thing was to discover that his mother was not a simple housewife. Because we had known his mother for some time and always thought that she was a soft-spoken, gentle housewife. But then, we discovered later that she had been an opium smuggler, and that under the nickname of "Third Sister" she had roamed the underworld all by herself! (Laughs) Also, that his father had been a spy for the Nationalist party under Chiang Kai-shek. That was also a shock. His father was not really willing to reveal that part of himself, actually. I found out the truth from his other sisters. So then he said : "Well, if you know about it, then I will tell you!" (Laughs)

Did Jackie's father have true political convictions, or rather, was he, as he called himself, a "hood, a henchman"?

Mabel Cheung: Jackie's father is more like a happy-go-lucky kind of man. He's very open, funny, friendly, but then he has this harsh appearance which makes people somewhat scared of him when they don't know him well. But after a few drinks, he's OK, he can talk very freely. I suppose, although he has suffered a lot in the past, he has enjoyed life in a way, lived life to the fullest.

Alex Law : He was never a political man. I think he joined the Nationalist party only by circumstances. But most people joined the Nationalists at that time, more than the Communists. And then, after he became a Nationalist, he eventually took side. But then, the Communists became bigger and bigger, and he had to leave China. But I don't think he took sides from the start. He was not politicized.

Mabel Cheung: He was just making a living! (Laughs)

Alex Law : Yes! (Laughs) He started off as a hooligan, a hitman, and if you joined the Nationalists, you could become a hitman with a licence. So he thought: "Why not?"

Mabel Cheung: He always liked guns! (Laughs) Carrying a gun made him feel more important.

You show in the film images of violence, whether bombardments, executions, decapitations... I would like to know how the use of that kind of images became instrumental to making this film?

Mabel Cheung : I had seen many documentaries about modern Chinese history for the making of The Soong Sisters. I have seen a lot of violent things that happened during the war and the cultural revolution. And those images stuck in my mind. So as soon as I listened to the stories of Jackie Chan's father and his two brothers, these images came to mind and I thought: "This is a good way to intercut the stories of Jackie Chan's family with those images, to illustrate the point." It was more interesting to intercut with actual historical footage than have those people just talking.

Alex Law: In any case, I think that in the mid-thirties and forties, life was very violent. People just died every day, on battle fronts, in the streets...

Mabel Cheung: Life was cheap then. You just executed people in the streets. During the cultural revolution, people got killed for various reasons. Sons and daughters betrayed parents. That was very common in China.

What kind of research did you do to find the actual footage you needed?

Mabel Cheung: We went to China first, but then in China, the filing system of newsreels was not too good so we had to look through all the rolls of film to find exactly what we wanted. And also, they censored some of the footage. So the executions in the streets, for example, they cut at the point of the gunshot. So we had to find those images elsewhere, and we sent people looking for the footage in England and the USA. And they sent that footage back to Hong Kong for us to screen. So it was a very long process, over a year, back and forth, finding the things we really wanted.

Was there the idea also, through the making of such a film, of reuniting on film a family that had been scattered by the course of history?

Mabel Cheung: Yes, all the more so as the health of Jackie's mother was a great concern. Jackie was afraid and wanted to record everything before something happened to his parents. His father is already 87 years-old. So he wanted to record everything before anything happened. And it was a good thing because his mother died last year after filming. So it's a good souvenir for the whole family. Reunification of Chinese families is a big thing, a big issue. Every single family has some members left in China or Taiwan. So this question of reunification has been on our minds for a long time, in every Chinese family.

Alex Law: Family reunion is a big thing in China. We always get together, for dinners, festivals, for the New Year. So I'm hoping also that this film will bring all families back together, that it will help families reunite all over China.

Mabel Cheung: Wherever they are... (Smiles)

Robin Gatto

Jackie Chan : Traces Of A Dragon