Huang Shuqin

b. 1940, Guangdong

Film director

Daughter of famed stage director Huang Zuolin, Huang Shuqin graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1964, but received no assignments until she co-directed Lianxin Dam (Lianxin ba, 1977). Beginning with The Modern Generation (Dangdai ren, 1981), she received regular assignments as a director for Shanghai Film Studios, completing award-winning films such as the adaptation of Wang Meng’s 1953 novel, Forever Young (Qingchun wansui, 1983) and Childhood Friends (Tongnian de pengyou, 1984). She first received international attention outside socialist countries with Woman, Demon, Human (Renguiqing, 1987), an account of an innovative female performer of male roles in the traditional theatre (Xiqu).

Huang directed La Peinture (a.k.a. A Soul Haunted by Painting, Huahun, 1994), based on the life of Pan Yuliang, who was sold into prostitution as a young girl and struggled to become a pioneering woman artist, never, however, to overcome persecution. Although Huang has continued to direct films, she became best known in the 1990s for directing acclaimed telenovellas such as the adaptations of Qian Zhongshu’s masterpiece, Fortress Besieged (Weicheng, 1990) and the topical Moral Debts (Niezhai, 1995), which depicts children searching for the parents who abandoned them, in Shanghai.

Further reading

Xiao, Li (1992). ‘Huang Shuqin: A Woman Film Director’. Chinese Literature 2: 178–81.

EDWARD GUNN