Mainland cinema

Zhang Yimou

Chen Kaige

Tian Zhuangzhuang

Banned Mainland films

Zhang Yimou

Zhang was born in the city of Xian, in 1950, at a time when an important lineage was the ticket to prosperity. Unfortunately, Zhang's father was an officer in the Nationalist Army, which, in the eyes of the government, made them politically suspect. One of Zhang's brothers had to flee to Taiwan, and another was accused of espionage and put behind bars. When Zhang was in his teenage years, the Cultural Revolution swept through China in 1966, and Zhang was forced to leave his home for the rural countryside where he spent a decade doing manual labour, first on a farm and then at a textile mill. With enough money saved from selling his own blood, he bought a cheap camera and spent most of his time taking photographs, which he published in the province's Shaanxi Daily newspaper. As a result, he gained a small amount of fame as a talented photographer. When the Beijing Film Academy reopened, Zhang jumped at the chance to escape his current meaningless life, so he enrolled. As luck would have it, he enrolled into the first class - the class of '82, which would go on to produce China's greatest modern filmmakers.

During the years at the Academy, Zhang was placed into the cinematography department, because of his previous photographic experience, but it was directing that Zhang had wanted to learn. After their graduation, the Fifth Generation made their first film together - the One and Eight, with Zhang manning the cameras.

Zhang went on to help fellow graduate Chen Kaige with the camerawork on Yellow Earth, which was well received globally. After helping Chen with another project (The Big Parade), and Wu Tianming's Old Well, Zhang was finally given permission to direct his own film - Red Sorghum, the film which turned his lead actress into China's biggest star. Zhang had decided, prior to filming Red Sorghum, that he did not want established actresses as the lead; therefore he chose a fresh-faced unknown girl named Gong Li during a visit to Beijing.

Zhang and Li became inseparable in both the movies and in real life, and when the rumours started flying that they were having an affair (Zhang was already married at the time), he quickly wanted a divorce. From then on, Zhang went on to even bigger international acclaim, but each time he stepped over the line, he was able to gather enough support from his international connections to stop the government from forcing him to cease making films altogether. Zhang became the darling boy of academics and political fighters inside China, and it seemed he was untouchable, but when his fairytale relationship with Gong Li ended abruptly in 1995, he went off the deep end, taking him some considerable time to recover from the messy emotional complications. Gong Li went on to marry a Singaporean businessman.