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Chen Kaige
At the time, Chen was only 16 years old, and was at a very impressionable age. He enlisted into the Red Guards, and joined Mao's war against China's traditional art culture. He was later ordered to denounce his father, who had been identified as a former member of the Kuomingtang party, as a spy. Both him and his father were sent to the rural countryside in exile to be re-educated along with tens of thousands of others like them. Chen did manual labour for the next three years, and he deeply wanted to escape. When he had the chance, Kaige joined the People's Army, and for the next four years, spent his time as a road engineer. Chen returned to his city of birth, Beijing, in 1975 and worked in a film developing plant until the reopening of the Beijing Film Academy. He enrolled, and became a part of the so-called Fifth Generation. Upon graduation, Chen was the first to direct a feature length film - Yellow Earth, and quickly received recognition and acclaim for his work from the Western critics. Chen's next three films were all successes and he
enjoyed being in the eye of the world's greatest filmmakers, but his classmate
Zhang's successes soon eclipsed him, and before long, Zhang was the darling
of the world, and China's most respected director. Chen had to rethink
his subject matter and his choice in projects. His next film was the adaptation
of Hong Kong author Lillian Lee's love epic "Farewell my Concubine".
The final piece of work was a grand dramatic fanfare of homosexuality,
betrayal, redemption and sadness, spread over a canvas of four decades
of turbulent Chinese history. Farewell my Concubine went on to share top
prize at Cannes with Jane Campion's The Piano, and established Chen as
one of the world's top art-house filmmakers. |
Chen
Kaige was born in Beijing, and was the son of Cheng Huaikai, one of China's
most respected directors of his generation. Kaige himself was given a
very proper education and was a very privileged young man, having the
best his father could provide for him. When the Cultural Revolution started
out in 1966, Kaige's life was about to be turned upside down.