MEMOIRS FROM THE BEIJING FILM ACADEMY
The Genesis of China's Fifth Generation
By NI ZHEN
Translated by Chris Berry. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. 240 pages, $54.95 (hardcover), $18.95 (paperback)

reviewed by S. Louisa Wei

For people who see art-house or foreign movies in America, names such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige are not unfamiliar. Zhang Yimou's Judou (1992) and Raise the Red Lantern (1993) were both nominated for Oscars, and his latest film, Hero (2003), is on the most recent list of nominations. Chen Kaige has not made an internationally successful film for some time, yet Farewell My Concubine (1993) still appears on lists of "the century's best films" chosen by critics and fans all over the world. In China, these two directors are considered to be representative figures of the so-called "Fifth Generation," whose core members are the 1982 graduates of the Beijing Film Academy, the renownedand the onlyfilm school in China, which has nurtured China's best filmmakers, a number of whom have become trendsetters in world cinema. Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy is an engrossing account of a group of ambitious young artists who introduced Chinese film to world audiences in the mid-1980s. The book focuses on the filmmakers' experiences at the academy, from how they passed their entrance exams to how they made the two unforgettable works, One and Eight (1983) and Yellow Earth (1984), that won them the title of the "Fifth Generation" and marked the beginning of a period of extraordinary filmmaking in China.

Ni Zhen, the author of Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy, was a professor of art direction and film theory at the school from 1980 to 2000, and therefore knew the Fifth Generation filmmakers personally and the experiences of their academy years; but he also relates incidents from their earlier days. One story, for instance, about Tian Zhuangzhuang, director of The Blue Kite (1993), goes back to his boyhood, when he was befriended by a learned scholar living next door who supplied him with good books. The scholar's suicide at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) cast a shadow on the young boy's mind, a shadow that later carried over into his films. Other stories include the early years of Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, and Evening Bell (1988) director Wu Ziniu, who were among millions of youths "sent down" from the cities to the countryside, for "reeducation" by the peasants, during the decade of political frenzy. Chen Kaige would eventually write a book about his teenage experiences. At one point during the years of exile, Zhang Yimou carried around two barrels of paintone red, one whitein order to paint Chairman Mao's picture, in the woodcut style, on the walls in the village to which he had been sent. The village head then told him to paint Mao's picture in every family's courtyard, which he did, and thus he earned the epithet "a good child of Mao." Wu Ziniu, however, gained a reputation as a sent-down youth who was capable of reciting Tang poetry, and of fighting. During the long, lonely nights in the countryside, the young man would often get drunk and imagine himself as a bandit rebelling against tyranny. But when he sobered up the next morning, he would still carry his hoe into the field.

Ni Zhen's book even presents details from the entrance exams of the lucky students who were admitted to the academy. After the Beijing Film Academy's decade-long closure, in 1978 the selection process was anything but traditional. While some candidates shone during their interviews, other talented candidates had trouble getting accepted. Zhang Yimou, for instance, was six years older than the age limit for the cinematography department and had to ask for help from a vice minister of culture, who subsequently wrote a special letter of recommendation. On the other hand, Liu Miaomiao, director of Innocent Bubbler, was only sixteen when she applied, and professors were hesitant to admit her. She used her quick wit to argue the case that there was no minimum age limit, and she would grow older. The professor who recognized the talents of Wu Ziniu right away was Situ Zhaodun, who during the Cultural Revolution was imprisoned for six years because he was caught reading a 1930s Shanghai pictorial with a picture of Madame Mao from her days as an actress.

Memoirs of the Beijing Film Academy is about an untold history, about why and how a generation of young men and women were able to produce an impressive repertoire. The book is delightful and informative; Ni Zhen tells the story as if it were about his own children and friends. The translator of the book, Chris Berry, is a well-known scholar of new Chinese cinema who spent several years in China as a translator for China Screen before teaching in Australia and then at Berkeley. It is obvious that the pleasure he gleaned from reading the book carried over into his translation, for he has made the English version as enchanting as the Chinese original.