Stephen Shin Kei-yin, born in Macau in 1950, moved with his family to Wan Chai in Hong Kong at the age of seven and studied at Salesian schools before reading biology at Hong Kong Baptist College, where he sat in on Chung King-fai's drama classes and was recommended to write for Television Broadcasts. His first script, written in 1970, became the station's first programme broadcast in colour. He switched to sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, graduated in 1975 and spent years as an assistant director and then director at Television Broadcasts, working on the sitcom Family Couple (1975) and later on drama productions of the late 1970s. Moving to Commercial Television, he left when the station collapsed. In 1979, with backing from Great Wall Movie Enterprises, he formed Tin Lung Film Company and directed his first feature in a social-realist vein, followed by a 1980 drama and the 1982 Mint Coffee, about working women; he then joined Radio Television Hong Kong, producing the information programme Electric Shadows, and produced a 1984 costume drama and later planned a 1988 film about the writer Yu Dafu. In the mid-1980s he wrote and directed Brothers (1986) for D&B Films, a hard-edged crime film that succeeded with critics and audiences alike, and at the end of 1986 he joined D&B as executive director, overseeing production and distribution, producing more than twenty films and continuing to direct. These included a 1987 romantic action film shot across Europe and the urban comedy Heart to Hearts (1988), which set a trend, together with its sequels in 1990 and 1992. He recruited Yuen Woo-ping to D&B, discovered the Taiwanese newcomer Cynthia Khan for a 1988 action film, and under the alias Shum Kei-yuen was executive producer of the 1988 Sil-Metropole drama Gangs. He helped found the Hong Kong Film Culture Centre and worked on the Hong Kong Film Awards. In 1994 he directed the historical epic The Great Conqueror's Concubine, starring Gong Li; he later partly left the film world for business, serving as executive director of a conglomerate, vice-president and Hong Kong chief of SMI Holdings, executive director of Sing Pao and chief executive of Sun TV. He made the 2016 war drama The Ultimate Victory, which he wrote, directed and produced, together with a documentary on the Weihsien internment camp. He is chief operating officer of Sil-Metropole, co-produced Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin (2015) and was a member of the Hong Kong Film Development Council from 2017 to 2019.
As executive director of D&B Films, Stephen Shin ran production during the company's golden years in the 1980s. Moving from television writing to film management, he also helped found the Hong Kong Film Culture Centre and worked on the Hong Kong Film Awards, belonging to a generation that built Hong Kong cinema's institutions.
Achievements
- 1970 · Wrote his first script, which became TVB's first programme broadcast in colour.
- 1979 · Directed his first feature film, a debut marked by its social-realist tone.
- 1994 · Directed the historical epic The Great Conqueror's Concubine, starring Gong Li.