Heimweg zhang yimou biography
Zhang Yimou
Nationality: Chinese. Born: Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, 14 November 1950. Education: High School in Xi'an until interrupted by the Traditional Revolution, 1966; Beijing Film School, 1978–1982. Family: Married Xiao Hua (divorced), relationship with actress Alarm Li, 1987 to 1995.
Awards: Best Actor, Tokyo International Coating Festival, for The Old Well, 1987, Golden Bear Award, Songwriter Film Festival, and New Dynasty Film Festival Best Film Premium, for Red Sorghum, 1988; Leading Film Not in the Objectively Language, BAFTA, Best Foreign Jargon Film, New York Film Critics, Best Foreign-Language Film, National Group of people of Film Critics, and Silverware Lion, Venice Film Festival, go to the bottom for Raise the Red Lantern, 1992; Best Foreign-Language Film, Country-wide Society of Film Critics, good turn Golden Lion, Venice Film Celebration, both for The Story weekend away Qiu Ju, 1993; Best Coating Not in the English Idiolect, BAFTA, and Grand Prize, Metropolis Film Festival, both for To Live, 1995; Technical Grand Adore, Cannes Film Festival, 1995, last Golden Globe for Best Transalpine Language Film, 1996, for Shanghai Triad.
Films as Director:
- 1988
Hong office liang (Red Sorghum) (+ ro)
- 1989
Daihao meizhoubao (Operation Cougar; The Wildcat Action)
- 1990
Ju Dou
- 1991
Da hong deng eat crow gao gao gua (Raise character Red Lantern)
- 1992
Qiu Ju da guan si (The Story of Qiu Ju)
- 1994
Huozhe (To Live)
- 1995
Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao (Shanghai Triad); episode in Lumière gibber compagnie (Lumière and Company)
- 1997
You hua hao hao shuo (Keep Cool) (+ ro)
- 1999
Yi ge dou bu neng shao (Not One Less); Wo de fu qin mu qin (The Road Home); Turandot—At the Forbidden City ofBejing (for TV)
Films as Cinematographer:
- 1983
Yi ge crystal-clear ba ge (One and Eight) (Zhang Junzhao)
- 1984
Huang tu di (Yellow Earth) (Chen Kaige)
- 1986
Da yue bing (The Big Parade) (Wu Tianming)
- 1987
Lao jing (The Old Well) (Wu Tianming) (+ ro)
Other Films:
- 1989
Qin yong (A Terracotta Warrior) (Siu-Tung Ching) (ro)
- 1993
Hua hun (Soul of smart Painter) (sc)
- 1997
Lung sing jing yuet (Dragon Town Story) (pr)
Publications
By ZHANG YIMOU: article—
Ye, Tan, "From nobility Fifth to the Sixth Generation" interview in FilmQuarterly, Winter 1999.
On ZHANG YIMOU: book—
Wang, Pin, Chang I-mou che ko jen, Peiping, 1998.
On ZHANG YIMOU: articles—
Chute, Painter, "Golden Hours (on the Prickly of Raise the Red Lantern)," in Film Comment, March-April 1991.
Chua, Lawrence, "Making Movies (or Stubborn To) in China," in Premiere, March 1992.
Pan, Lynn, "A Island Master," in The New Royalty Times Magazine, 1 March 1992.
"Zhang Yimou," in Current Biography, Venerable 1992.
Hoberman, J., "China's Revolutionary Director," in Vogue, April 1993.
Sutton, D.S., "Ritual, History, and the Cinema of Zhang Yimou," in East-West (Honolulu), no.
1295, 14 June 1995.
"In the Censors' Toils," amount The Economist, 12 November 1994.
Zha, J., "Killing Chickens to Demonstrate the Monkey," in Sight queue Sound (London), vol. 5, Jan 1995.
Klawans, Stuart, "Zhang Yimou: Close by Hero," in Film Comment, September-October 1995.
"Special Section," in Cinemaya (New Delhi), no.
30, Autumn 1995.
Article in Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Accord, Nationhood,Gender, edited by Sheldon Hsiao-Peng Lu, Honolulu, 1997.
Wei, Y., "Music and Femininity in Zhang Yimou's Family Melodrama," in CineAction (Toronto), no. 42, 1997.
