Cai Chusheng
| Cai Chusheng | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Background information | |
| Chinese name | 蔡楚生 |
| Pinyin | Cài Chǔshēng (Mandarin) |
| Born |
January 12, 1906 Shanghai, China |
| Died | July 15, 1968 (aged 62) |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1930s–1960s |
| Cai Chusheng | |||||||||||
| Chinese | 蔡楚生 | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Cài Chǔshēng |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | Choi3 Cho2 Sang1 |
Cai Chusheng (January 12, 1906 – July 15, 1968) was a Chinese film director of the pre-Communist era, and was the first Chinese director to win an international film award at the Moscow International Film Festival. Best known for his progressive output in the 1930s, Cai Chusheng was later severely persecuted and died during the Cultural Revolution. His ashes are kept at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.
Born in Shanghai to Cantonese parents, but raised in Chaoyang, Shantou, Guangdong. Cai only had four years of formal education, and was home-schooled after he had spoken up for his class about the misbehavior of a teacher. While home-schooled, he studied Confucianism and practiced calligraphy and painting. Cai Chusheng initially worked in low-level positions in several small studios during the 1920s, before eventually joining Mingxing Film Company as a director's assistant to Zheng Zhengqiu, another Chaoyang-native. Cai later joined the Lianhua Film Company where he directed a handful of mainstream popular films including Spring in the South and Pink Dream (both 1932). He would not cement his reputation as a leading leftist filmmaker until after the Japanese attack in 1932, when Cai, like many of his colleagues, shifted towards increasingly progressive or leftist filmmaking. This shift can be seen in output after 1932, including the class-struggle dramas Dawn Over the Metropolis (1933), Song of the Fishermen (1934), and the proto-feminist New Women (1934), which starred Ruan Lingyu. Song of the Fishermen, for example, was a major box office success in Shanghai where it played for 87 days, and it would also become the first Chinese film to win an international prize, doing so at the Moscow International Film Festival.
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