Li Xing (Director)

Born: 1930, Shanghai.

Grew up in Shanghai before moving with his family to Taiwan after the war. His first Mandarin film was Our Neighbours (Jietou xiangwei, 1963), a 'realist' portrait of an impoverished Taipei neighbourhood. He also made the influential 'healthy realism' films Oyster Girl (1964) and Beautiful Duckling (1965).

Before this he had made Taiwanese (taiyu pian) films including comedy serials. Precisely because of its low budgets, Taiwanese film production was in urgent need of new directors, even if
they had little or no experience. This was how Li got into directing in 1958, although he never went back to this after making the move to the larger Mandarin-language film industry in 1963. He thus worked across the various genre and linguistic and industrial divides in Taiwan, and is a key figure of pre-1980s Taiwanese cinema.

Li is known for his filial piety. He openly acknowledged that parental love supersedes any other kind of relationship in his world. This explains the centrality of the father/son duo in many of his films.
Criticism arises when Li’s auteur signature becomes “backward,” when his traditional values appear to obstruct any possibility for “social and cultural reform.”

Parallel to his lifelong relationship with CMPC, Li continued to make films for himself and for other small independent companies. For instance, Li also made films for Union Pictures and codirected an omnibus film with Li Hanxiang, King Hu, and Bai Jingrui for Grand Pictures in 1969. This film, in which each emotion is treated by a different director, is called 'Four Moods'.

In 1973 and 1974, Li became the number one box office director in Taiwan and Hong Kong with his two hits, The Young Ones (Caiyun fei, 1973) and Where the Seagull Flies (Hai’ou fei chu, 1974). Both were based on Qiong Yao novels. These melodramas not only established him as a ruling commercial director, they also helped mark the peak of Taiwan film’s so-called Golden Age (when Taiwan films were popular enough to get advance financing from around Southeast Asia). Romantic melodramas, dominated by Qiong Yao adaptations, comedies, and martial arts films made up the core that supported a flourishing industry.

















References:
Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island, 30-.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0497359/