|
Let a thousand film students compete
(The New York Times)
Updated: 2005-10-04 09:12
Chen Kaige, director of "The Promise" a
graduate of the Beijing Film Academy.
| Without question, the academy's most
distinguished graduates were the so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers, among
them Zhang Yimou ("House of Flying Daggers"), Chen Kaige ("The Promise") and
Tian Zhuangzhuang ("Springtime in a Small Town"). Now mostly in their 50's, they
were the group to emerge after the Cultural Revolution. Along with 150 others in
their class, they were the first to enter the school in 1978, after it had been
closed for 10 years of Maoist political turmoil. (Their journey was chronicled
in Ni Zhen's "Memoirs From the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China's
Fifth Generation," published in 2002 by Duke University Press in an English
translation by Chris Berry.)
Later, the academy helped spawn many of the so-called Sixth Generation
filmmakers, among them Zhang Yuan ("Green Tea"), Wang Xiaoshuai ("Shanghai
Dreams") and He Jianjun ("Man Yan").
Of this group, perhaps the best known is Jia Zhangke ("The World"), who was
inspired to be a filmmaker after seeing Chen Kaige's "Yellow Earth." "For a
young person to see foreign films and rare films was very difficult - you could
only see them at the Beijing Film Academy," said Mr. Jia, who entered to study
screenwriting in 1993. "Most importantly, the environment at the film academy
was very relaxed, and there were a lot of exchange students from Europe,
America, Japan that brought a lot of new ideas and thoughts."
As documented in "Beijing Film Academy Annals 1950-1995" (a Chinese-language
book, edited by Ren Jie), the inspiration for the academy first came to the
actor and director Yuan Muzhi in 1940, when he was sent to Russia. He visited
VGIK film academy in Moscow and saw a model for his own country's cinematic
future.
Along with the actress Chen Boer and others, Mr. Yuan founded the Performing
Art Research Institute in 1950, under the Film Bureau of the Ministry of
Culture. On June 1, 1956, with the dramatist and filmmaker Zhang Min as its
first president, the school took on its present identity, and has since expanded
and moved to its current home at No. 4 Xi Tu Cheng Road, in the university
district popular with young people.
A former dormitory mate of Zhang Yimou, Zhang Hui-Jin - who was named
president of the academy in 2002 - now sees the challenge of changing technology
as the first issue facing his charges as they begin their professional lives.
"The birth of new technologies has a huge impact on traditional filmmaking," he
said in a recent interview in his office at the academy. "We have to teach our
students traditional filmmaking, but at the same time we have to make sure the
students have access to digital technology."
|
 | | | Rope walking to celebrate China's 56th birthday | | |  | | | Giant panda cub gets vaccination | | |  | | | Get united to combat AIDS/HIV | | |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top Life
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
