Kwan, Stanley

(né Kwan Gum-pang/Guan Jinpeng)

b. 10 September 1957, Hong Kong

Film director, producer

Emerging from the Hong Kong ‘New Wave’, Stanley Kwan titled his first film Women (Nüren xin, 1985), the first of many films focusing on women’s issues which have earned him the sobriquet, ‘Hong Kong’s George Cukor’. Like Cukor, but more explicitly, Kwan has also revealed himself to be a gay director, committed to exploring male as well as female identities in the ex-colony of the British crown. His internationally acclaimed feature films include Rouge (Yanzhi kou), winner of seven Hong Kong Film Awards in 1987; Centre Stage (a.k.a. Actress; Ruan Lingyu), which won him ‘Best Director’ at the 1992 Chicago Film Festival; and Red Rose, White Rose (Hong meigui yü bai meigui), which won a ‘Best Actress’ for Joan Chen at the Taiwan Golden Horse Awards in 1994.

His first gay film, Hold You Tight (Yu kuaile yu duolou, 1998), also won multiple awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in addition to the Frameline Award conferred on Kwan at the 23rd San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (1999). His recent gay film, Lan Yu, was a mainland collaboration adapted from the web novel Beijing Story (Beijing gushi; see web literature), and was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2001. It garnered four Golden Horse Awards, including ‘Best Director’. Kwan’s credits also include documentaries such as Yang+Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema (Nansheng nüxiang: Zhongguo dianying zhi xingbie, 1996), dealing with the queer dimension of Chinese cinema, and Still Love You After All This (Nianni ruxi, 1997), a reflection on Hong Kong on the verge of becoming part of China.

See also: homosexuality and tongzhi culture

Further reading

Chow, Rey (2001). ‘A Souvenir of Love’. In Esther Yau (ed.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 209–29 [on Rouge].

Reynaud, Bérénice (2003). ‘Centre Stage: A Shadow in Reverse’. In Chris Berry (ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes. London: BFI, 31–8.

Stokes, Lisa and Hoover, Michael (2000). ‘Resisting the Stage: Imaging/Imagining Ruan Lingyu in Stanley Kwan’s Actress’. Asian Cinema 11. 2 (Fall/Winter): 92–8.

Yau, Ching (1999). ‘Bisexuality and Duality in Hold You Tight’. In Cindossier: The 35th Golden Horse Award-winning Films. Taipei: National Film Archive, 116–22.

WANG YIMAN