Situ Huimin (1910.2.16 ~ 1987.4.4) was a Chinese film technician and director. He is a member of the Chinese Communist Party film group headed by Xia Yan, and has directed films such as "God of Freedom", "Blood Splash baoshan City", "Guerrilla March", and "Hometown of Baiyun". As the producer of the anti-war feature film "Children of the Wind and Clouds", Situ Huimin successively asked the communists Tian Han and Nie Er to fill in the lyrics and compose the music for the theme song of the film, "March of the Volunteer Army". In addition, the "Three Friends" film optical tape recorder he participated in developing has taken an important step in the technology of China's film industry.
Situ Huimin
Situ Huimin, who came out of the "Red Armor Worker", can be called a prominent representative and a famous artist in the film industry who has made outstanding contributions in revolutionary literary and artistic activities to the construction of socialist film undertakings.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > actively participated in the revolution Unexpectedly became acquainted with "shadow"</h1>
Situ Huimin was born in 1910 to a patriotic overseas Chinese family in Kaiping, Guangdong Province. At the age of 5, Situ Huimin came to Guangzhou with her father and spent her entire childhood and adolescence in Guangzhou.
In 1925, Situ Huimin was admitted to the Guangdong Provincial Industrial College (formerly the Guangdong Provincial First Industrial School, one of the important sources of south China University of Technology) to study chemical engineering. During his time at school, he met Zhou Wenyong, who was also a Kaiping native, and the same revolutionary ambitions made the two quickly become friends, and under the introduction of Zhou Wenyong, Situ Huimin, who was only 17 years old, joined the Communist Party of China.
In 1927, after the "April 15" counter-revolutionary coup in Guangdong, Guangzhou was shrouded in white terror, and Situ Huimin, in order to do a good job of covering up, obeyed the organizational arrangements and opened a "Xinlu Literature and Art Bookstore" in Changxing Street in the city to sell new literary and art books and periodicals, and the director monitored the enemy's movements.
Later, under the introduction of Zhou Wenyong, Situ Huimin participated in the Guangzhou Uprising and did transportation liaison work; he and armed workers stationed on the Long Causeway in Guangzhou to intercept Li Fulin's military operation to cross the river.
After the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising, in the spring of 1928, Situ Huimin went into exile in Japan and became a graphic student at the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts, where he also studied film and radio in the Film Research Class of the Japanese University and the Department of Electronics at Waseda University in Tokyo. The experience of studying in Japan not only exposed Situ Huimin to the knowledge of art and film, but also pointed out the direction for his future revolution with film. In the second year of staying in Japan, Situ Huimin, together with his American classmate Xu Da, together with Shen Xuecheng (i.e., Shen Xiling), Yu Bingwen and others, initiated the organization of the "Young Artists Alliance" and conducted profound and extensive exchanges with local left-wing cultural people, laying the foundation for him to participate in and lead the left-wing film movement later.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="78" > practice drama to save the war of resistance literary and artistic forces</h1>
In 1930, Situ Huimin returned to Shanghai from Japan and worked as a teacher and designer while joining the Shanghai Art Drama Society and joining the left-wing theater movement.
The following year, Japan launched the September 18 Incident, and China's 14-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression officially began.
Situ Huimin, together with other left-wing cultural groups, formed the "General Alliance of Chinese Left-Wing Culture", mainly engaged in the left-wing cultural movement in the film culture circles in the Kuomintang area, criticizing unhealthy, backward, reactionary films that propagate feudal superstitions, myths and pornography, and cover up and defend imperialist aggression, with a view to contacting the vast number of film workers and encouraging their progressive tendencies.
After 1934, with the support of Xia Yan and other revolutionary comrades, Situ Huimin successively entered the "Dentsu Production Company" and the "Lianhua Film Company" to do film-related work. During this period, he joined hands with left-wing artists to shoot a number of patriotic films with anti-imperialist and anti-feudal themes, anti-Japanese salvation, and wide social influence, such as "Peach and Plum Robbery", "Freedom God", "Urban Scenery", "Children of the Wind and Clouds", etc., and also directed two short films reflecting social life, "Two Cents" and "Song and Dance Class", which reflect social life. These films played an important role in propagating the Party's line of resistance against Japanese aggression and winning over most of the film industry. Among them, the theme song of "Children of the Wind and Clouds" is the "March of the Volunteer Army" that was later used as the national anthem of the People's Republic of China.
