Cai Chusheng (January 12, 1906 - July 15, 1968) was a Chinese film director of the pre-Communist era.

Biography

Born in Shanghai to Cantonese parents, but raised outside of Guangzhou, Cai Chusheng worked in low-level positions in several small studios during the 1920s, before eventually joining Mingxing Film Company as a director's assistant. Cai did not gain true prominence until he joined the Lianhua Film Company where his role as a leading leftist filmmaker throughout the 1930s and 1940s was cemented. He is perhaps most famous for his film, New Women (新女性 , 1934), starring Ruan Lingyu in her final role prior to her suicide.

In 1934, Cai's Song of the Fisherman became the first Chinese film to win an international prize at the Moscow Film Festival.

Cai's post-war film, the collaboration with Zheng Junli The Spring River Flows East (1947) also proved to be a major film in the brief "Second Golden Age" of Cinema that followed the end of the Second World War. Following the Communist revolution, Cai worked mainly in administrative tasks, though he did make one major post-1949 film, Waves on the Southern Shore (1963). As the Cultural Revolution began to gain momentum in the late 1960s, Cai Chusheng, like many artists and intellectuals, became the target of persecution, which led to his early death in 1968.

In Stanley Kwan's 1992 biopic of Ruan Lingyu, Centre Stage, Cai Chusheng is portrayed by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai.

Selected filmography

Year	English Title	Chinese Title	Notes
1932	Spring in the South	南国之春
1932	Pink Dream	粉红色的梦	Also known as A Dream in Pink
1932	Share the Burden of the National Crisis	共赴国难
1933	Dawn Over the Metropolis	都会的早晨
1934	Song of the Fishermen	渔光曲
1935	New Women	新女性
1936	Mi tu de gao yang	迷途的羔羊
1939	Orphan Island Paradise	孤岛天堂
1940	Qian cheng wan li	前程万里
1947	The Spring River Flows East	一江春水向东流上集
1963	Waves on the Southern Shoret	南海潮

Notes

See also

• Cinema of China

External links

• Cai Chusheng at the Internet Movie Database
• Short Biography on Cai Chusheng
• Essay on Cai Chusheng
• Cai Chusheng at the Chinese Movie Database
• Cai Chusheng at the BFI Film and TV Database