Editing Tsui Hark (section)

===1977–1981: New Wave period===
Tsui returned to Hong Kong in 1977 and worked for TVB,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2001/hong-kong/hark_filmo/ | title=Tsui Hark: Filmography – Senses of Cinema | date=17 December 2013 }}</ref> the dominant local television station, then moved to its rival, CTV, lured by its general manager Selina Chow. Viewed as having an eye for talent (numerous future New Wave directors got their first directing gigs under Chow)<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3225186/hong-kong-new-wave-cinema-key-movies-and-directors-tsui-hark-ann-hui-and-how-they-changed-filmmaking | title=Hong Kong New Wave cinema: The directors and their ground-breaking movies | date=25 June 2023 }}</ref> she put Tsui in charge of the martial arts drama, ''The Gold Dagger Romance'', which marked him as a talent to watch.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.filmcomment.com/article/an-annotated-tsui-hark-interview-part-ii/ | title=Online Exclusive: An Annotated* Tsui Hark Interview (Part II, aka Annotation Overload) }}</ref> 

Producer Ng See-yuen saw ''Gold Dagger Romance'' and hired Tsui to direct his first feature, ''The Butterfly Murders'' (1979),<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.filmcomment.com/article/an-annotated-tsui-hark-interview-part-ii/ | title=Online Exclusive: An Annotated* Tsui Hark Interview (Part II, aka Annotation Overload) }}</ref> a technically challenging blend of [[wuxia]], murder mystery and science fiction / fantasy elements. His second film, ''[[We're Going to Eat You]]'' (1980), was a blend of cannibal horror, black comedy and martial arts. He was quickly typed as a member of Hong Kong's "New Wave" of directors.

Tsui's third film, ''[[Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind]]'' (1980), was a nihilistic thriller about delinquent youths on a bombing spree. Heavily censored by the [[1980s in Hong Kong|British colonial government]], it was released in 1981 in a drastically altered version titled ''Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind'' (or alternatively, ''Don't Play with Fire''). The movie out-grossed Tsui's previous two films, however and made him a darling of film critics with writers describing it as "one of those very rare films in the history of Hong Kong cinema that brims with accusation and subversion" and saying that it described "man as trapped animals — this is the popular theme of the New Wave and the one enduring image in their narratives."<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hv3yJ6MaoYsC&pg=PA44 | isbn=978-0-7864-0990-7 | title=The Cinema of Tsui Hark | date=January 2001 | publisher=McFarland }}</ref>