In 1990, Ju Dou, co-directed by Yang Fengliang and starring Gong Li, was the first Chinese film to be a candidate for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film, after having been first presented at the Cannes Film Festival. In the following year, Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong denglong gaogao gua) won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and won another nomination at the Oscars as Best Foreign Film. Both Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern were heavily censored in the versions released in China. The following film, The Story of Qiu Ju (Qiu Ju da guansi, 1992), Golden Lion and Coppa Volpi for Gong Li in Venice, miraculously escaped censorship: after the success of the film at the Venice Film Festival, the director's earlier films were removed from the "black list". However, his fifth film with Gong Li, To Live (Huozhe, 1994), which adapted a celebrated novel by Yu Hua, had fresh problems with the authorities, although it won the Special jury prize and the prize for best actor at the Cannes Festival.
In 1995, his career made a first shift towards genre cinema with a gangster film entitled Shanghai Triad (Yao ayao yao dao waipo qiao, 1995), which won the Grand Prix de la Commission Supérieure Technique at the Cannes Film Festival. The two films that followed were launched with success at the Venice Film Festival and were then presented at other film festivals around the world, which helped assure them a successful distribution: Keep Cool (Yohua haohao shuo, 1997), and above all Not One Less (Yige dou buneng shao, 1999), which in Venice won the Golden Lion, the Magic Lantern prize and the Sergio Trasatti Award. In 2000, with The Road Home (Wo de fuqin muqin), Zhang assured himself the Silver Bear and the Jury Grand Prix at the Berlin Festival and, subsequently, the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. This film marked the debut of the director's new muse, Zhang Ziyi, who would work with him in another three films.
After the much-rewarded Happy Times (Xingfu shiguang, 2000), starring Zhang Ziyi, Zhang Yimou made a new and brusque change of direction towards genre cinema, and more precisely towards the wuxia (martial-knightly) genre, first with Hero (Ying xiong, 2002), candidate for an Oscar as best foreign film, and then with House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu, 2004). At the time it was filmed, Hero was the most expensive film in the history of Chinese cinema. It was distributed internationally in a new version prepared by Miramax from the USA and presented by Quentin Tarantino, a great admirer of the Chinese film maker. The film was one of the first subtitled films (that is, not dubbed into English) to top the box offices in America. Two years later, House of Flying Daggers repeated the international success of the earlier film. In 2005, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Qianli zou danqi ) successfully participated in the Tokyo Festival and was picked up the following year by the first edition of Cinema. Festa Internazionale di Roma (in the Extra section).
Zhang Yimou's latest film is once again a historic epic with an unprecedented budget in China, Curse of the Golden Flower (Mancheng jindai huangjin jia), a tragedy set in China during the Tang dynasty. It stars two of the most famous Chinese actors at home and abroad: Gong Li, who after ten years has once again worked with the director, and Chow Yun Fat from Hong Kong. This film works both as a great spectacle and as a political metaphor with a precarious equilibrium between the old and new generations of holders of central power in China.
Zhang is one of the 35 directors invited by Gilles Jacob to produce a three-minute episode to form a part of Chacun son cinéma, the film-event with which the Cannes Film Festival, 15 years younger than its Venetian counterpart, intends celebrating its own 60th anniversary this year.
Venice, 22 May 2007
