Zero Chou

Zero Chou is an award-winning Taiwanese director.

Life

Chou was born in Keelung, Taiwan in 1969. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy from National Chengchi University in 1992. She worked as a journalist before becoming an indie film director.

She entered into film making because of her attraction to the combination of content and form. She has been heralded as the most talented document director in the recent years of Taiwan. She has also received various festival awards around the world for films.

Chou and Hoho Liu are an lesbian couple.

Works

Documentary

* Looking For The Forgotten Artists 1997, 45 mins
* Artist And His Daughter 1997, 23 mins
* Memories Of The Taiwanese Master 1997, 47 mins
* Yi Shi Zai Hai Shi Zhong 1998, 48 mins
* Being Ceased 1998, 60 mins
* Mother And Son 1998, 65 mins
* Democracy Show 1998, 53 mins
* Wanderers' Bay 1998, 60 mins
* Floating Islands 2000, 288 mins
* Before The Radiation 2000, 22 mins
* Headhunting Festival 2000, 54 mins
* Zou Zu Zhan Ji 2000, 56 mins
* Corners 2001, 66 mins
* Poles Extremity 2002, 56 mins
* The Kinmenese Tracks 2003, 64 mins
* Father In The Blacklist 2004, 56 mins

Film

* A Film About The Body 1996, 62 mins
* Splendid Float 2004, 71 mins
* The Road On The Air 2006, 82 mins
* 2007, 97 mins

Award-Winning Films

Corners
* Winner of the 2002 Taipei Film Festival for Best Documentary

Poles Extremity
* Winner of the 2003 Marseille Festival of Documentary Film for Best Documentary

Splendid Float
* Winner of the 2004 Golden Horse Award for Best Make Up and Costume Design
* Winner of the 2004 Golden Horse Award for Best Original Film Song
* Winner of the 2004 Golden Horse Award for Best Taiwanese Film Of The Year
* Winner of the 1st CJ Asia Independent Film Festival for Audience Award

Spider Lilies
* Winner of the 2007 Teddy Award for Best Gay/Lesbian Feature Film at the Berlin Film Festival

Yee Chin-yen

Yee Chin-yen , is a Taiwanese film director.

Biography

Yee Chin-yen attended UCLA between 1983 and 1988.

Filmography

* ''About Love''
* ''Blue Gate Crossing''
* ''Lonely Hearts Club''

Awards

* Outstanding Co-Production Film, Huabiao Film Awards for ''About Love''
* Special Jury Prize, Bratislava International Film Festival for ''Blue Gate Crossing''

Tsai Ming-liang

Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of , along with earlier contemporaries as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang. His films have been acclaimed world-wide and have won numerous festival awards.

Biography

Tsai is a , and lived there "in a very simple small village" for 20 years, after which he moved to Taipei. This, he says, had "a huge impact on mind and psyche", perhaps later mirrored in his films. "Even today," says Tsai, "I feel I belong neither to Taiwan nor to Malaysia. In a sense, I can go anywhere I want and fit in, but I never feel that sense of belonging."

He graduated from the Drama and Department of the Chinese Culture University of Taiwan in 1982 and worked as a , screenwriter and television director in Hong Kong.

Tsai's honours include a Golden Lion for ''Vive L'Amour'' at the Venice Film Festival in 1994, the Silver Bear/Special Jury Prize for '''' at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival, the FIPRESCI award for '''' at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and the Alfred Bauer Award and Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement for ''The Wayward Cloud'' at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.

All his films have featured Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng.

The Malaysian Censorship Board on 4th March 2007 decided to ban Tsai's latest film shot in Malaysia, ''I Don't Want to Sleep Alone'' based on 18 counts of incidences shown in the film depicting the country "in a bad light" for cultural, ethical and racial reasons. However, they later allowed the film to be screened in the country after Tsai agreed to censor parts of the film according to the requirements of the Censorship Board.

Filmography

Features

*''Rebels of the Neon God''
*''Vive l'Amour''
*''''
*''''
*''What Time Is It There?''
*''Goodbye, Dragon Inn''
*''The Wayward Cloud''
*''I Don't Want to Sleep Alone''
*''Salome''

Shorts & Segments

*''A Conversation with God''
*''The Skywalk Is Gone''
*''Welcome to S?o Paulo'' - segment "Aquarium"

Telefilms

*''Endless Love''
*''The Happy Weaver''
*''Far Away''
*''All Corners of the World''
*''Li Hsiang's Love Line''
*''My Name is Mary''
*''Ah-Hsiung's First Love''
*''Give Me a Home''
*''Boys''
*''Hsio Yueh's Dowry''
*''My New Friends''

Te-sheng Wei

Te-Sheng Wei is the director of Cape No. 7, a highly successful Taiwanese film. Previously, he was the assistant director for Edward Yang's 1996 film . His next project will be Seediq Bale, for which he has already shot a 5 minute short film.

