About the director

Lou Ye, known as one of the 6th generation filmmakers in Chinese mainland, was born in 1965 in Shanghai where two of his successful pieces were made.

Being the son of theatre performers, Lou Ye's childhood was spent backstage and in dressing rooms. Once an adult, he devoted himself to studying painting at the well-known Beijing Film Academy. During his days at BFA, Lou Ye along with his fellows students were deeply influenced by European films as well as courses in film schools such as those of N.Y.U and U.C.L.A, while the seniors were more fond of those of the Soviets.

Lou Ye's graduation film, Weekend Lover (1994), helped to define the 6th generation filmmaking. The film follows the lives of a group of dissatisfied young people in Shanghai during the 80's and early 90's. It is a significant shift from the 5th generation filmmakers (of which the representative directors are Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige) with its emphasis on tradition and official Chinese culture. The film is also notable as the production team was the youngest in Chinese filmmaking history. Weekend Lover was the Winner of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Prize for Best Director at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival in 1996.

In 1995, faced with the near impossibility of raising money for independent feature films in China, Lou Ye turned to television, producing the ground-breaking "Super City," a series for which he gave ten of his 6th generation colleagues the unprecedented opportunity to leave their inhibitions at the door and make whatever kind of film they wanted. His own TV production "Don't Be Young" (1995),a psycho-mystery, broke similar ground for Chinese television films with its non-narrative expressionism.

In 1998, Lou Ye founded Dream Factory, one of China's first independent film production companies. Dream Factory's first production, in association with Philippe Bober and the Coproduction Office, is the Suzhou River, Winner of the VRPO Tiger Award at the 29th Rotterdam Film Festival 2000. The film is turning out to be a big hit with both general audiences and the critics in the western world, notably Suzhou River was a hot selling film at the Berlin European Film Market.

FilmFestivals.com reporter
Fanfan Ko