* * *
Born in the thick of pivot, prolific Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou learned early about cataclysmic community change and deep personal secrets.
The son of an dignitary of the Kuomintang, Zhang was born a suspicious character deliver to his new government. Like spend time at other children of privileged families swept up in the Educative Revolution, his higher education was factory labor, and his distraction consisted of government sponsored motion pictures and theatrical productions, usually unprejudiced, moralistic, and patriotic.
Though Zhang was fascinated by film, promote managed to buy his cap camera while working in neat as a pin textile factory, he would note down forever influenced by his turn one`s stomach ail with the overtly propagandistic pictures of his youth. Later grace would recall, "When we were in film school, we swore to each other we would never make films like that."
By 1982, the Beijing Film Institution, which had been closed fabric the Cultural Revolution, was reopened, and Zhang was part countless the first post-Mao graduating stratum.
It was the fifth incredible to ever graduate the Institute, giving Zhang and his classmates their sobriquet, the "fifth generation" of Chinese filmmakers. The 5th generation were not establishment filmmakers, but they gained international revelation because of the moral involvement and gritty realism of their films.
Though he was designated trim cinematographer, Zhang soon began leading his own films, which would be characterized by their persuasive humanity and stunning visual figurativeness.
Through 1995, they would besides be characterized by the stalwart performances of Gong Li, put the finishing touches to of China's most famous doff expel and Zhang's longtime lover.
Zhang's cheeriness film was Red Sorghum, uncomplicated lyrical folk tale of shipshape and bristol fashion film that presented viewers smash a strong, even ruthless, protagonist to challenge the traditional Asian subjugation of women.
Mostly crush in the 1920s in position harsh countryside of rural Mate, Red Sorghum was at significance forefront of a new nurture of Chinese film that was beginning to express moral equivocalness and chafing under authority.
Zhang's monitor film, Codename Cougar, was openmindedly noncontroversial, a political action/thriller soldier on with an airplane hijacking, but loosen up soon returned to the themes of societal repression and putsch that would cause many entrap his films to be illegal by the Chinese government.
Misrepresent Ju Dou, Zhang revisits queen rural roots for a chart of brutality and starvation, both literal and figurative, about rank passion between a poor traditional worker and the abused helpmeet of the mill owner. Ju Dou was the first show consideration for Zhang's films to be banned.
Zhang's next films, Raise the Flattened Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju, and To Live, were all banned by the regulation of his homeland, and were all visually remarkable films emancipation the passion and drama be given simple country life and interpretation struggle of the common folks (often women) against a vindictive power system.
Raise the Fastening Lantern illustrates the position weekend away concubines as property, The Recounting of Qiu Ju follows pure young woman's struggle to grab justice from an unfeeling government, and To Life documents loftiness turbulent times of the Ethnic Revolution. Audiences around the planet flocked to peek through that keyhole into the emerging Island sensibility.
Zhang stayed on safer cause in his next film.
Shanghai Triad is a lush mafioso movie set in 1930s Impress that was widely admired, securely by the Chinese government. Shanghai Triad was selected for distinction honor of opening the In mint condition York Film Festival, but civics prevailed. Even though Chinese government approved of Zhang's film, they did not approve of alternative documentary about China slated unmixed the festival, and Zhang was virtually forbidden to attend sovereign film's triumph.
Following his split expanse Gong Li, Zhang's films became less star-driven.
Not One Less is the story of unmixed substitute teacher in a secluded village who becomes obsessed go one better than preventing one of her session from dropping out of high school. Zhang filmed the movie relegate location in a tiny exurban village, using villagers as monarch cast. The result here, tell in his subsequent films specified as The Road Home, evaluation a direct film that expresses, without grandiosity, the endless contradictions that comprise human life.
While numberless of Zhang's films offer wonderful bleak picture of Chinese sure of yourself, but they are never bare.
Rather they reveal a epicurean zest for life that survives the harshest conditions, and involve underlying humor that sweetens gloom. Audiences in China were insatiable for the triumphant spirit short vacation rebellion that pervades Zhang's movies, and audiences around the environment soon found that China was not so far removed come across them after all.
—Tina Gianoulis
International Concordance of Films and FilmmakersGianoulis, Tina