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Zhang
Yimou is one of the best-known directors of the Chinese Fifth
Generation and one of the most influential and widely respected
filmmakers working today.
Zhang's
first film, Red Sorghum (1987), which won the Golden Bear at the
Berlin Film Festival and achieved critical and commercial success,
both internationally and domestically.
After
the thoroughly forgettable Codename Cougar (1987), Zhang made Ju Dou
(1989), which won Best Film at the Chicago Film Festival and
garnered an Academy Award nomination.
His
next film, Raise the Red Lantern (1992), widely considered his
finest, also concerned a woman married into a controlling, abusive
patriarchal world.
Just
as critics seemed to have identified a specific Zhang Yimou style,
he released The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), about a pregnant peasant
women seeking legal justice after her husband is beaten by a village
leader. Instead of rigidly framed images featuring carefully
modulated color, this film, set in modern-day Shaanxi province,
adopted a gritty quasi-documentary look that used long tracking
shots.
His
film Not One Less (1999) won the coveted Golden Lion at the 1999
Venice Film Festival. |
