Karl Maka moved to Hong Kong in 1958 and then five years later he emigrated to New York City where he studied as an engineer. It is difficult to ascertain whether he got his sense of humor on the streets of New York or later when he was working for the telephone company in New Jersey! At some point though he realized this wasn’t for him and returned to HK in 1973 with his American styled humor well in tow. He quickly got into the film business – first as an assistant director and then in 1976 directed his first film.

It was in 1980 though when he formed the film company Cinema City along with Raymond Wong and Dean Shek that Maka was fully able to put his Western influenced comedic imprint upon his films. In 1982, Maka made the first Aces Go Places film with Sam Hui and Sylvia Chang (who he was married to but has since divorced) and these films were tremendously popular in Hong Kong. During the first part of the 80’s, Cinema City was extremely successful – producing a number of comedies that did well and introducing many stars to the public. They also acted as the producers for Tsui Hark’s production company, Film Workshop, and therefore are partly responsible for such classics as Shanghai Blues, Peking Opera Blues and A Better Tomorrow and they also produced films such as Ringo Lam’s On Fire series. Towards the end of the 80’s though Cinema City fell upon hard times when a number of their films collapsed at the box office with Dragon from Russia (1990) being the final nail in their financial coffin. Maka pretty much left the film industry by 1991 and began focusing on the real estate business – but the downturn in the real estate sector during the Asian crash of the late 90’s generated large financial losses for Maka.

In 2000 Maka returned to the film business with his old partner Sam Hui in the geared for the Chinese New Year film Winner Takes All 2000 – but it unfortunately did not fare well at the box office and Maka admitted that perhaps his style of family comedy is no longer popular.

(Source: HKCM/Yves Gendron) Edit Biography