Zhang Yuan (director)
Zhang Yuan | ||
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Hanyu Pinyin | Zhāng Yuán |
Zhang Yuan (simplified Chinese: 张元; traditional Chinese: 張元; pinyin: Zhāng Yuán; born October 1963) is a Chinese film director who has been described by film scholars as a pioneering member of China's Sixth Generation of filmmakers.[1] He and his films have won ten awards out of seventeen nominations received at international film festivals.[2]
Feature films
Born in
Aside from some original short subjects he directed as a student filmmaker, the official debut of his career in 1990 is Mama, a semi-documentary account of a mother and her retarded son, which is considered to have a historical spot as one of the first features of the Sixth Generation movement and as China's "first independent film since 1949".[5] His next film, 1993's Beijing Bastards follows Beijing's disaffected youth subculture and another title, Sons, in the same manner as Mama, blends the line between fiction and documentary film, as the actors, playing themselves, recreate the actual destruction of their family due to alcoholism and mental illness. However, the transgressive nature of these films (which depicted Chinese youth and society in harsh and unflattering imagery and terms), quickly came to the attention of the Chinese authorities. By April 1994, the Ministry of Film, Television and Culture issued a statement banning Zhang from filmmaking.[6] Also banned were fellow Sixth-Generation directors He Jianjun, Wang Xiaoshuai, the documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang, Fifth Generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Zhang's wife, screenwriter Ning Dai, whose sister, director Ning Ying, is a transitional figure between the Fifth and Sixth Generation. In 1996, two years after the ban went into force, Zhang was ready to present his next, and most-controversial, work, the surreptitiously filmed East Palace, West Palace, also known as Behind the Forbidden City, China's first feature with homosexual characters and, furthermore, their persecution by the police. A print was secretly taken out of China and screened at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.[7]
After East Palace, West Palace, Zhang's style began to shift away from documentary-like neo-realist dramas to more conventionally filmed features. 1999's
Documentaries
Between his feature film efforts, Zhang strives to continue producing long-form documentaries. 1994's The Square documents daily life in Tiananmen Square, in the immediate years following the events of the 1989 Democracy demonstrations. The surreptitious shoot took the guise of a program production crew for China Central Television (CCTV).
The late 1990s, meanwhile, saw Zhang indulging again in his interest in documentary form with Demolition and Relocation in 1998, an account of the destruction of Beijing's
Other media
Besides films, Zhang has also directed numerous
Filmography
Year | English Title | Chinese Title | Pinyin | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | Mama | 妈妈 | Māma | |
1993 | Beijing Bastards | 北京杂种 | Běijīng zá zhǒng | |
1994 | The Square | 广场 | Guǎng chǎng | Documentary |
1996 | Sons | 儿子 | Érzi | |
1996 | Danish Girls Show Everything | 丹麦姑娘 | Vignette in a comic anthology film | |
1997 | East Palace, West Palace | 东宫西宫 | Dōng gōng xī gōng | Screened at Cannes[10] |
1998 | Demolition and Relocation | 钉子户 | Ding zi hu | Short documentary |
1999 | Crazy English | 疯狂英语 | Fēng kuáng yīng yǔ | Documentary |
1999 | Seventeen Years | 过年回家 | Guò nián huí jiā | |
2000 | Miss Jin Xing | 金星小姐 | Jin xing xiaojie | Short documentary |
2000 | Hainan Hainan | 海南,海南 | Hainan Hainan | |
2002 | I Love You | 我爱你 | Wǒ ài nǐ | |
2003 | Jiang Jie (a film of the opera Sister Jiang )
|
江姐 | Jiang jie | |
2003 | Green Tea | 绿茶 | Lǜ Chá | |
2006 | Little Red Flowers | 看上去很美 | Kànshangqu hěn měi | |
2008 | Dada's Dance | 达达 | Dádá | |
2013 | Beijing Flickers | 有种 | Yǒu Zhǒng |
References
- ^ ISBN 0-415-18974-8. Google Book Search. Retrieved 2008-08-24.
- ^ Movie Database list of nominations and awards won by Zhang Yuan at international film festivals[permanent dead link]
- ISBN 0-231-10615-7. Google Book Search. Retrieved 2008-08-24.
- ^
Li Xiao (translator) (2003-09-19). "Art of Regret: Talking Film with Zhang Yuan". China.org. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
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has generic name (help) - ^ a b "Zhang Yuan's films". Zhang-yuanfilms.com. Archived from the original on 2007-07-05. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
- The International Herald Tribune. Archived from the originalon 2012-10-12. Retrieved 2008-11-17.
- ^ Zhang Yuan's career overview at AllMovie Guide[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b Berry, Michael (2002). "Zhang Yuan" in Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers.
Columbia University Press, p. 144. ISBN 0-231-13331-6. Google Book Search. Retrieved 2008-08-25
- ^ "22nd Moscow International Film Festival (2000)". MIFF. Archived from the original on March 28, 2013. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: East Palace, West Palace". festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on October 6, 2012. Retrieved 2009-09-26.