The first edition of the Volunteer March Vinyl Record
After the July 7 Incident, China entered a state of all-out war of resistance, and in the autumn of that year, Situ Huimin went to Hong Kong and the mainland to carry out the United Front of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the film democracy movement at the behest of the party organization. In 1938, Zhou Enlai proposed at the inaugural meeting of the National Association for Resisting the Enemy in Literary and Art Circles: "I hope that the writers will draw more on the heroic struggle of the soldiers on the front line, the brutality of the enemy in the theater, and the enthusiasm of the whole people in the rear, which will certainly inspire the whole country to hate the enemy and strengthen the confidence in defeating the enemy!" In order to implement the spirit of the speech, Situ Huimin filmed anti-war films in Hong Kong. He directed two anti-Japanese Cantonese films co-edited with Cai Chusheng, "Blood Splash baoshan City" and "Guerrilla March"; "Hometown of Baiyun", a film written by Xia Yanren and reflecting the support of Hong Kong compatriots in the anti-Japanese resistance; and "Paradise on an Isolated Island", written and directed by Cai Chusheng, which reflected the persistence of a group of patriotic young people in Shanghai after the fall.
March 1938, Guangzhou. From left in the front row: Mao Dun, Xia Yan, Liao Chengzhi; from left in the back row: Pan Hannian, Wang Fuquan, Yu Feng, Ye Wenjin, Situ Huimin
Later, Zhou Enlai praised Situ Huimin's work in directing "Blood Splash Baoshan City": "It is very good that you can make "Blood Splash Baoshan City" in Hong Kong, and it is the first feature film to write the War of Resistance after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression", "I remember that during the First World War, there were very few works reflecting the war at that time." It seems that your writing of works reflecting the War of Resistance in such a short period of time is an experience that deserves a good summary."
After the Anhui Incident in 1941, Situ Huimin and other literary and art circles jointly organized the "Association of Dramatists in Hong Kong". As the head of the association, he presided over the performance of plays such as "Fog Chongqing", "Professor Mamen", "Hitler's Masterpiece", "Peking Man", "Sorrowful City" and other plays that criticized the Kuomintang rule, praised the anti-fascist struggle and encouraged the War of Resistance.
After the fall of Hong Kong at the end of December, Szeto Huimin helped organize the evacuation of film and theater people from Hong Kong to the mainland in batches, and he himself fled to Chongqing. Although forced into exile, Situ Huimin still insisted on the "drama to save the life", and during his time in Chongqing, he served as the head of the theater troupe affiliated with the party-led "China Arts Drama Society", organized the performance of progressive plays such as "Fog Chongqing" and "Home", and served as the director of the news documentary department of the "China Film Studio" run by the National Government, shooting anti-Japanese news documentaries. In addition to her enlightened film work, Situ Huimin is also secretly engaged in a covert struggle to collect and pass on intelligence.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="79" > do not forget the original intention of further study, and still be a "shadow" person</h1>
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, from July 1946 to the end of 1951, Situ Huimin was assigned to study film technology and management in the United States, and also to do united front work for overseas Chinese in the United States. During his stay in the United States, he worked in restaurants, studied film courses at Columbia University, and worked at Hollywood Enterprise Studios, West Electric Film Studios, and Raiden Hua Film Company's New York Factory. In 1947, he directed and produced the documentary "Chinese National Dance", which starred Dai Ailian, a Chinese dancer in the United States at that time, and won the Excellence Award at the 1948 Edinburgh Documentary Film Film Festival in the United Kingdom, and was selected as one of the five best dance films of the year by the Brolin School of Music and Dance in New York.
In April 1952, Situ Huimin overcame many obstacles to return to China, devoted herself to the construction and development of the new Chinese film industry, and made important contributions.
Since the second year of her return to China, Situ Huimin has held a leadership position in the Ministry of Culture, responsible for the leadership of film technology and foreign affairs, and has become the main founder of new China in terms of film production, machinery, film industry and scientific research. He organized the preparation and preparation of the People's Liberation Army Bayi Film Studio, a multi-genre comprehensive film production organization, the survey and selection of the sites of local film studios in Xi'an, Emei, Zhujiang, Tianshan and other places, the transformation of old factories, and the construction of the First Film Factory of the Ministry of Chemical Industry in Baoding, the Beijing Film Printing Factory, and the film machinery factories in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Harbin, so that the film production and technology industries in New China gradually moved from the production mode of handicraft workshops to modernization. In addition, during situ Huimin's tenure as the second director of Bayi Factory, the director filmed the first large-scale color documentary "Bayi Games" in China, which enabled a group of professional creative backbones and technicians to grow up from it.
