Kwong Kwong was born in Shanghai in 1925 as Kwong Cho-kwong, with ancestral roots in Taishan, Guangdong, and moved to Hong Kong in childhood with his father Chin Tsan and elder brother Chin Ning. He came from a film family; his father founded the National and Liberty studios and taught himself a stereoscopic filming process, and in 1937 Kwong was brought into the Hong Kong film industry by his father. In 1950 he took part as writer and director in Ne Zha Fights the Red Boy, co-directing with Yip Yat-sing and Leung Sam, and began his directing career. In 1953 his father handed him the stereoscopic technique he had developed, and Kwong wrote and directed The Gold Hunt, a Cantonese 3D feature; audiences had to wear polarised glasses, which cinemas rented for twenty cents or sold for eighty cents, the film opening in Hong Kong on 19 June 1953, its depth effects compared with American 3D productions of the day. In 1957 his father and brother developed an anamorphic wide-screen process named the Grand Complex, for which Kwong wrote and directed Mulan Joins the Army. After his father died in 1958 he became head of National Film Studio, his brother taking the post of general manager. He also directed several Amoy- and Teochew-dialect films, among them Red Kid and Monkey King, The Centipede, the Clam and the Snake, Two Fools' Romance, Swatow Ah Sao and Four Red Noses, and between 1949 and 1967 served as art director on more than twenty Cantonese films spanning fantasy, opera and drama. Kwong died on 27 June 2019, having witnessed Cantonese cinema's passage from fantasy pictures to stereoscopic technology.
The Gold Hunt, written and directed by Kwong Kwong in 1953, was among Hong Kong's earliest stereoscopic films and gave local audiences their first taste of 3D in a cinema; a long-serving art director on Cantonese pictures, he took over National Film Studio after his father's death and helped build the sets and art work of 1950s Hong Kong cinema.
Achievements
- 1950 · Took part as writer and director in his first film, Ne Zha Fights the Red Boy
- 1953 · Wrote and directed The Gold Hunt, one of Hong Kong's earliest 3D films
- 1958 · Became head of National Film Studio after his father Chin Tsan's death