| Birth Name: | Patrick Tam Kar-ming |
| Native Name: | 譚家明 |
| Native Name Lang: | zh |
| Birth Date: | 25 March 1948 |
| Birth Place: | Hong Kong |
Patrick Tam Ka-ming (; born 25 March 1948) is a Hong Kong film director and film editor. He is known as the seminal figure of Hong Kong New Wave[1]
Patrick Tam was born in 1948. As a teenager, he was avid film goer and wrote reviews and made film shorts on 16mm cameras. Like many of the other members of Hong Kong New Wave films, Tam began in television. He worked at TVB starting out as a prop assistant in 1967. By 1975, he was directing the stations tops programs like Superstar Special. When he was offered a sabbatical to study filmmaking in San Francisco, he spent most of the time at the Pacific Film Archive watching films.
He returned to Hong Kong in 1976 directing episodes of the Hong Kong cop show C.I.D. and then the series he was most known for with Seven Women. His last major television production was the 10-part series titled 13 in 1977.
His first film was The Sword (1980), a wuxia film.
Tam directed the 1987 film Final Victory, scripted by Wong Kar-wai. He edited Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild, contributing the cameo appearance of Tony Leung Chi-wai in the last scene, and Ashes of Time, as well as Johnnie To's Election.
As part of Hong Kong's New Wave of film directors in the late 1970s and 1980s, Tam's work enjoys great acclaim. According to the Hong Kong film critic Perry Lam, writing in Muse magazine, "[Tam's] unpredictable digressions and swift changes of scene can evoke a dreamer's logic, but his sound and images are always sharp and particular."[2]
As of 2006, Tam was an assistant professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.[3]