
	Where results make sense

Topic: Tian Zhuangzhuang

Related Topics

Jiang Wen

Chen Kaige

Jia Zhangke

Hero (movie)

Stanley Kwan

Cinema of China

Steven Chow

Zhang Yimou

Gong Li

Ruan Lingyu

Jet Li

Zhang Ziyi

	Tian Zhuangzhuang
		Tian's father was an actor who had risen to become the head of the Beijing Film studio, while his mother was an actress who later took charge of the China's Children's Film Studio.
		Tian spent the next several years making films for the government, but his breakthrough came in 1993 when he was given permission to make a film he believed in - The Blue Kite, co-produced by Hong Kong's Longwick Production Company.
		Tian forever denied smuggling the raw footage out of China himself, and luckily, there was no evidence for the government to prosecute.
	www.hkfilms.150m.com /Chinese/tianzhuangzhuang.htm (470 words)

	Tian (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Tian Zhuangzhuang is the latest of China's Fifth Generation...
		Tian (天 Pinyin Tiān) is the Chinese character for heaven.
		Tian sometimes seems to be God itself, or Heaven, or the entire celestial bureaucracy.
	hallencyclopedia.com /Tian (364 words)

	UWM News Release (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Tian Zhuangzhuang is one of the most prominent filmmakers of China's Fifth Generation, along with Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.
		His father was Tian Fang, a noted actor from the 1930s and a director for the Beijing Film Studios after the Communists gained power.
		During the Cultural Revolution, Zhuangzhuang was sent at age 16 to labor in remote Jilin province.
	www.uwm.edu /News/PR/04.09/asian_film_fest.html (460 words)

	The Blue Kite - QuickTopic free message board hosting
		Tian’s hopeful introduction of the film helps to convey that part of the tragedy of communist rule is that it started with such hope but would turn to disaster for the people as he portrays through the childhood of Teitou and the family he will lose to the party.
		Tian portrays this movement when Teitou comes home to tell his mother that the children at school denounced their teacher as counter-revolutionary and when Lao Wu is hunted down in his home by a young faceless mob of revolutionaries.
		Tian also being a sixth generation director was apart of a class who for the first time made movies that criticized the entire party, and the people for participating in its policies, instead of making movies who place the blame on one evil person who created the faults in the communist party.
	www.quicktopic.com /26/H/2aexB9UkR6D (8076 words)

	New York State Writers Institute - Horse Thief Film Notes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Tian had intended his story to be a timeless one, its parable of conflict between the family and the ideological community perhaps a lesson for modern China.
		In the wide palette of Cinemascope, Tian’s iconography is especially unforgettable: documentary footage of the solemn Buddhist rite of the prayer wheel, the nearly experimental sequence of the thief circling the temple, the oddly placid reality of vultures idly tearing at a corpse on a burial scaffold against a frozen sky.
		Tian’s stoic Tibetans are destitute, scraping subsistence out of a cold and cruel land, awaiting death with a certain eagerness at the transfiguration into long-denied peace and contentment which their religion promises.
	www.albany.edu /writers-inst/fns01n6.html (817 words)

	China Now Magazine
		Tian, along with his Beijing Film Academy cinematography department classmates Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, revitalized Chinese cinema in the mid-1980s, giving it an international profile that continues to generate exposure and acclaim and garner international film awards today.
		Tian burst onto the new wave Chinese cinema scene in the politically-charged mid-1980s with two difficult, experimental films set among minority communities—a semi-documentary on Inner Mongolia’s nomadic hunters On the Hunting Ground (1985), and a Tibetan mythical-religious paean Horse Thief (1986).
		Tian’s radical devotion to the value of continuous tradition is precisely what leads him to abjure the avant-garde stylistics of the original in favor of a self-consciously classicizing style, one that asserts a continuity with past Chinese film culture and, on a personal level, represents a rhapsodic homecoming.
	www.chinanowmag.com /filmreview/filmreview.htm (1374 words)

