One of the greatest directors in the history of Chinese cinema, Sun Yu was born on March 21, 1900, to a merchant family in the city of Chongqing.
Sun Yu created a body of work that infuses realistic depictions of China’s contemporary social problems with a highly romantic spirit of idealism and enthusiastic optimism. His classics of the 1930s speak beyond the immediate needs of the time as they portray on film universal human problems. The filmmaker’s "urge to resist all forms of repression" is as apparent in his sensuality as in his arraignment of social inequities. Much like his American contemporaries, John Ford and Frank Capra, Sun Yu was simultaneously radical and traditional, capturing on film the spirit and aspirations of an entire nation.
With the belated discovery of early Chinese cinema by the outside world, "the poet Sun Yu," as he was called in China in tribute to his passion and lyricism, is taking his place in the pantheon of the world’s great filmmakers.
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