The parting shots
Wong is notoriously slow to shoot and complete films, so late arriving at the 2004 Cannes Festival with 2046 (the last film Doyle shot with him) that its first screenings had to be rescheduled. Doyle doesn’t have the patience for that any more. “I’d rather make 10 films in a year than a film in 10 years,” he said. “Maybe it’s an age thing. Next year they give me a free bus pass.”

It’s also love and concern for his adopted home, Hong Kong. “It’s disappearing,” he said. “The language and the culture are being subsumed. It feels important to make Hong Kong films now because in two years it might be too late.”

Soon, Doyle will shoot a second Hong Kong feature with the creative team behind Port of Call. There’s also another project coming up with Mark Cousins, whose epic The Story of Film did the festival rounds a few years ago. Before that, Doyle will “misdirect” his own next film.

Doyle never came close to offering technical advice, never cited a camera he’d used or preferred and only once noted a lens length – and that only to explain how far away from something he’d had to be to shoot it safely.

In his second BSS presentation, he said, “At my age you do what you can not what you want.”

Ward called it an excellent note on which to end, but Doyle added a coda, asking, “How can we get somewhere special?”

“It’s the love that you give,” he closed, “like a mother’s cooking. You make it for the people you love and you put it on the table.”