Esther Eng (24 September 1914 – 25 January 1970), born Ng Kam-ha, was raised in San Francisco in a family with roots in Taishan, Guangdong, one of ten children and the fourth, a second-generation Chinese American. She grew up around the Cantonese opera theatres of Chinatown and developed a taste for film; her father, a local merchant, was keen that his children keep a Chinese consciousness, so she learned Chinese and Cantonese even abroad, which later helped when she came to Hong Kong to make films. She entered the film world in the 1930s. In 1935, having formed a company with a friend, she co-produced the Cantonese sound film Heartaches, shot in Hollywood and promoted as the first such Chinese-language talkie made there. She came to Hong Kong in 1936 and went on to direct National Heroine, a patriotic film premiered in the colony on 13 March 1937 and commended by a Guangdong women's rights association. In 1938 she directed two films for different studios. In 1939 she directed It's a Women's World, performed entirely by thirty-six actresses, an unusual undertaking at the time, before the widening war forced her to leave Hong Kong. In 1941 she worked with Chiu Shu-sun and Kwan Man-ching on Golden Gate Girl, released in the United States, in which the baby playing a girl was the future martial-arts star Bruce Lee in his screen debut. With her father she also ran a company that bought Cantonese films for distribution in North and Central America. Eng made eleven Cantonese films in all, spanning Hollywood, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Hawaii and New York, all aimed at Chinese audiences. She habitually dressed in men's clothes and was known to colleagues as Ha Gor, or Brother Ha. After the war she lived largely in New York, running restaurants and nightclubs and opening several eateries between 1950 and 1967. She died in New York in 1970, aged 55. She was rediscovered in the 2010s through S. Louisa Wei's documentary Golden Gate Girls (2013), premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
Esther Eng broke ground in Chinese film history as one of the very few women directing feature films in the 1930s and 40s; working across the United States and Hong Kong, and making the all-female It's a Women's World, she left a distinctive female perspective on early Chinese-language cinema.
Achievements
- 1935 · Formed a company with a friend and co-produced Heartaches, a Cantonese sound film shot in Hollywood.
- 1937 · Directed National Heroine, a patriotic film premiered in Hong Kong on 13 March.
- 1939 · Directed It's a Women's World, performed entirely by thirty-six actresses.
- 1941 · Worked on Golden Gate Girl, in which baby Bruce Lee made his screen debut.