Center Stage (1991)

Also released as Actress. Stanley Kwan's portrait of Ruan Lingyu, the Shanghai silent star who died in 1935, mixes Maggie Cheung's re-created scenes with clips from Ruan's own films and interviews with people who knew her, and even shows the cast discussing the production. The structure sounds dry; the effect is haunting, a Hong Kong film looking back at a lost Chinese cinema and asking who gets remembered. Cheung won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlin, and for anyone who first met her as a sidekick in action films, this is the performance that shows what she could really do.