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Lai Man-Wai
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This is a Chinese name; the family name is 黎 (Li).
Lai Man-Wai (Traditional Chinese: 黎民偉, Mandarin: Li Min-wei, 1893-1953), now known as Father of Hong Kong Cinema, was the director of the first Hong Kong movie Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (莊子試妻) in 1913. Note that in the movie, Lai played the role of the wife himself, partly due to the reluctance of women to participate in show business at that time.
Born in Japan and raised in Hong Kong, he joined Sun Yat-sen's Kuomintang party in 1911 and helped make anti-warlord movies. He was an active director during the golden years of the Shanghai movie industry from 1921 to 1928. In 1923, he founded the Minxin (China Sun) Film Company in Hong Kong which later relocated to Shanghai. By 1930, he co-founded one of the giant studios of the 1930s, Lianhua Film Company with Law Ming-yau. In 1938, he returned to Hong Kong and retired.
His story was documented in Lai Man-wai: Father of Hong Kong Cinema by Choi Kai-kwong in 2001.
Lai Man-Wai is portrayed in Stanley Kwan's 1992 biopic of actress Ruan Lingyu, Centre Stage by Hong Kong actor, Waise Lee.
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