Fung, who moved to Toronto via Ireland in 1973, is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Photoelectric Arts Department (1977) and of the Cinema Studies program at the University of Toronto (1984). He is a video artist, writer and filmmaker, who has been engaged with questions of sexism and racism for most of his artistic career. These questions were examined in Orientations, his 1984 documentary on gay Asians.

Richard Fung's other videos include: Chinese Characters (1986) which looked at Gay Asian sexuality and its relation to North American gay media and Fighting Chance (1991) about several Asian gay men with AIDS. He has also written numerous thoughtful and incisive articles on film.

Richard Fung's contribution to the field of video art is three-fold. As an artist, his video work has continued to develop strands of experimentation, narrative hybridity and cultural voice into lyrically politicized tapes, each with its own formal approach - be it the personalized documentary-cum-diary of My Mother's Place to Shawn Fowler's careening stream-of-consciousness performance in School Fag.

He has taught at the Ontario College of Art, University of California at Irvine, California Institute for the Arts and S.U.N.Y. (Buffalo), has received the McKnight Fellowship, at Intermedia Arts Centre for Arts Criticism and Asian American Renaissance. Minneapolis-St. Paul (1996), a Rockefeller Fellowship, Centre for Media, Culture and History, New York University (1995) and the Bulloch Award for best Canadian work in the Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, Toronto (1996). Fung is the winner of the 2000 Bell Canada Award for outstanding achievement in video art.

Fung is one of Canada's most widely exhibited artists working in video, showing in festivals and curated programs in major museums and community centres, hosted by major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., and grassroots cultural organizations such as the Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver.

As an activist, Richard Fung has made an inestimable contribution to human rights issues. His commitments include production of documentary works such as Out of the Blue, curatorial projects such as the 17-title series Fresh Looks: anti-racist film and video, community service such as his involvement with the Canada Council's Committee for Racial Equality, his founding membership in Gay Asian Toronto, his work with the Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples and the Committee Against Homophobia.