Zhang Yimou to direct film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China
Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, is to make a film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. The news, announced yesterday on China Central Television, completes what many regard as the last step in a curious rehabilitation for the one-time dissident film-maker.
According to the director's assistant, Pang Liwei, Zhang is currently deliberating between three or four state-sanctioned screenplays. "The script must meet the director's requirements," Pang told the Associated Press. "Nothing has been decided."
Zhang, 59, worked as a farmhand and a textile worker during the Cultural Revolution before finally gaining entrance to the Beijing film academy in the late 1970s. His early films documented the resilience of China's citizens in an oppressive, poverty-stricken climate. Zhang's debut picture, Red Sorghum, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival but was initially banned in his homeland. The authorities also imposed a ban on a later film, To Live, and also prevented the director from personally collecting an award from the Cannes film festival in 1994...
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According to the director's assistant, Pang Liwei, Zhang is currently deliberating between three or four state-sanctioned screenplays. "The script must meet the director's requirements," Pang told the Associated Press. "Nothing has been decided."
Zhang, 59, worked as a farmhand and a textile worker during the Cultural Revolution before finally gaining entrance to the Beijing film academy in the late 1970s. His early films documented the resilience of China's citizens in an oppressive, poverty-stricken climate. Zhang's debut picture, Red Sorghum, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival but was initially banned in his homeland. The authorities also imposed a ban on a later film, To Live, and also prevented the director from personally collecting an award from the Cannes film festival in 1994...