	'The Blue Kite' (NR)
		When the Chinese authorities first viewed Tian Zhuangzhuang's "The Blue Kite," they were distressed by what they referred to as its "political leanings" and banned it from exhibition in China.
		Tian expresses historical events in human terms, showing us, for example, that Shaolong is sent to a labor reform camp partly because a scapegoat was needed and partly because he chose an unfortunate moment to go to the bathroom.
		Yet even in the face of these upheavals, Shujuan clings to Tietou as her one true source of fulfillment and delight, and by the end, the film develops into a moving portrait of the bonds between mother and child.
	www.washingtonpost.com /wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/thebluekitenrhinson_b009e5.htm (472 words)

	village voice > film > Springtime in a Small Town by J. Hoberman
		Tian's first feature in the decade since his politically outspoken family drama, The Blue Kite, is also his quietest, remaking a 1948 Chinese classic to marvelous effect.
		Tian puts tremendous emphasis on the natural world, whether in Liyan's garden or the crucial conversation where Zhang and Yuwen indicate their feelings for each other while overlooking the void of an enormous gorge.
		Tian's rarefied atmospherics are not without a delicate suggestion of political allegory.
	www.villagevoice.com /issues/0420/hoberman4.php (641 words)

	A spring flowering, a decade on - www.theage.com.au
		Tian Zhuangzhuang says he doesn't understand why everyone is asking him the same question.
		Tian has made some significant changes to the characters - the wife is no longer the narrator, the husband takes a more pro-active role than in the original - but he decided against updating the story to the present-day.
		For Tian, it's also important that the film should speak of contemporary matters and that is what drew him to the project in the first place.
	www.theage.com.au /articles/2003/09/19/1063625198182.html (1170 words)

	Print Article: Springtime in a Small Town
		Tian knows what it's like to be out of favour with the Chinese Government, for example.
		Tian's direction of these unknown actors is part of the film's charm, but the more sensual pleasure is the way the film is shot, by Taiwanese master Mark Lee (Li Pingbin).
		It's a more classical style than Tian Zhuangzhuang has done before, a homage to his forebears, and a welcome return by one of the most gifted directors of his generation.
	www.smh.com.au /cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2003/09/24/1064083052665.html (685 words)

	Film Synopsis (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		On the fringes of a somewhat controlled and financially challenged film industry, new and older talents are creating a space for fresh and critical glimpses at real Chinese life.
		Tian Zhuang-zhuang, film academy classmate of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, has produced a spectacular account of life and culture in southwest China.
		Tian and his crew spent several years filming in these mountains, creating a feast for the eye and the mind.
	www.enzedff.co.nz /filmsynopsis.asp?FilmID=1880&Archive=0&RegionID=1&EventID=9 (315 words)

	BIFF - Film Review (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		It was finally completed (according to Tian's detailed instructions) in Tokyo last spring (1993), and it premiered as the 'surprise film' in the 'Director's Fortnight' section of the Cannes Film Festival - where it was a major critical and commercial success.
		And since Tian ZhuangZhuang himself was born around the same time as his protagonist Tietou, it's safe to assume that he has invested the film with a lot of personal memories.
		Born in Beijing in 1952, Tian ZhuangZhuang's parents were both communist cadres involved in the film industry.
	www.pftc.com.au /BIFF_2001/programme/film_review.asp?flmID=161 (613 words)

	Lan feng zheng (1993) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		The Blue Kite, a beautiful and courageous 1993 film by Tian Zhuangzhuang, describes the ups and downs in the lives of a young Chinese family from the early 1950's through the Cultural Revolution of 1966.
		Tietou's mother, Shujuan, brilliantly portrayed by Lu Liping, is a tower of strength who must care for her son while coping with the sudden death of three husbands, indirectly due to the political turmoil.
		Tian depicts the excesses of the Red Guard in bullying and beating those whom they deemed to lack "political purity".
	us.imdb.com /Title?0107358 (744 words)

	Variety.com - Reviews - Springtime in a Small Town
		Tian, fllisted for opposing government policies on human rights, returns with a remake of one of the most illustrious films from China's past.
		Tian's remake is basically faithful, though there are changes in emphasis.
		Tian cast the film with newcomers -- only Ye Xiaokeng, as the old retainer, had ever made a film before.
	www.variety.com /review/VE1117918632?categoryid=31&cs=1 (792 words)

