Yonfan
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Yonfan (Manshih Yonfan; Traditional Chinese: 楊凡; born 1947) is a Hong Kong film director and photographer.
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[edit] Biography
He was born in Wuhan at the Hunan province of China. As the Yon family emigrated from the People's Republic, Yonfan spent his childhood first in Hong Kong and then in Taiwan. He returned to Hong Kong as a young man to work as a photographer, but left for the United States in 1968 to study film. After a couple of years travelling through United States, France and Britain, he returned to Hong Kong once again in 1973, and became a famous photographer most noted for his celebrity portraits.
In 1984, he made his box office debut as a director with A Certain Romance. Two years later, Yonfan adapted the much-loved romantic novel The Story of Rose by prolific writer Yi Shu. Starring an up and coming Maggie Cheung, the passionate Lost Romance was a huge commercial success and rescued young Chow Yun-Fat from his descent into a "box office poison.
After In Between (1993), Yonfan started to steer away from the mainstream market and began to introduced characters from the marginalised section of the society. With 1998 came another milestone, Bishonen, best known for its romantic cinematography and explicit portrayal of homosexual onscreen passion. Inspired by a real-life scandal in which a Hong Kong playboy was found to possess more than a thousand nude photographs of local police officers, this melodramatic tale of redemption polarized film critics in Hong Kong, but was very well received at film festivals around the globe. It also launched the acting career of heartthrob Daniel Wu.
[edit] Filmography
- A Certain Romance (少女日記, 1984) starring Sally Yeh
- Lost Romance (玫瑰的故事, 1986) starring Maggie Cheung, Chow Yun-Fat
- Immortal Story (海上花, 1986) starring Sylvia Chang
- Double Fixation (意亂情迷, 1987) starring Cherie Chung, Jacky Cheung
- Last Romance (流金歲月, 1988) starring Cherie Chung, Maggie Cheung
- Promising Miss Bowie (祝福, 1990) starring Dodo Cheng, Kenneth Tsang
- In Between (新同居時代, 1993) starring Maggie Cheung, Sylvia Chang
- Bugis Street (妖街皇后, 1994) starring Maggie Cheung, Sylvia Chang
- Bishonen (美少年之戀, 1998) starring Daniel Wu, Shu Qi, Brigitte Lin
- Peony Pavilion (遊園驚夢, 2001) starring Daniel Wu, Rie Miyazawa, Joey Wong, Brigitte Lin
- Breaking the Willow (鳳冠情事, 2003)
- Colour Blossoms (桃色, 2004), starring Teresa Cheung, Keiko Matsuzaka