Cui Wei (b. Cui Wenjing) (1912-1979), one of the leading orthodox Communist film directors of the Third Generation, was born into a poor peasant family in Shandong at the very beginning of the Republican period. He became involved in Communist political activities while still in high school, and then worked as an actor, writer and director in experimental political theatre for some years before joining Mao Zedong and the Communist Party in Yan'an in 1938. Subsequently, he became a leading figure in the emerging cultural bureaucracy of the new Communist regime and continued to work in theatre before eventually making his debut in film, first as an actor in 1954-55, then as co-director with Chen Huaikai of Song of Youth (1959), one of the best-known socialist-realist films from the Foundation Years of the People's Republic. He then co-directed 3 major opera films, including Female Warriors of the Yang Family (1960), and the propaganda film Zhang Ga: A Boy Soldier (1963), before the onset of the Cultural Revolution brought his career in film, along with most Chinese film-making, to an abrupt halt. However, his standing in the Communist political and cultural establishment helped him to survive the upheavals of the following decade, and he was one of very few directors allowed to resume film-making work after 1973, notably with Hongyu (1975), a major piece of socialist-realist drama extolling the virtues of the new 'barefoot doctors', with which, in effect, he paid his dues to the ultra-Maoist faction led by Jiang Qing which was then temporarily in the ascendant in both the political and cultural spheres. Interestingly, though, although he is described by Hong Miao as “one of the greatest Chinese film actors and directors” of the Communist era, this work is not mentioned by either of the standard English-language biographical reference works giving details of Cui Wei's life and work. See Tan Ye and Yun Zhu, eds., Historical Dictionary of Chinese Cinema (2012), pp. 40, 144, and Yuwu Song, ed., Biographical Dictionary of the People's Republic of China (2013), pp. 52-53.