Tsi Lo-lin (1925–2015), born Chau Kit-lin in Yunfu, Guangdong, learned opera as a child because her father worked in a Cantonese opera troupe; her elder sister Chau Kit-wan was a leading Cantonese opera actress in Guangzhou, and at thirteen she joined the Tai Ping troupe led by the celebrated Ma Si-tsang, touring between Guangdong and Hong Kong. She entered films in 1938 in South China Film Company's The Eighth Heaven and came to prominence with her 1941 lead in a Cantonese tragedy. In 1952 she joined Ng Cho-fan, Cheung Ying and Pak Yin in founding Union Film Enterprise, a collective dedicated to socially conscious, higher-quality Cantonese pictures; the company produced realist works such as In the Face of Demolition (1953), in which she also appeared. Active through the 1950s, she starred in more than a hundred films, among them several Cantonese dramas. In 1954 she set up her own Tsi Lo-lin Film Company and wrote, directed and starred in Love in Malaya, one of the few women to direct in early Cantonese cinema. Her films also include The Foolish Bridegroom (1956) and Emerald Green Years (1957), with her final screen appearance coming in 1964. Recommended early on by the director Hung Chung-ho, she worked with figures such as Pak Ku-wing. A devout Christian, she volunteered in her church after retiring and cared for ageing colleagues in the industry, and died in Hong Kong in 2015, aged about ninety.
Tsi Lo-lin was a founding member of Union Film Enterprise and helped raise the standard of Cantonese cinema; with Love in Malaya she became one of the few women directors of early Hong Kong film, opening a path for later female filmmakers, and her charity toward fellow veterans after retiring was widely remembered.
Achievements
- 1938 · Appeared in South China Film Company's The Eighth Heaven, entering the film industry.
- 1952 · Co-founded Union Film Enterprise with Ng Cho-fan, Cheung Ying and Pak Yin.
- 1954 · Founded her own Tsi Lo-lin Film Company and wrote, directed and starred in Love in Malaya.