	Delamu (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		NEW YORK -- Fifth-generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang ("The Horse Thief," "The Blue Kite") is one of China's finest filmmakers.
		It's beautifully shot -- Tian flies in the face of current documentary esthetics by carefully arranging his subjects in front of a static camera -- but never really penetrates the subject matter.
		Tian demonstrated his affinity with the Chinese landscape at the start of his career in films like "The Horse Thief." Montage in that film used the scenery to conjure a transcendental effect, but here the idea is simply to make the locations look picture-postcard pretty.
	www.hollywoodreporter.com /thr/icopyright_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000523717 (284 words)

	dOc DVD Review: Springtime in a Small Town (Xiao cheng zhi chun) (2002)
		Tian Zhuangzhuang offers some very thoughtful, intriguing insights into his filmmaking process and discusses remaking the classic 1948 film by Fei Mu.
		Next is a radio interview with director Tian Zhuangzhuang by Leonard Lopate of WNYC Public Radio (16m:10s), conducted on May 6, 2004.
		Tian Zhuangzhuang's return is a triumphant, patient meditation on love and loyalty.
	www.digitallyobsessed.com /showreview.php3?ID=6665 (1089 words)

	horsethief
		Brilliant Chinese filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang ("The Blue Kite") is an important member of the "Fifth Generation" Beijing film movement to have emerged from the People's Republic of China.
		Tian has said that this is a film he made for the 21st century.
		It shows the difficulties of a Tibetan surviving on honest work without help from the gods or the community, that in essence belies a culture that forces those who are unskilled or banished from society to be criminals.
	www.sover.net /~ozus/horsethief.htm (459 words)

	8 SOFIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
		Tian uses a young cast and strengthens the drama by making it explicit that the husband's impotence is psychosomatic.
		Son of Tian Fang, who was head of the Peking Film Studio.
		In 1978 he was admitted to the film academy of Beijing, where he formed the so-called Fifth Generation with the future filmmakers Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Peng Xiaolan and Wu Ziniu.
	www.cinema.bg /sff/2004/eng/movie.php?movieSid=206 (226 words)

	calendarlive.com: 'Springtime in a Small Town'
		Tian Zhuangzhuang's first film in a decade is nothing short of triumphant, evocatively exploring the workings of desire in 1940s China.
		Exquisitely directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, whose earlier films include "Horse Thief" and "The Blue Kite," "Springtime in a Small Town" reveals its mysteries with quiet deliberation.
		For Tian, who was banned from directing by Chinese authorities for a decade, it marks a triumphant return; for those who have loved the filmmaker's work in the past, few resurrections have seemed as welcome.
	www.calendarlive.com /movies/dargis/cl-et-springtime28may28,2,1077591.story (711 words)

	Tian Zhuangzhuang
		But invariably, as the Cultural Revolution becomes increasingly turbulent and hostile towards established scholars, Lao Wu's academic ties lead to political disfavor and public denunciation.
		Tian Zhuangzhuang creates a poignant story of lost innocence, political turmoil, and personal courage in The Blue Kite.
		The opening image of the soaring blue kite provides a figurative continuity through the uncertainty of Tietou's own young life, as the tradition of flying a kite is passed down to a younger generation.
	www.filmref.com /directors/dirpages/tian.html (577 words)

	Spring roles - www.smh.com.au
		Tian Zhuangzhuang is in Sydney for 24 hours to promote his new film, Springtime in a Small Town.
		Tian made the film using the moral compass of China in the 1940s, resisting the temptation to load it with steamy illicit sex.
		Tian believes it is possible to make a truly erotic movie without any sex.
	www.smh.com.au /articles/2003/09/18/1063625154493.html?from=storyrhs (765 words)

	Electric Shadows - Springtime In A Small Town
		In Tian's words: "I was very nervous about returning to directing because so much has changed in Chinese cinema in the last ten years.
		Difficulties have obviously never frightened Tian since his stint as a trainee cinematographer in the People's Liberation Army, and the elegance of this film proves definitively he has not forgotten how to direct.
		To accentuate the challenge, Tian cast new talent in all three leading roles: all three were drama school graduates in 1997-9, and had done a little TV, but none of them had ever played in a feature film before, and certainly nothing as demanding as Tian's project.
	www.electricshadows.com.au /film/2385646045.html (753 words)

