Song of the Fishermen

Song of the Fishermen
Traditional Chinese漁光曲
Simplified Chinese渔光曲
Hanyu PinyinYú guāng qǔ
Directed byCai Chusheng
Written byCai Chusheng
Produced byLo Mingyau
StarringWang Renmei,
Han Langen,
Tang Tianxiu,
Shi Renjie,
Luo Peng,
Yuan Congmei
CinematographyZhou Ke
Music byGeorge Njal
Production
companies
United Photoplay Service (Lianhua Film Company), Second Studio, Shanghai
Release date
  • 1934 (1934)
Running time
57 minutes
CountryChina
LanguageSilent with Chinese intertitles

Song of the Fishermen (Chinese: 渔光曲; pinyin: Yú guāng qǔ) is an early Chinese silent film directed by Cai Chusheng in 1934, and produced by the Lianhua Film Company.

A successful film, Song of the Fishermen played for 84 straight days in Shanghai. In 1935, the Song of Fishermen with a Chinese film delegation participated Moscow International Film Festival in the Soviet Union and won an honorable mention award.[1] It was the first Chinese film to win a prize in an international film festival (Moscow Film Festival in 1935).[2] In addition, for the director of the film, Cai Chusheng, who born in January 12th, 1906 and was one of the foremost progressive Chinese directors of the time, Song of the Fishermen, is one of his most critically acclaimed films, allowed him to become the first Chinese director to win an international award during the Moscow International Film Festival in 1935.[3]

The film, like many of the period, details the struggle of the poorer classes, in this case a family of fishermen who are forced to sing on the streets in order to survive. The story was made possible by the fact that Cai Chusheng, who also worked as a screenwriter of this film, ever since he had begun developing his skill for playwriting, had been involved in the social rights movements of his time, like his involvement in the workers' union in China at the age of just 19.[4]Subsequently, as we see in the Song of the Fishermen as well, many of the films part of his larger body of work frequently delve into societal issues present in China during the early 20th Century, namely New Women (1935) and Dawn over the Metropolis (1933).

  1. ^ 王人美 [Wang Renmei] (in Chinese). Xinhua. 2005-03-16. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013. Retrieved 2024-06-12.
  2. ^ David Carter (2010). East Asian Cinema (https://books.google.com/books?id=Nydlzbe2LhEC&pg=PA1957). Kamera Books. ISBN 9781842433805.
  3. ^ Pickowicz, Paul. "Victory as Defeat: Postwar Visualizations of China's War of Resistance." Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, ed. Wen-Hsin Yeh. University of California Press (2000).
  4. ^ "The Second Generation of Chinese Directors". en.chinaculture.org. Retrieved 2024-06-11.