Chen Kaige

Chén Kǎigē (Chinese陈凯歌/陈凯歌; born August 12, 1952 in Beijing, People's Republic of China) is a film director and writer. As representatives of the ' Fifth Generation ' he added much to the reputation of Chinese film.

Life

Chen comes from a film family. His father worked as a director for opera films in the Beijing Film Studio. His mother wrote screenplays. Visiting a very prestigious middle school in Beijing was short. After his entry into school in 1965, he came in 1966 in the vortex of the Cultural Revolution. He was like many other students zwangsentsandt in a remote part of the country to work assignments, in his case to Yunnan, where he remained until 1972, 1968. The experiences of this time has summarized in his book Children of the Dragon Chen Kaige, his third film king of the children takes up the theme of the book and its memories. In Yunnan Chen worked at a rubber plantation, where his athletic talent in basketball helped him after a few years to a place in the army and improve long-term return to Beijing allowed, where he worked in a factory. After the end of the Cultural Revolution and with the normalization of the public and social life, the Beijing Film Academy opened its doors again. Chen was in 1978, together with Zhang Yimou for the first year, which they left in 1982 after four years with a degree. He was initially in the studio, where his father worked. However, the breakthrough came when he followed the suggestion Zhang and went with him to the Guangxi studio, a small film company that was far enough away from Beijing to fairly unobserved try something new can. Here in 1984, the film Yellow Earth, who consistently broke with the traditional and narrow aesthetic, narrative and political norms. China was back on the international map of filmmaking. Chen Kaige's film Farewell My Concubine based on the novel by Lilian Lee won numerous European awards ( BAFTA, Golden Palm at Cannes) and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in the category. Chen Kaige lived several years abroad and also filmed a movie in Hollywood, Killing Me Softly (2002), but has since returned to China.

Filmography (selection)