11 Facts About Huang Shuqin

Huang Shuqin was a Chinese film director known for her film Woman, Demon, Human.

Huang Shuqin was born 9 September 1939 in Shanghai to film director Huang Zuolin, a well-known playwright who had studied in England during the 1920s, and Jin Yunzhi.

Huang Shuqin enrolled in China's only film school at the time, the Beijing Film Academy, to study directing, graduating in 1964.

Huang Shuqin later attended a May Seventh Cadre School, which acted as a labour camp, for five years; two of which were spent under "isolation and surveillance" in a small room without contact from anyone as punishment for her possible involvement in the May 16 Notification in 1966.

Many of Huang Shuqin's films explore the theme of gender and woman's consciousness.

Huang Shuqin has expressed the necessity to "insert herself" into her work, in order to give these films a personality, citing her gender as an important factor in her self-identity.

Six of Huang Shuqin's films are about women, each with a focus on the fundamental aspects of women's narratives and their relationship to mainstream ideology.

Huang Shuqin hoped to capture an authentic recreation of this time period, rather than one of celebration or rejection.

Scholars such as Huang Shuqin Cui have written that the film portrays its protagonist, based on real-life actress Pei Yanling, as actively struggling with her simultaneous desire for and rejection of female identity.

Huang Shuqin did this before every film she made, believing it to be necessary to observe and understand life before filming.

Huang Shuqin began work on A Soul Haunted by Painting in the early 1990s, as China moved from a planned economy to a market economy.