In the mid-to-late 1950s, Situ Huimin presided over the film bureau's cultural exchange work with foreign countries. His frank, enthusiastic and equal style, proficiency in English and Japanese, and self-taught Russian, French, German and Spanish have enabled him to have extensive contacts and friendships with hong Kong and Macao compatriots and overseas Chinese compatriots in foreign countries.
On October 28, 1964, Situ Huimin (first from left) and Xia Yan (second from left) accompanied Premier Zhou Enlai (third from right) to meet with the famous Dutch international director Julies Evans (third from left)
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="80" > the enthusiasm struggle does not stop and bows to the "Situ Cow"</h1>
Mr. Deng Huqiu, another veteran Guangdong party member who introduced Situ Huimin to the party with Zhou Wenyong, once commented: "In his life, I don't know how many professions have changed, most of them are to cover the work of the party. He was very involved in every line of work and became an expert. He mastered many Chinese words and words all by hard work. So someone gave him the nickname 'Situ Niu'. ”
In 1926, american sound films came out, and Situ Huimin also began to delve into film recording technology. Together with his cousin Situ Yimin, who had studied radio engineering at Harvard University in the United States, and Ma Dejian, who had studied mechanical engineering at the University of Washington in the United States, he studied sound film recording technology, and established a recording technology research laboratory in his home, repeatedly studying trial tape recorders. At the end of 1933, the "Sanyou" tape recorder they manufactured was officially used for film recording, which made an important step in the technology of the Chinese film industry. After the birth of the "Three Friends" tape recorder, Situ Huimin, as a recording engineer, successively recorded the sound of the famous films such as "Fishing Light Song", "Big Road", "New Woman", "Sister Flower", "Fat Powder Market" and so on, which caused great repercussions.
Stills from the movie "Fisherman's Song"
Szeto Huimin's study of the film business often reached the level of obsession. For example, in order to study the editing techniques and professional technical ideas of the Soviet film works "Life Road", "Golden Mountain" and the American film "Outlaw", bring bread, watch and record the same film repeatedly from morning to night; before the sub-shot and the length table come out, for a long time and many times in front of the reversing table in the theater screening room, one by one, paragraph by piece, until the details of the picture composition, the editing order of the shots, the number of shots, and the number of squares are recorded.
In terms of dealing with film talents, Situ Huimin has always maintained an attitude of loving talents and cherishing talents. In 1978, at the ministerial meeting of the Ministry of Culture, he rejected the Beijing Film Academy's opinion that Zhang Yimou, He Qun and other 8 people were older and had weak results in cultural subjects and planned not to recruit, and decided to admit all nortel students of the class of 1978. Among them, Zhang Yimou's early works such as "Yellow Land" and "Red Sorghum" were all released with the approval of Situ Huimin in the early days of reform and opening up.
Huang Miaozi, who has known Situ Huimin's revolutionary path for 53 years, once wrote a poem "Mourning Situ" to depict Situ Huimin's contribution to the revolution for 60 years:
Oath to throw the head to unsustain the hanging upside down, two lotus dances on the day of punishment;
The sons and daughters of the wind and clouds are as affectionate as yesterday, fighting the silver altar for sixty years.
Cold rain knocked on the window and looked at the tower, so the people were relatively in tears;
He Zeng had cultivated debts, and lost this cattle with too much interest.
Nearly a hundred years ago, Situ Huimin, who came out of the "red worker", chose to take root in the film industry on the revolutionary road, and despite the harsh environment, he always adhered to the original revolutionary intention, insisted on inspiring the people, calling comrades, building the country with the power of film, and made outstanding contributions to the revolution and the early film industry of New China. And his thoughts, beliefs, wisdom and realistic attitude of advancing with the times are also worthy of the title of flag bearer in the early Chinese film industry.
Today, as the inheritors of the spirit and bloodline of the "Red Workers", huayuan students should look up to Situ Huimin and other revolutionary ancestors, and build a country of youth and a nation of youth with the self of youth!
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The content is transferred from: South China University of Technology official micro.