Fred Tan, 35; Writer and Director of Films

Fred Tan, a promising young writer and director of feature films, has died in Taipei, Taiwan, of acute hepatitis. He was 35.

Tan died Wednesday of hepatitis he contracted on a trip to China during the student demonstrations and massacre last year, said Ron Norman, his friend and associate in Horizons Productions in Los Angeles.

A law school graduate who taught film in Taiwan, Tan moved to Los Angeles and became a U.S. citizen in 1985. He earned a master of fine arts degree from UCLA.

Three feature films--”Rouge of the North,” “Dark Night,” and “Split of the Spirit”--had won Tan invitations to international film festivals in Cannes, London, Los Angeles, Madrid and elsewhere, and a strong following in Taiwan and in art theaters in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Tan was a founding member of the Director’s Guild in Taiwan and had served as film critic for “China Times,” a newspaper with 1.5 million circulation throughout the world.

He was working on a Chinese feature about the coming of age of Taiwan’s youth and developing his first American film, a suspense thriller, at the time of his death.

Tan leaves his parents and two brothers. Memorial contributions to a scholarship for young people in the arts may be made to Horizons Productions, (213) 654-6911.