	Springtime In A Small Town - Films on DVD and Video - MovieMail UK (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		In Springtime in a Small Town, directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, a wife meets her former lover and flirts with the possibility of leaving her sick husband.
		Tian Zhuangzhuang was one of the leading figures of the so-called 'Fifth Generation' until he was banned from making films after his 1993 film, 'The Blue Kite'.
		The married couple sleep in separate rooms, their lives without intimacy or passion as a result of Liyan's undiagnosed illness that he believes to be tuberculosis, though Tian hints that it may be psychosomatic.
	www.moviemail-online.co.uk /films/12553 (460 words)

	Fall 1995 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Tian Zhuangzhuang, the director of the highly acclaimed film The Blue Kite, is one of the most controversial of China's so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers.
		In his essay, "Tian Zhuangzhuang, the Fifth Generation, and Minorities Film in China," appearing in the current issue of Public Culture, Dru Gladney shows how Zhuangzhuang's early minority films depict a more general oriental bias in contemporary Chinese film, which exoticizes the minority for the sake of the majority.
		Zhuangzhuang's 1986 film, Horse Thief has become almost a cult film among Tibetan enthusiasts in the West.
	www.newschool.edu /gf/publicculture/backissues/pc18/gladney.html (215 words)

	A Movie Review of The Phantom Tollbooth
		Springtime in a Small Town is directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Blue Kite), who was banned and then shunned by the Chinese government.
		It trusts its audience to pay attention to subtle details, to not get frustrated with ambiguity and a measured pace, and to appreciate that there are many ways to tell a story and that a great film will tell its story in many ways.
		That Tian's conclusion, with a last shot of the earth and wall, is simply perfect only affirms how great a movie Springtime in a Small Town is. It opens Fri., Oct. 29 for a week-long run.
	www.tollbooth.org /2004/movies/spring.html (1281 words)

	Review: The Blue Kite (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		The narrator of The Blue Kite is Tietou (played by Yi Tian as an infant, Zhang Wenyao as a young boy, and Chen Xiaoman as an adolescent), whose 1953 birth occurs early in the film.
		Tian's criticism of the Chinese revolution is effective because of its subtlety.
		Tian's method of storytelling, while reasonably straightforward, will be unfamiliar to many American movie-goers.
	movie-reviews.colossus.net /movies/b/blue_kite.html (546 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-11)
		Unless, that is, you’re already familiar with the earlier work of Tian, one of the best and brightest of the Fifth Generation of mainland Chinese filmmakers, albeit not as well known in the West as his contemporaries Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.
		But that one year turned into 10, as Tian segued into a career as a producer and mentor to new directors and, by his own admission, began to question whether he still possessed the ability to direct.
		For in Tian’s dreamlike netherworld, pitched somewhere between here and there, winter and summer, the ravages of war and remembrance can be fended off for only so long.
	www.laweekly.com /ink/printme.php?eid=53847 (582 words)

	BBC - h2g2 - Tian Zhuangzhuang - Film Director
		Like Zhang Yimou, with who he worked on his first film, Tian has made various television projects to help fund his more difficult cinema presentations.
		Tian's most famous film in the West, The Blue Kite, deals with the experiences of the Cultural Revolution, and does so without metaphor or frills.
		Tian was unable to make pictures for many years, and was silent other than appearing as an actor in Ruan's Song.
	www.bbc.co.uk /dna/h2g2/A640658 (394 words)

	Things heat up in 'Springtime'
		Tian's masterpiece, "The Blue Kite," which detailed the effects of the Cultural Revolution on a Beijing family (Tian himself was "re-educated" and spent much of that time in Manchuria), had to be completed outside China.
		Having apparently served his time, Tian is back and seems to be playing it safe with "Springtime in a Small Town," a remake of a beloved 1948 classic about a melodramatic love triangle.
		Working on a beautifully designed set lighted by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping ("In the Mood for Love," "Flowers of Shanghai"), Tian is delicate and sure-handed with his wonderful young cast, as much of the emotion and meaning of the story lies beneath the surface of the dialogue.
	www.sfgate.com /cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/01/DDGOCA3J4H1.DTL (548 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)