Was one of the leaders of the Popular Liberation Army's revolutionary cinema.
Yuan Muzhi was, from the founding of the PRC in October 1949 through 1951 when he stepped down, the first director of the Bureau of Cinema ,part of the new regulation of the Chinese film industry as part of the Communist cultural reorganization.
In 1940 he was sent by the Chinese Communist Party to the USSR to study their state run film industry structure. He returned to China in 1946.
The inaugural president of the Beijing Film Academy.