Zhang Yimou is one of the best-known directors of the Chinese Fifth Generation and one of the most influential and widely respected filmmakers working today. Zhang was born in 1950, in the city of Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, to a future in Communist China that seemed unpromising; his father was an officer in Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang Army and one of his brothers was accused of being a spy, while another fled to Taiwan. During the 1950s, his family's background was suspect and during the convulsive tumult of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, it was criminal. Zhang was pulled out of high school and sent to toil with the peasants. Later, he transferred to a textile factory. While working there, Zhang reportedly sold his own blood to buy his first camera. In 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to an abrupt end with the death of Mao Zedong. Deng Xiaopeng, his eventual successor, began reopening the many universities that were closed during the final chaotic decade of Mao's reign. In 1978, at the age of 27, Zhang passed the entrance exam for the Beijing Film Academy but was rejected on account of his age. After an appeal to the Ministry of Culture, however, he was enrolled in the B.F.A.'s class of 1982. His classmates included Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Zhang Junzhao, filmmakers who would eventually form the core of the Fifth Generation. Zhang, along with three others from among his cohorts, was assigned to faraway Guangxi Film Studio after graduation, ostensibly to work as director's assistants, but they soon learned that there were no directors to assist. With government permission, they formed the Youth Team and began making their own films. Bye.
