Wang Xiaoshuai

Born in Shanghai (East China) in 1966, Wang Xiaoshuai is considered as one of the most talented young filmmakers in the country. After growing up in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, Wang studied film directing at the Beijing Film Academy from 1985 to 1989.

With fellow thirty-something directors Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, and Zhang Ming, Wang Xiaoshuai is establishing a new kind of mainland cinema that explores both the odd and average characters of contemporary urban Chinese life.

These pictures are nothing like the allegorical period pieces created by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige in the 1980s. Hidden meanings are few and far between. Mainly, with these young directors, what you see is what you get.

 Wang Xiaoshuai's Filmography

1993: The Days (Dongchun de Rizi)

1995: Frozen (Jidu Hanleng)

1996: Shoulder Pole and Girls (Biandan Guniang)

1999: So Close to Paradise (Menghuan Tianyuan)

2000: Beijing Bicycle (Shiqisui de Danche)

Frozen

This stunning and demanding film takes the audience into the world of Beijing 's avant-garde artists of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

A daring young artist in Beijing is obsessed with performance art and makes his own suicide as his last work of art. On the longest day of the year, he plans to melt a huge block of ice with his own body heat and die of hypothermia. He calls this protest against the coldness of society "Funeral on Ice."

Based upon a similar performance staged in Beijing and shot in 1994, "Frozen" is a unique work even among independently produced Chinese films.

Beijing Bicycle

Xiao Gui, 16 years old, is from the country. He finds work at a courier company, which gives him food and lodging, and lends him a superb silver-coloured mountain bike. The company pays good wages but part of these wages goes toward paying for the bicycle on which Xiao Gui spends most of his days.

One day, as Xiao Gui has almost finished paying for his bicycle, it disappears. Without a bicycle Xiao Gui can't work so he scours Beijing in search of it and by miracle finds another young guy, Xiao Tin, riding it. All Xiao Gui has to do is take it back but Xiao Tin doesn't agree. He bought the bike at the flea market… Xiao Gui is going to have to learn to share …