Zhang Yang
Born in 1967, Zhang Yang received his BA in Chinese Literature from Zhongshan University (South China's Guangdong Province) in 1988 and continued his study in the Directing Department of the Central Drama Academy (CDA) in Beijing. After graduating from CDA in 1992, he entered the Beijing Film Studio and is now working for the studio as a director.
His first film, Spicy Love Soup, had box-office receipts placing it among the most successful nonpolitical films in the last two years. It swept all the domestic Chinese awards and was elected for competition at the 1998 Tokyo International Film Festival (Japan) and was invited to the San Diego International Film Festival (United States of America), Kerala Film Festival (India), Pan Asia Film Festival (London), and Far East Film Festival (Italy). It's soundtrack even sold 500,000 units in Mainland China. The film was China's first sleeper hit and was the first independent Chinese film to achieve domestic box office success.
Zhang Yang's Filmography
1997: Spicy Love Soup (Aiqing Malatang)
1999: Shower (Xizao)
2001: Quitting (Zuotian)
Shower
When the film unfolds, Da Ming, who works in the capitalism-oriented South as a businessman, returns to his family home in Beijing after being told that his elderly father has passed away. Da Ming's father owns a traditional bathhouse which he runs with the help of his other son, mentally challenged Er Ming .
Da Ming feels a little impatient after learning that his father is perfectly healthy. He immediately books a flight ticket and plans to go back. In the meantime, while his brother welcomes Da Ming lovingly, his father is remote and cold. Their separation is a result of different values, different life experiences, and different generations.
As the narrative develops, however, Da Ming gradually realizes what has separated him and his father. In a rapidly changing China, what is lacking or has been lost is the traditional sense of human connection, family ties, and community celebration, which Da Ming eventually learns to value through his observation of and interaction with his father and brother.
Quitting
In the late 1980s a new film star, Jia Hongsheng, emerged in China. Labeled "the thug idol," he gained fame playing gangsters and heroes in a series of films by young directors and soon became the actor of choice for Chinese sixth generation filmmakers such as Wang Xiaoshuai and Lou Ye.
Jia's naturally fragile mental/psychological state coupled with his drug use, however, gradually led him into a state of despair. He stopped acting and cut himself off entirely from all his friends, locking himself in an apartment, taking drugs and listening to tapes of his favorite music over and over again.
Jia Hongsheng epitomizes the younger generation who, between the late 1980s and early 1990s, went through a radical social change. Rock music, changes in values, and drugs all contributed to giving birth to a new type of life, stoking the anger between the younger and older generations. The film recreates seven years of effort by a family to help one of their members get rid of drug addiction and also to help him find his identity.
Every character in "Quitting" is played by a real person who was part of Jia Hongsheng's life. The film seeks to be unflinchingly realistic in its portrayal of its characters and the early 1990s as a historical period.
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