Hsu Feng

Hsu Feng (Chinese徐枫/徐枫, Pinyin Xu Feng, born in 1950 in Taipei) is a Taiwanese actress, producer and entrepreneur. In the 1970s, she was one of the most famous actresses in the cinema of Hong Kong and Taiwan. After she finished her career as an actress in 1981, she became a successful producer later. Her work as a producer has received several awards, among others, she received a Golden Horse Award (1990 ) and a British Academy Film Award ( 1994).

Childhood and youth

Hsu Feng was born in 1950 in Taiwan as the first child of her parents. Her father was originally from Fujian and her mother from Manchuria. After her father died when she was only 6 years old, her mother married again and still got 3 children. The family was poor and Hsu Feng felt early responsibility as the eldest daughter to contribute to the family upkeep. When she in a newspaper ad a casting agency when she applied at the age of 15 years and later received in King Hu's film The hostel to the Dragon (1967 ) a minor role.

Work

As a 19 - year-old she two years later received then a starring role in the classic film A Touch of Zen, again directed by King Hu. In this film she plays the daughter of a general Yang, who fled after the murder of her father by the captors of the imperial eunuchs in the province and there is but tracked from them again. The film has influenced the wuxia genre sustainable and is considered the masterpiece of King Hu. About Hsu Feng's representation of the general 's daughter Yang wrote the American film critic Richard Corliss (Time) later that they continue to be the most important and most gorgeous view of a female warrior on the screen ( "she remains the screen 's gravest, most ravishing woman warrior " ) Hsu Feng's own attitude towards films has been fundamentally changed by their participation in A Touch of Zen. First, they had movies construed as a purely commercial products, but after she had attended the Film Festival of Cannes, in order there to present the film along with director King Hu, she began to look at films as an art form.

It was in the next decade to a skeleton crew of King Hu, for which they The last fight of Lee Khan, the brave and rain in the mountains again took on the role of a sword fighter in the movies. For her role in the ghost story Legend of the Mountain, also directed King Hu, 1979, she received a nomination for Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards.

In addition to her collaboration with King Hu, she participated in more than 40 other films in which she often embodied a sword fighter. For her performances in Assassin (1976) and The Pioneers (1980 ) they were each awarded a Golden Horse Award for Best Actress.

At the beginning of the 1980s, she retired as an actress from the film business and instead began from the mid-1980s, a career as a producer. She founded the Tomson Film Company own production company with which they specialized in the production of sophisticated artistic film projects. Among the films produced by her include, among other things, Red Dust (1990 ), Five Girls and a Rope ( 1992) Farewell My Concubine (1993 ), Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (1994) and Temptress Moon (1996). For Red Dust, she was awarded a Golden Horse Award for Best Picture. The two award-winning international success Farewell My Concubine and Temptress Moon, respectively, developed under the direction of Chen Kaige. For Farewell My Concubine Hsu Feng was awarded the BAFTA Award, in addition, the film was also the Palme d'Or and Golden Globe and was nominated for a César and an Oscar.

Hsu Feng was a jury member of the Berlinale 1994 and the Film Festival in Venice in 2004.

In addition to her work as an actress and producer, Hsu Feng was an entrepreneur and outside the film industry, so she headed in Shanghai, the construction of the luxury complex Tomson Shanghai International Club.

Private

In 1976 she married the businessman David Tong Cunlin, whose family is from Shanghai. She has two sons with him and currently resides (1998) with her family in Shanghai.

Filmography (selection)

Actor

Producer

Swell

• Yingjin Zhang, Zhiwei Xiao: Encyclopedia of Chinese film. Taylor & Francis 1998, 9780415151689, S. 191 ( excerpt ( Google) )
• Lily Xiao Hong Lee, Clara Wing -chung Ho: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women - Volume 2 ME Sharpe, 2003, ISBN 0765607980, pp. 231-233 (excerpt in the Google Book Search )
• Joan Dupont: For Hsu Feng, Films of Her Homeland Are a Passion: Tribute to a Chinese producer in the New York Times on May 23, 1998
• Lily Tung: Waiting for the ice to melt. Asiaweek, CNN, April 9, 1998