Stan Lai

Stan Lai or Lai Sheng-chuan is a highly influential award winning US born Taiwan based playwright and theater director. He is the director of Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land , often touted as the most successful contemporary Chinese play. Lai is recognised as one of the most important theater directors in Asia.

Life

Lai was born on 25 October 1954 in Washington D.C. to a diplomat father. He returned to Taiwan in 1966. In 1978, Lai married Ding Nai-chu . After the marriage, the couple went to US for further studies.

He received his Ph.D. in Dramatic Art from University of California, Berkeley in 1983. He is also Professor and Founding Dean of the College of Theatre at Taipei National University of the Arts. In 1984, Lai and Ding founded Performance Workshop, a contemporary theatre group. Lai became the Artistic Director while Ding is the Managing Director.

Lai had been the recipient of Taiwan’s highest award for the arts, the National Arts Award, twice - 1988 and 2001.

In 2006, Lai taught at Stanford University as Visiting Professor and Resident Artist for the I.D.A. program.

Works

Plays

* That Evening, We Performed Xiangsheng
* Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land
* Circle Story
* Journey to the West
* The Island and the Other Shore
* Strange Tales from Taiwan
* Red Sky
* Angels in America
* I Me He Him
* A Dream Like A Dream
* Millennium Teahouse
* Sand and a Distant Star
* Don Giovanni

Film

* The Red Lotus Society
* Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land

Peter I. Chang

Peter I. Chang is a Taiwanese-born mixed-media artist , illustrator, and filmmaker. He has often collaborated with the author Mitch Cullin who is also his domestic partner.

In a 2006 review of Chang's documentary Life in G-Chord, The Santa Fe New Mexican praised Chang's "simple camerawork" and the "whimsical touches" the director used in the film, further stating that "Chang makes good sense of the film’s endless supply of still photography and old footage through playful collage and editing."

Chang's digital short Regina Monologue, which features Cullin and was shot in Canada during the production of Terry Gilliam's , is included as an easter egg on Disc 2 of the UK DVD release of the film.

I Want to Destroy America, a about the Japanese street musician Hisao Shinagawa, was officially released on DVD by Pathfinder Pictures in the summer of 2008.

Bibliography

*

Filmography

Features

*''I Want to Destroy America'' ; about Hisao Shinagawa

Shorts

*''Regina Monologue'' ; available as an Easter egg on the UK DVD of Terry Gilliam's

Mou Tun Fei

Mou Tun Fei is a controversial Chinese director.

Better known as T.F. Mous and born in 1941 in Shandong, China. Mou's family let China for Taiwan in 1949. Mou graduated from a state run film school in Taiwan that could not even afford equipment for the students. Mou thus was forced to learn filmmaking by theory alone, mainly by watching films numerous times in theaters and identifying how many cuts the films contained. After graduation, Mou was assistant director on an anti-communist propaganda film called ''Give Back My Country'' and then directed numerous Taiwanese films in a style akin to the movement. In 1977, Mou joined the Shaw Brothers, his first film there being ''Gun,'' a segment in the fifth film of the Shaw’s exploitation true crime series ''The Criminals''. While at the Shaw Brothers, he would dabble in crime , romance , horror and kung-fu . However, his most notable work for the Shaw Brothers would be ''Lost Souls'' ; telling the story of a group of illegal immigrants taken captive and sexually and physically abused by a gang of human traffickers, ''Lost Souls'' has often been called a brazen, vicious and outrageous exploitation film that and a film that brings Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ''Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom'' to mind.

Mou then left the Shaw Brothers to become the first director from Taiwan to work in the mainland. While working on a children’s kung fu film called ''Young Heroes'', Mou began to hear stories about war atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. One account, of how the Japanese military had performed every manner of horrific experiment on POWs and civilians while stationed at Unit 731 in Manchuria, particularly grabbed Mou. Thus, he decided to make a film about it. Originally, he wanted to make a documentary, but he then realized that the Japanese army had destroyed or classified most of the photographs and films so he set about making a staged recreation instead. The film that resulted, a collaboration between Hong Kong and the mainland, would be ''Men Behind the Sun''. After co-directing the film ''Trilogy of Lust'' with Julie Lee, Mou set about making a sequel to ''Men Behind the Sun'', this time visiting the 1937 Nanjing Massacre called ''Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre''. Since then, Mou has attempted to make a third part in his planned ''Black Sun'' trilogy entitled ''No More War''. Apparently due to the infamy of his work, he has as of yet been unable to obtain financing.