HONG KONG – Hong Kong's recently-minted Film Development Council has approved its first movie investments.

State org will put HK$5.2 million ($670,000) into two small-to-medium budget films by first time directors who both have experience in other fields. FDC coin reps 30% of budget in both cases.

FDC has previously committed some $2 million to non-production activities including non-refundable grants to the Asian Film Awards, the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF).

FDC is backing "Claustrophobia," a romantic-comedy chamber piece by highly rated screenwriter Ivy Ho. Producer Cary Cheng of Runaway Film Production says the pic's eight scene format and only five characters had put off many traditional Hong Kong backers. "But despite its low budget ($695,000) it has commercial elements including a cast that includes a cast headed by Karena Lam and Ekin Cheng, cameos by Eric Tsang and Andy Hui, and a very established tech crew," Cheng said. Pic has coin from mini-conglom Edko and lensing is now underway. Int'l sales have not been fixed.

Org has also backed the $1.54 million 2D animation "McDull WuDang," the latest instalment in the McDull feature series about an everyman pig in Hong Kong. Helmer is Brian Tse, who was producer of previous McDull pics, and is also developing "Wee Wee the Poop," a bigger-budget 3D animation.

"WuDang is the slice of life that we have come to expect from McDull and although in this one he learns kung-fu this is in no way a kung-fu movie," producer Samuel Choy said. Production is through Bliss Pictures, which produced previous McDull episodes.

"The two approved film projects are of different film types. It clearly demonstrates that the FDF Scheme covers different film categories and production scales to meet various needs of the local film market," convenor of the council's fund vetting committee, Wilfred Wong, said.

FDC, which was born last year following calls that Hong Kong invest public coin in development of new film-making talent, is examining two other funding submissions which will likely be green-lighted in the next two months and some six more at other stages of submission.

While coin approval is largely automatic if all local elements criteria are in place, FDC is understood to have turned down two other applications which failed that test.

Although commercial potential is one of the expected elements, presence of a sales company is not an FDC requirement and foreign sales estimates by the production company are deemed sufficient.