11 Facts About Tian Zhuangzhuang

Tian Zhuangzhuang is a Chinese film director, producer and actor.

In 1991, Tian Zhuangzhuang began work on a quiet epic about one of modern China's darkest moments.

Tian Zhuangzhuang was born on April 23,1952, in Beijing.

Tian Zhuangzhuang was the son of Tian Fang, a famous actor in the 1930s who became head of the Beijing Film Studio after 1949, and Yu Lan, an actress who later ran the Beijing Children's Film Studio.

In 1978, after three years at the studio, Tian Zhuangzhuang applied for entrance in the Beijing Film Academy and was accepted.

Tian Zhuangzhuang reached international prominence with a pair of experimental films in the mid-1980s, On the Hunting Ground and The Horse Thief, both about ethnic minorities in China.

Nevertheless, stung by the rebukes, Tian Zhuangzhuang followed up The Horse Thief with a string of commercially viable films, including Street Players, Rock 'n' Roll Kids, and the historical costume film Li Lianying: The Imperial Eunuch.

Tian Zhuangzhuang has since tried to distance himself from these films, often noting that they were part of a journeyman period of his career, where he would sign on to direct existing projects with funding and screenplays already in place.

In 1998 Tian Zhuangzhuang was honoured with a Prince Claus Award from the Prince Claus Fund, an international culture and development organisation based in Amsterdam.

In 2004, Tian Zhuangzhuang returned to his favorite subject of China's ethnic minorities with Delamu, a HD-filmed documentary about peoples in Yunnan and Tibet.

The latest work by Tian Zhuangzhuang is a historical epic, The Warrior and the Wolf, filmed in China's remote Xinjiang Autonomous Region.