Yuan Yang-an (1905-1994), a native of Dinghai in Zhejiang, was a lawyer, publisher and film producer-director; his daughter Yuan Jingmian, known as Mao Mei, founded a ballet school. After secondary school in Zhoushan he moved with his family to Shanghai and graduated from Soochow University's law faculty, practising as a lawyer there from the late 1920s to the 1940s with his own firm and serving as legal adviser to the industrialist Liu Hongsheng. He was also active in education and publishing, heading a joint middle school and founding a Shanghai book and periodical company that issued the celebrated Liangyou pictorial. Moving to Hong Kong in 1947, he took over the failing Great Wall film studio and reorganised it as Great Wall Film Production, the New Great Wall, serving as general manager and producer-director and reviving the company; its film The Flower in the Sea was selected for the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1953. He left in 1957 to found the Xinxin studio, and in 1958 completed The True Story of Ah Q, which he directed; its star Kwan Shan won best actor at the Locarno International Film Festival, the first Hong Kong actor to take an international best-actor prize. In October 1968 he left Hong Kong for Taiwan with the Great Wall star Chen Sisi; he died in 1994.
Yuan brought Shanghai publishing and legal experience to Hong Kong and organised émigré filmmakers into the New Great Wall, giving Mandarin cinema in 1950s Hong Kong a stable production base; The True Story of Ah Q made Kwan Shan the first Hong Kong actor to win a best-actor prize at a major international festival.
Achievements
- 1947 · Took over the failing Great Wall studio in Hong Kong and reorganised it as Great Wall Film Production, becoming its general manager and producer-director.
- 1953 · The Great Wall film The Flower in the Sea, which he helped produce, was selected for the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
- 1958 · Directed The True Story of Ah Q, whose star Kwan Shan won best actor at the Locarno International Film Festival.