Cai Chusheng

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Cai.
Cai Chusheng
Chinese name 蔡楚生 (Traditional)
Chinese name 蔡楚生 (Simplified)
Born January 12, 1906(1906-01-12)
Shanghai, China
Died July 15, 1968 (aged 62)
Years active 1932 - 1950

Cai Chusheng (Chinese: ; pinyin: Cài Chǔshēng) (January 12, 1906 - July 15, 1968) was a Chinese film director of the pre-Communist era.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Shanghai to Cantonese parents, but raised outside of Guangzhou, Cai Chusheng worked in low-level positions in several small studios during the 1920s, before eventually joining Mingxing Film Company as a director's assistant. Cai did not gain true prominence until he joined the Lianhua Film Company where his role as a leading leftist filmmaker throughout the 1930s and 1940s was cemented. He is perhaps most famous for his film, New Women (新女性 , 1934), starring Ruan Lingyu in her final role prior to her suicide.

In 1934, Cai's Song of the Fisherman became the first Chinese film to win an international prize at the Moscow Film Festival.[1]

Cai's post-war film, the collaboration with Zheng Junli The Spring River Flows East (1947) also proved to be a major film in the brief "Second Golden Age" of Cinema that followed the end of the Second World War. Following the Communist revolution, Cai worked mainly in administrative tasks, though he did make one major post-1949 film, Waves on the Southern Shore (1963). As the Cultural Revolution began to gain momentum in the late 1960s, Cai Chusheng, like many artists and intellectuals, became the target of persecution, which led to his early death in 1968.

In Stanley Kwan's 1992 biopic of Ruan Lingyu, Centre Stage, Cai Chusheng is portrayed by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai.

[edit] Selected filmography

Year English Title Chinese Title Notes
1932 Spring in the South 南国之春
1932 Pink Dream 粉红色的梦 Also known as A Dream in Pink
1932 Share the Burden of the National Crisis 共赴国难
1933 Dawn Over the Metropolis 都会的早晨
1934 Song of the Fishermen 渔光曲
1935 New Women 新女性
1936 Mi tu de gao yang 迷途的羔羊
1939 Orphan Island Paradise 孤岛天堂
1940 Qian cheng wan li 前程万里
1947 The Spring River Flows East 一江春水向东流上集
1963 Waves on the Southern Shoret 南海潮

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Kraicer, Shelly (2005-12-06). Timeline. Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved on 2006-05-08.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links