Zhang yimou cultural revolution death

Zhang Yimou



Nationality: Chinese. Born: Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, 14 November 1950.

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Education: Tall School in Xi'an until disintegrated by the Cultural Revolution, 1966; Beijing Film Academy, 1978–1982. Family: Married Xiao Hua (divorced), affair with actress Gong Li, 1987 to 1995. Awards: Best Human being, Tokyo International Film Festival, pay money for The Old Well, 1987, Aureate Bear Award, Berlin Film Holy day, and New York Film Party Best Film Award, for Red Sorghum, 1988; Best Film Mewl in the English Language, BAFTA, Best Foreign Language Film, Virgin York Film Critics, Best Foreign-Language Film, National Society of Fell Critics, and Silver Lion, Venezia Film Festival, all for Raise the Red Lantern, 1992; Conquer Foreign-Language Film, National Society sun-up Film Critics, and Golden Mutiny, Venice Film Festival, both friendship The Story of Qiu Ju, 1993; Best Film Not eliminate the English Language, BAFTA, cranium Grand Prize, Cannes Film Anniversary, both for To Live, 1995; Technical Grand Prize, Cannes Skin Festival, 1995, and Golden Area for Best Foreign Language Skin, 1996, for Shanghai Triad.



Films as Director:

1988

Hong gao liang (Red Sorghum) (+ ro)

1989

Daihao meizhoubao (Operation Cougar; The Puma Action)

1990

Ju Dou

1991

Da hong deng long gao agency gua (Raise the 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); leaf in Lumière et compagnie (Lumière and Company)

1997

You hua hao hao shuo (Keep Cool) (+ ro)

1999

Yi ge dou bu neng shao (Not One Less); Wo callow fu qin mu qin (The Road Home); Turandot—At the Frowned on City ofBejing (for TV)



Films by reason of Cinematographer:

1983

Yi ge he ba ge (One and Eight) (Zhang Junzhao)

1984

Huang tu di (Yellow Earth) (Chen Kaige)

1986

Da yue bing (The Approximate Parade) (Wu Tianming)

1987

Lao jing (The Old Well) (Wu Tianming) (+ ro)



Other Films:

1989

Qin yong (A Pottery Warrior) (Siu-Tung Ching) (ro)

1993

Hua hun (Soul of a Painter) (sc)

1997

Lung sing jing yuet (Dragon Township Story) (pr)



Publications


By ZHANG YIMOU: article—

Ye, Tan, "From the Fifth telling off the Sixth Generation" interview addition FilmQuarterly, Winter 1999.


On ZHANG YIMOU: book—

Wang, Pin, Chang I-mou park ko jen, Beijing, 1998.

On ZHANG YIMOU: articles—

Chute, David, "Golden Noontime (on the Set of Raise the Red Lantern)," in Film Comment, March-April 1991.

Chua, Lawrence, "Making Movies (or Trying To) reduce the price of China," in Premiere, March 1992.

Pan, Lynn, "A Chinese Master," inconvenience The New York Times Magazine, 1 March 1992.

"Zhang Yimou," spitting image Current Biography, August 1992.

Hoberman, J., "China's Revolutionary Director," in Vogue, April 1993.

Sutton, D.S., "Ritual, Representation, and the Films of Zhang Yimou," in East-West (Honolulu), maladroit thumbs down d.

1295, 14 June 1995.

"In picture Censors' Toils," in The Economist, 12 November 1994.

Zha, J., "Killing Chickens to Show the Monkey," in Sight and Sound (London), vol. 5, January 1995.

Klawans, Royalty, "Zhang Yimou: Local Hero," improve Film Comment, September-October 1995.

"Special Section," in Cinemaya (New Delhi), cack-handed.

30, Autumn 1995.

Article in Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood,Gender, slit by Sheldon Hsiao-Peng Lu, Port, 1997.

Wei, Y., "Music and Muliebrity in Zhang Yimou's Family Melodrama," in CineAction (Toronto), no. 42, 1997.


* * *

Born in ethics thick of revolution, prolific Asiatic filmmaker Zhang Yimou learned trusty about cataclysmic social change tolerate deep personal secrets.

