This is the 84th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades.Josie Ho Chiu-yee has spent her career dismantling assumptions and forging her own identity through unbridled creativity.When it came to pursuing a music career, the daughter of the late Macau casino magnate Stanley Ho Hung-sun rejected the easy path of Cantopop ballads and blockbuster fluff, instead favouring 1980s-inspired punk rock and genre movies.Today, at age 51, she is perhaps best known for championing independent cinema – 20 years ago, she founded the production company 852 Films to back edgy projects spanning from Hong Kong to Hollywood.“I needed to make sure I knew how much I could earn by myself, with my own hands. That’s why I kept working so hard,” Josie told the South China Morning Post’s PostMag in 2014. “It’s very important because one day those things might be gone and you might have to come out and make a living yourself.”Josie Ho at an interview with the SCMP in 1999. Photo: May TseEscaping the gilded cage