Kwan Man-ching | |||||||||||||||||
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_restored.jpg) Kwan by Nelson Evans | |||||||||||||||||
| Born | 30 September 1896 Kaiping County, Guangdong, China | ||||||||||||||||
| Died | 15 June 1995 (aged 98) | ||||||||||||||||
| Other names | Moon Kwan | ||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Film director | ||||||||||||||||
| Years active | 1926–1969 | ||||||||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 關文清 | ||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 关文清 | ||||||||||||||||
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Kwan Man-ching (simplified Chinese: 关文清; traditional Chinese: 關文清; pinyin: Guān Wénqīng, 30 September 1896 – 17 June 1995), better known in the United States as Moon Kwan, was a Chinese film director. Born in Kaiping County, Guangdong, Kwan travelled to San Francisco after a time studying English in Hong Kong. Unable to finish his studies, he moved to Hollywood in the mid-1910s. Through the newspaper editor Harry Carr, he was introduced to the director D. W. Griffith and hired as a technical consultant for Broken Blossoms (1919). Through 1920, Kwan provided consulting on Chinese subjects for Hollywood filmmakers, simultaneously publishing original and translated poetry.
Kwan returned to China in 1921, moving to Hong Kong after finding little success in Shanghai. Working first for Minxin and later for the United Photoplay Service, he held a variety of roles and frequently travelled to the United States. During one 1933 trip, he met Joseph Sunn, with whom he established the Grandview Film Company and made Blossom Time (1933) – one of the first Cantonese-language talkies. As the Second Sino-Japanese War was escalating, Kwan directed several films with nationalist themes, beginning with Life Lines in 1935. Spending the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong as a teacher, he returned to filmmaking in 1947, making his final film in 1969. Kwan, having directed more than fifty films in his lifetime, has been described by the film critic Paul Fonoroff as one of early Hong Kong cinema's most influential directors.