Tang Shu Shuen (; born 1941) is a former

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

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

art cinema An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is 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 prima ...

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 an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

province, China. She graduated from the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

. Tang's best-known films are her first two, '' The Arch'' (1968) and '' China Behind'' (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 Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

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

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

China and

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

Hong Kong brought upon it a thirteen-year ban by the British colonial authorities. 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, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. 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 through the early 2000s until the present time. Origins of the movement The Hong Kong New Wave started in 1979 with the rele ...

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