Tian Zhuangzhuang

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This is a Chinese name; the family name is Tian

Tian Zhuangzhuang
Image:Tian zhuangzhuang.jpg
Born	1952 Beijing, China
Occupation	Director

Tian Zhuangzhuang (田壯壯, born in 1952 in Beijing, China) is a Chinese film director.

Son of Tian Fang, a famous actor in the 1930s and a director who became head of the Beijing Film studio, and Yu Lan, an actress who later ran the China's Children's Film Studio, Tian began as an amateur photographer and as an AC at the Beijing Agricultural Film Studio. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, together with a cohort of Fifth Generation directors which included Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou.

[edit] Directorial career

One of Tian's most renowned work is The Horse Thief, like many of his early works, its about ethnic minorities in China, and which American director Martin Scorsese named it as his favorite film of the decade of 1980s. Tian's work has also been drawn fire from the Chinese government, especially The Blue Kite, a film about the adverse events following Communist rule: the Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward and especially the Cultural Revolution. Footage of The Blue Kite was smuggled out of the country; Tian has denied complicity in the act. After a hiatus of some 9 years, he returned with a critically acclaimed remake of Fei Mu's famous film Spring in a Small Town (1948), often referred to in English as Springtime in a Small Town (2002) to differentiate it from the original. In 2004 he made the first HD feature of China, a documentary called Delamu, on ethnic minorities in Yunnan and Tibet. His latest feature, The Go Master (2006) is a biopic of the legendary Chinese Go player, Go Seigen.