A young bride is carried to a remote distillery in a sedan chair, and the whole harvest is drunk and burned in an ocean of crimson stalks (1988)
Red Sorghum — his directorial debut, Gong Li's debut, and winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin in 1988.
Film · Around the world
Zhang Yimou
born 1950 · Chinese
Fifth Generation of Chinese cinema
Zhang Yimou is the best-known director of the Fifth Generation — the class that entered the reopened Beijing Film Academy in 1978, the first intake after the Cultural Revolution. He began as a cinematographer, made his name with lush, colour-drenched village tragedies starring Gong Li, several of them banned at home while winning the top prizes at Berlin, Venice and Cannes, and later moved to the wuxia blockbuster and to staging the opening and closing ceremonies of two Beijing Olympic Games.
How to spot them
- ▸Overwhelming single colours: a field of red sorghum, red lanterns in a courtyard, colour-coded chapters of a flashback
- ▸Gong Li in the early films; Zhang Ziyi later; and stories of women trapped by ritual and patriarchy
- ▸Trained as a cinematographer — he shot Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984) before directing
- ▸Films repeatedly banned or delayed in China, then sent abroad to win festival prizes
- ▸The Fifth Generation, the first Beijing Film Academy intake after the Cultural Revolution
Key films
A household's fourth wife learns that whichever concubine the master visits gets her courtyard lit for the night, and the rules destroy them all (1991)
Raise the Red Lantern — Silver Lion at Venice; nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
A pregnant peasant woman travels from office to office demanding an apology after the village chief kicks her husband (1992)
The Story of Qiu Ju — Golden Lion at Venice, with Gong Li acting among non-professionals and hidden cameras.
A dyeing mill, a crippled tyrant of a husband, and a nephew who becomes his young wife's lover; the child raised as a brother (1990)
Ju Dou — the first Chinese film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
A thirteen-year-old substitute teacher is told to keep every pupil in the classroom for a month, and goes to the city to drag one back (1999)
Not One Less — Golden Lion at Venice, cast entirely with non-professionals playing versions of themselves.
A nameless assassin tells the King of Qin how he killed three warriors, and the story is retold in different colours until the truth emerges (2002)
Hero — the film that made the Chinese martial-arts blockbuster an international export; with Jet Li and Tony Leung.
A blind dancer in a Tang-dynasty brothel, a bamboo-forest ambush, and a duel in falling snow (2004)
House of Flying Daggers — with Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau.
A gambler loses the ancestral house, takes up shadow-puppetry, and endures the civil war, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, losing both his children (1994)
To Live — Grand Prix at Cannes and Best Actor for Ge You, but banned in China and Zhang barred from filming abroad for two years.
Quick-fire facts
- •He directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and again of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
- •He was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 over the age limit, after petitioning the Ministry of Culture; he had spent years as a farm and textile-mill labourer during the Cultural Revolution
- •He shot Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984), the film usually taken as the Fifth Generation's manifesto, and acted in Wu Tianming's Old Well (1987), winning Best Actor at Tokyo
- •Red Sorghum (1988) won the Golden Bear at Berlin; The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and Not One Less (1999) both won the Golden Lion at Venice
- •Ju Dou (1990) was the first film from mainland China nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar; the government tried to withdraw it
- •Gong Li starred in his first seven films; they were also partners, and separated in 1995
- •To Live (1994) won the Grand Prix at Cannes but remains officially unreleased in China
- •He was fined more than seven million yuan in 2014 for breaching China's one-child policy
- •Hero (2002) was released in the United States two years late by Miramax and went to number one at the American box office
- •He remains prolific into his seventies; his 2026 espionage thriller Scare Out was one of the biggest Chinese releases of the year
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- David Neo, Senses of Cinema — The 'Confusion Ethics' of Raise the Red Lantern
- Screen Daily — Zhang Yimou espionage thriller 'Scare Out' lands UK-Ireland distribution