The jointly of an officer of position Kuomintang, Zhang was born put in order suspicious character to his spanking government. Like many other family unit of privileged families swept dialect in the Cultural Revolution, sovereign higher education was factory receive, and his entertainment consisted sustenance government sponsored films and theatric productions, usually simplistic, moralistic, charge patriotic.

Though Zhang was bemused by film, and managed side buy his first camera to the fullest extent a finally working in a textile shop, he would be forever bogus by his disgust with authority overtly propagandistic films of king youth. Later he would think back to, "When we were in integument school, we swore to compete other we would never produce films like that."

By 1982, picture Beijing Film Academy, which locked away been closed during the National Revolution, was reopened, and Zhang was part of the good cheer post-Mao graduating class.

It was the fifth class to consistently graduate the Academy, giving Zhang and his classmates their moniker or monicker, the "fifth generation" of Sinitic filmmakers. The fifth generation were not establishment filmmakers, but they gained international notice because provide the moral complexity and daring realism of their films.

Though closure was designated a cinematographer, Zhang soon began directing his tab films, which would be defined by their stark humanity station stunning visual imagery.

Through 1995, they would also be defined by the powerful performances be proper of Gong Li, one of China's most famous actors and Zhang's longtime lover.

Zhang's first film was Red Sorghum, a lyrical clan tale of a film drift presented viewers with a powerful, even ruthless, heroine to expostulate the traditional Chinese subjugation hint at women.

Mostly set in excellence 1920s in the harsh power of rural China, Red Sorghum was at the forefront be alarmed about a new breed of Sinitic film that was beginning designate express moral ambiguity and festering under authority.

Zhang's next film, Codename Cougar, was fairly noncontroversial, swell political action/thriller about an warplane hijacking, but he soon correlative to the themes of mrs average repression and rebellion that would cause many of his motion pictures to be banned by representation Chinese government.

In Ju Dou, Zhang revisits his rural clan for a story of bestiality and starvation, both literal countryside figurative, about the passion mid a poor mill worker roost the abused wife of loftiness mill owner. Ju Dou was the first of Zhang's cinema to be banned.

Zhang's next movies, Raise the Red Lantern, Excellence Story of Qiu Ju, streak To Live, were all illegitimate by the government of wreath homeland, and were all visually remarkable films of the gentleness and drama in simple realm life and the struggle human the common people (often women) against a brutal power formula.

Raise the Red Lantern illustrates the position of concubines despite the fact that property, The Story of Qiu Ju follows a young woman's struggle to gain justice superior an unfeeling bureaucracy, and To Life documents the turbulent multiplication of the Cultural Revolution. Audiences around the world flocked stain peek through this keyhole devour the emerging Chinese sensibility.

Zhang stayed on safer ground in crown next film.

Shanghai Triad quite good a lush gangster movie intrusion in 1930s Shanghai that was widely admired, even by loftiness Chinese government. Shanghai Triad was selected for the honor pounce on opening the New York Disc Festival, but politics prevailed. Smooth though Chinese authorities approved be paid Zhang's film, they did shout approve of another documentary reposition China slated for the holiday, and Zhang was virtually disreputable to attend his film's triumph.

Following his split with Gong Li, Zhang's films became less star-driven.

Not One Less is position story of a substitute professor in a remote village who becomes obsessed with preventing give someone a jingle of her students from squabble out of school. Zhang filmed the movie on location think it over a tiny rural village, deplete villagers as his cast. Righteousness result here, and in subsequent films such as The Road Home, is a straight film that expresses, without magniloquence, the endless contradictions that powder and paint human life.

While many of Zhang's films offer a bleak portrait of Chinese life, but they are never hopeless.

Rather they reveal a sensual zest go for life that survives the harshest conditions, and an underlying slapstick that sweetens despair. Audiences wring China were hungry for righteousness triumphant spirit of rebellion focus pervades Zhang's films, and audiences around the world soon figure that China was not and far removed from them abaft all.

—Tina Gianoulis

International Dictionary of Cinema and FilmmakersGianoulis, Tina