Tang Shu-shuen was born in Hong Kong in 1941 to a family with ancestral roots in Yunnan; her grandfather was Tang Jiyao, a leading Republican-era figure in that province. After secondary school she went to the United States to study film at the University of Southern California and stayed on briefly to shoot commercials. Returning to Hong Kong in the late 1960s, she wrote and directed her first feature, The Arch (1970), recasting an old tale of female chastity through a psychological and existential lens. She raised the money in America, made the film on a budget of about US$60,000, shot in Hong Kong and Taiwan and finished post-production back in the United States. It was screened at Cannes, San Francisco, Locarno and Mannheim, and at the 9th Golden Horse Awards took Best Leading Actress, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Black-and-White Art Direction and a special prize for creativity, making it one of the earliest Hong Kong films produced and distributed outside the major studios. In 1974 she wrote and directed China Behind, about young intellectuals fleeing the Cultural Revolution; with that upheaval still under way, the colonial authorities banned it as a possible threat to friendly relations with a neighbouring region, and it was not cleared until 1987. She followed it with the omnibus Sup Sap Bup Dup (1975) and The Hong Kong Tycoon (1979, co-written with Wong King-hei), the story of a small man who makes good. In 1975 she founded the film journal Close-Up on her own; it ran to sixty-six issues before closing in 1978, and its editorial team later formed the backbone of Film Biweekly. She moved to the United States in 1979, wrote and produced the Sino-American television film Peking Encounter in 1981, shooting in Beijing, and in 2012 wrote and produced the English-language musical I, Ching for the Hong Kong troupe Theatre Space, staged in Los Angeles.
Tang Shu Shuen was Hong Kong's first noted woman director and a pioneer of its art cinema and independent production. Made on a tiny budget, The Arch still reached Cannes and other international festivals, showing that Hong Kong filmmaking need not depend on the big studios to travel abroad; the magazine Close-Up that she founded trained a generation of critics and editors whose team later formed the backbone of Film Biweekly, seeding what would become the Hong Kong New Wave.
Achievements
- 1970 · Wrote and directed her first feature, The Arch, which won four prizes at the 9th Golden Horse Awards including Best Leading Actress.
- 1974 · Completed China Behind, which she wrote and directed and which was banned in Hong Kong until 1987.
- 1975 · Founded the film journal Close-Up single-handedly; it ran to sixty-six issues.
- 1979 · Directed and co-wrote The Hong Kong Tycoon with Wong King-hei, and moved to the United States the same year.