SUPERSTAR cinematographer Christopher Doyle is arguably the most influential and prolific cameraman in Asian cinema, having spent 20 years in Asia, working with the greats and steeping himself in Chinese culture.

Doyle, fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, helped put modern Hong Kong cinema on the map.

The hard-drinking, outspoken Australian is given to tirades, blunt criticism and abstract ramblings on life, love, making movies and Chinese poetry.

Hardly Hollywood's darling, Doyle recently made headlines by calling Ang Lee's "Life of Pi," which won an Oscar for best cinematography "a f***ing insult to cinematography." He was referring to all the sensational visual effects that he said overwhelmed any art of cinematography. He typically rants against Hollywood box office, an industry "run by accountants," and "ridiculous" Academy Awards. He himself has never received one.

Doyle was recently in Shanghai to give a workshop during the Shanghai International Literary Festival and spoke with Shanghai Daily, also answering questions via Skype.

Doyle is famous for his work with Wong Kar-wai, seven films including "In the Mood for Love" (2000), "Chungking Express" (1994), "Happy Together" (1997) and "2046" (2004), which took five years to shoot. He did not shoot Wong's latest film, "The Grandmaster" (2013), praised for its brilliant visuals.

Doyle is better known than many directors; He is self-taught, but perfected his technique in Paris.

His work is ever-changing, highly atmospheric and improvisational. Its sensibility is often eccentric, the lighting woozy, the colors oversaturated, the images febrile.

The 61-year-old auteur was born outside Sydney, left home at the age of 18 and joined the merchant marine. He has been an oil driller in India, a cow herder in Israel and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine in Thailand. A good filmmaker and cinematographer needs a lot of life experience and Doyle has it.

Since the late 1970s he lived in both Hong Kong and Taipei, where he learned Mandarin and Cantonese. He goes by the Chinese name of Du Kefeng, "Like the Wind," from Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) poet Du Fu's last name and Shijing (the Classic of Poetry).

Referring to his immersion in Chinese culture, Doyle describes himself as "a Chinese with a skin disease" and lightheartedly compares his own life to the Chinese classic "Journey to the West." He sees in himself the characteristics of the four main characters.

He said he appreciates the indirectness of Chinese culture. "I know when I say 'yes,' I mean 'maybe,' but my 'maybe' may be more," he said.

"That's why I think I am more comfortable in this culture because that's definitely me," he added.

Some of the best cinematographers working in American films were not schooled in Hollywood, he observers, saying the same outsider status is true of himself as a cinematographer working in Asia, "looking with fresh eyes."

People from outside "are seeing-perceiving moments and aspects of culture that someone inside the culture will never see. So they have the experience of engagement with the culture, but they also have the objectivity of looking with other eyes," he explained.

Asked what makes creativity, he replied, "It is the balance between the personal/subjective and the objective, between the inside and the person looking with fresh eyes."

As for what fuels him, it's "alcohol and people and love and space are the same as oxygen. They give you the energy."

Doyle calls camera movement a "dance between the actors and the cinematographer."

"Good filmmaking is good sex and you are not sure who is who anymore," Doyle told Shanghai Daily.

Doyle said he embraces errors and accepts mistakes as "wondrous revelations." Various mistakes have helped him create some of his extraordinary mise-en-scenes, he said, citing defective film and unpredictable situation in film processing. He won't try to control it, but only work on the unknown shapes and volumes. "You have to appreciate the mistakes and then you learn from them and have voice."

There's a crack or flaw in everything "and that's how the light gets in to reveal the essence," he said. "It could be light streaming through a broken cathedral window or it could be mistakes."

In film he works with many people who have strong affiliations with words and music, so as he works with them, he and they try to find "the crack," he said, "to make something hopefully a little more volatile, or a little bit more expressive, and bit more perhaps unexpected."

Though he rejects the label perfectionist, Doyle appears obsessed with getting it right. He is forced to make sacrifices and compromises and said that at night he can't sleep because he dwells on how he could have done better. Maybe he moved the camera too fast and missed an important shot.

Doyle compared the process of shooting a film to "the process of falling in love ... they (scenes, images) just come through to you unexpectedly. And that's exhausting, because you have so much determination and you have so much need."

He said that as a cinematographer, his best film is always the next one, adding that the feeling of not having done his best is what drives him to make his next movie.

He calls making movies "a beautiful way to live, because then we never get old." It's not unusual to see filmmakers still working in their 80s and 90s, but it's rare to see a businessman working at that age, he observes.

"The energy keeps on coming through you. It just demands so much and gives so much back."

Explaining some of his philosophy, he says, "I think life is beautiful but maybe you don't know until I tell you. I think you are beautiful and maybe I can show you why you are beautiful. I think there are a few ideas that people don't know, let's find out what they are to us. There's a whole world of astonishing spaces that maybe others don't see, how scary it is, how beautiful it is, how mystical it is. That's what we do, we have to share the wonder of life."

Censorship is not the main issue holding back Chinese cinema, "it's box office," he told Shanghai Daily. "It's all over the world and not just in China. The whole box office fatality has dominated mainstream of filmmaking," he said. "So what we do? We just say f*** you very much, and move along."

And the only way to move along is to find other approaches, Doyle said, citing past examples of new beginnings, such as Italian neorealism, the French new wave, Brazil's new cinema, and China's fifth generation, exemplified by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.

Doyle said he's not surprised that money and material things are so important in China today, but he considers this trend to be temporary.

"I have a very positive attitude toward what will happen, how kids will teach us what we need to know.... People in the social environment will make some changes and then ultimately people will stop thinking too much about box office and make really great films. And it's the kids, not me or Kar-wei or Kaige. We need their voice and they actually have the voice."

"Don't worry. Let the blockbuster create the blockbuster bust, then the blockbuster will bust the block. And then you have the new block really happen."

Works

Since 1983, Doyle has been the cinematographer for more than 60 features, short films and projects.

"In the Mood for Love" was awarded the Grand Technical Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as Best Cinematography Awards by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Doyle has won four Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan and six Hong Kong Film Awards for cinematography.

Doyle has worked with many directors, including Zhang Yimou on "Hero" (2002), Chen Kaige on "Temptress Moon" (1996), Stan Lai on "The Red Lotus Society" (1994), James Ivory on "The White Countess" (2005) and with Gus Van de Sant in the 1988 remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" as an "art project."

Several of his films are in post-production, including "The Blue Bone," directed by Cui Jian, legendary singer songwriter and actor, the so-called godfather of rock. Also in post production is Peter Chan's "American Dreams in China."

Doyle himself has written and directed a couple of films such as "Away With Words," (1999, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese), but admits he's a better collaborator and cinematographer than director.

On the name Du Kefeng (Like the Wind)

"Like the wind, I should acquire a certain attitude, a lifestyle. At times I should be like and of the wind, forceful perhaps, even violent, at times coming from one direction and from an usually opposite side. Not there sometimes when you need him most. Sometimes he doesn't blow at all. I think something I have to aspire is Du Kefeng who is much more elegant and much more achieved than Christopher Doyle."