Hsin Chi
Hsin Chi , birth name as Hsin Jin-Chuan, was a Taiwanese film director who was known for his Taiwanese-language films in the 1960s, including The Bride Who Has Returned From Hell, Foolish Bride, Naive Groom, and The Rice Dumpling Vendor. He directed nearly fifty Taiwanese-language films, most of them have a close relationship with plays and literature.
Biography
Hsin Chi’s birth name was Xing Jin-Chuan. He was born in 1924 in Wanhua District, Taipei City. His home was close to the Wanhua Cinema, where his neighbour worked, Hsin Chi thus developed had a love for cinema quite early in his life. He only enrolled in high school for a year before he transferred to polytechnic school. He started to develop an interest toward literature, and started to explore theatre. He went to Nihon University, Japan, and studied in the department of theatre in 1942 despite his family’s disagreement.He dropped out of the university and came back to Taiwan in 1944, which was at the peak of the Japanization movement promoted by the Japanese government. Xing Jin-Chuan joined “Youth Culture Committee” and performed “street poetic play”. Due to the play’s implied questioning of Taiwan’s Japanese national identity, Hsin was investigated by the government. To him, plays were their media to spread patriotism and resist Japanese colonisation. He later joined the “Taiwan Theatre Committee” to be in charge of stage design and other works. He engaged in nearly all of the important theatre movements in Taiwan in the period of WWII until the restoration of Taiwan. When he was the editor of Local Theatre , he used the name Hsin Chi as his pseudonym, and the name was kept for all his works afterwards.
In 1956, Hsin Chi adapted Cai Qiu Lin ’s Xi Shi, which was a script for Taiwanese opera, into film script to be filmed as Fan Li and Xi Shi. In the same year, Hsin adapted the play script Yu Ye Hua into film script for the very first modern Taiwanese-language film of the same title. He founded Zhongxing Taiwanese Experimental Drama Club with Xu Shou-Ren and Li Chuan. They fostered Yang Ming, Jiang Nan, Yu Han-Xiang, Chen Yun-Qing and several other stars of Taiwanese-language film.
In 1957, Hsin Chi directed his first film Gan Bao Guo Taiwan . That same year, he participated in the first edition of Taiwanese-Language Film Festival held by the Intelligence News Agency with his Miao Ying Piao Ling Ji and Bo Min Hua. In 1965, his Qiu Ni Yuan Liang won the Best Film award at the National Taiwanese-Language Film Exhibition held by the Taiwan Daily. Hsin Chi and Wang Yi-Juan also won the Best Screenplay award for Bei Lian Gong Lu and Hsin Chi was selected as one of the top ten Taiwanese-language film directors and awarded the Baodao Award. His Shuang Mian Qing Ren released in 1965 was the first science fiction horror film in Taiwanese-Language films. In 1966, Hou Jie Ren Sheng was Hsin Chi 's most satisfying representative work in his film career. That same year, he directed his first Mandarin film Bing Dian. In 1970, he went to Hong Kong to work on the post-production of Shaw Brothers' Shadow Girl which was shot in Taiwan.
In 1971, Hsin Chi began working in television and became the theatrical instructor for several TV shows, including The Chinese Television Service’s Jia Qing Jun You Taiwan, Xi Luo Qi Jian, Wang Ni Zao Gui, Nü Shen Long, Shan Hu Tan Zhi Lian ", and Taiwan Television Enterprise’s Mu Lei Di Di Ai, etc. In 1972, he went to Indonesia to film Jing Jing Xun Mu Ji, which was not released in Taiwan. In 1978, he won the Golden Bell Award for Best Educational and Cultural Program Award for his educational program Ai Xin. In 1979, he directed Drunken Shrimp, Crab, and Fish, which was his last film.
Beginning in 1990, Hsin Chi assisted the National Film Archive to sort and catalogue Taiwanese-language film materials. In 1996, he acted in TV dramas Chunhua Dream" and "Dharma ". He became the president of the "Taiwanese Film and Television Artists Association" in 1997 and organized the "Taiwanese Filmmakers Group" the following year. In 1999, director Lai Feng-Qi made a documentary about him entitled On Hsin Chi and his A-Team for Taiwanese-Language Films. In 2001, the "Taiwanese Film and Television Artists Association" expanded and became the "Taiwanese Filmmakers Group", with Hsin Chi serving as the first chairman.
Hsin Chi died due to colorectal cancer in 2010.