Terry Bourke
Terry Christopher Bourke (Bairnsdale, Victoria 9 April 1940-29 June 2002) was an Australian journalist, screenwriter, producer and director.
He worked as a show business journalist and production assistant in Hong Kong for a number of years before returning to Australia in 1971. He made several movies and also worked in television.
Early filmography
Bourke was a newspaper journalist for The Australian and The China Mail in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong. He entered the world of feature films in 1965 by raising $320,000 for actor Jeffrey Stone's first and last East-West Motion Picture Ltd production Strange Portrait (1966) with Bourke credited as an associate producer. He continued in Hong Kong shot films being credited as a production manager in Harry Alan Towers' film The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) directed by Lindsay Shonteff.
Bourke made his directorial debut when he wrote, produced and directed Sampan AKA San-Ban shot in the New Territories in 1968 with an eye on international distribution. The film attracted threats of censorship and large audiences in Hong Kong as it featured what was regarded as the first nude scene in Hong Kong Cinema when star Dorothy Fu displayed one of her breasts in a scene of her running away from a pursuer. The film became the most successful Hong Kong film of the year. Though Hong Kong censors originally considered cutting the scene but allowed it in the film, the Australian censors excised the scene prior to the film's release. Some sources credited Bourke as being the first Occidential to direct a Hong Kong film
