Luo Mingyou

Luo Mingyou (also Lo Ming-yau ; * 1902 in Hong Kong ; † 1967 there ) was a Chinese film producer and director.

Luo Mingyou began studying law at Peking University in 1918 , but turned to the film business a year later. With the help of his parents and brother-in-law, he converted a tea house into a 700-seat movie theater. Its entrance fees were lower than those of foreign cinema owners. Just six months after it opened, Luo's cinema burned out; another year later he was able to reopen and expanded his company by buying cinemas from foreign owners in Beijing and Tientsin and expanding them into a chain.

In 1927 he founded the film company Huabei (North China Film Company), which soon controlled film distribution in northern China. In 1930 Luo Mingyou turned to film production. He merged with two film studios in Shanghai , one of which was Minxin , and created the most successful Chinese film production company of the 1930s under the name Lianhua, alongside Mingxing and Tianyi . In its most stable economic period, Lianhua had several studios in Shanghai, as well as an acting school each in Shanghai and Beijing. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Luo lost its distribution network in the north. A Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1932 destroyed one of the Lianhua studios.

Luo Mingyou was a supporter of the KMT government, for which he also had news films made. At Lianhua, however, left-wing films such as Bu Wancang's Sange modeng nü xing ( Three Modern Women , 1933), Sun Yus Dalu ( The Big Road , 1934) as well as Shen nü ( The Goddess , 1934) and Little Angel (1935) ( both shot by Wu Yonggang ).

Together with Fei Mu , Luo Mingyou directed Tian lun (Song of China) , with Zhu Shilin in Guo feng (both 1935). The films were intended to support the “New Life” movement. After the war, Luo Mingyou became a Christian and lived in Hong Kong.

Web links

• Luo Mingyou in the Internet Movie Database (English)