Tang Shu Shuen (; born 1941) is a former

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

film director. Though her film career was brief, she was a trailblazer for socially critical

art cinema An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily ...

in Hong Kong's populist

film industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production company, production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre ...

, as well as its first noted woman director. Tang was born in

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...

province, China. She graduated from the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8. ...

. Tang's best-known films are her first two, '' The Arch'' (1968) and ''

China Behind ''China Behind'' (再見中國) is a 1974 Hong Kong movie, directed by Tang Shu Shuen. The film painted a bleak portrait of communist China and the desire to escape, yielding a thirteen-year ban by British colonial authorities, that was lifted i ...

'' (1974). The first film looks at the subjugation of women and their sexuality in a traditional village through the story of a widow's unconsummated passion for a male houseguest. The second follows the harrowing journey of a group of college students trying to cross illegally into Hong Kong from a China torn by the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated go ...

. The bleak portrait in ''China Behind'' of both

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...

China and

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, pri ...

Hong Kong brought upon it a thirteen-year ban by the

British colonial authorities British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

. In addition to their provocative themes, both films used stylistic devices, such as freeze-frames and expressionistic color, possibly inspired by the European art cinema of the 1960s. Tang made two more, less noted, films, ''Sup Sap Bup Dup'' (1975) and ''The Hong Kong Tycoon'' (1979). She also launched the territory's first serious film journal, ''Close-Up'', in 1976. It stopped publishing in 1979 (Bordwell, 2000). She ceased filmmaking and emigrated to the United States in 1979, becoming a respected restaurateur in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

. Many critics, however, see her influence in the so-called

Hong Kong New Wave The Hong Kong New Wave is a film movement in Chinese-language Hong Kong cinema that emerged in the late 1970s and lasted into the early 2000s. Origins of the movement The Hong Kong New Wave started in 1979 with the release of numerous notable fi ...

of edgy, groundbreaking young filmmakers in the late '70s and early '80s.

References

* Bordwell, David. ''Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. * Teo, Stephen. ''Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions''. London: British Film Institute, 1997.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tang, Shu Shuen 1941 births Living people University of Southern California alumni Hong Kong emigrants to the United States Hong Kong film directors