Tang Shu Shuen

Who is Tang Shu Shuen?

Tang Shu Shuen, also known as Cecile Tang Shu Shuen, is a former Hong Kong film director. Though her film career was brief, she was a trailblazer for socially critical art cinema in Hong Kong's populist film industry, as well as its first noted woman director.

Tang was born in Yunnan province, China. She graduated from the University of Southern California.

Tang's best-known films are her first two, The Arch and China Behind. The first film looks at the subjugation of women and their sexuality in a traditional village through the story of a widow's unconsummated passion for a male houseguest. The second follows the harrowing journey of a group of college students trying to cross illegally into Hong Kong from a China torn by the Cultural Revolution.

The bleak portrait in China Behind of both communist China and capitalist Hong Kong brought upon it a thirteen-year ban by the British colonial authorities. In addition to their provocative themes, both films used stylistic devices, such as freeze-frames and expressionistic color, possibly inspired by the European art cinema of the 1960s.

Tang made two more, less noted, films, Sup Sap Bup Dup and The Hong Kong Tycoon.