Director biography

CHEN Jue is a director and producer of television drama and documentary, as well as a film and television project planner. He graduated in 1985 from the Television Department (TV Drama Directing) of the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (now Communication University of China). In the late 1980s, he began working in documentary and joined mainland China’s first experimental filmmaking group, SWYC (Structure. Wave. Youth. Cinema), with Tian’anmen Square as a representative work. He has served as a member of the expert panel for the Movie Channel and as an international documentary juror at the Xi’an International Image Festival. KUANG Yang is a scholar of social and cultural studies and a Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). A member of the SWYC (Structure. Wave. Youth. Cinema) experimental filmmaking group, he served as the narration scriptwriter for the eight-part documentary Tian’anmen Square (1991). He also participated in the planning of the CCTV programs Oriental Horizon and Tell It Like It Is. SHI Jian is a documentary filmmaker and television producer, and a senior editor at China Media Group. His series Tian’anmen Square was selected for One Hundred Chinese-Language Films of the Century. He has launched dozens of television programs, including Oriental Horizon and Tell It Like It Is. Centered on pressing social realities, his documentaries also include I Have Graduated, Weijia Hutong, Xiaomao and the Sparrows, The Potala Palace, A Foreign Land A Familiar Home, and My Grandfather Liu Wencai. Shi Jian’s works have screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Rotterdam, the “Forum” section of the Berlin International Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and other international venues. In 2011 he chaired the International Documentary Jury at the 17th Shanghai TV Festival. He is currently Vice President of the Documentary Committee of the China Radio and Television Association. WANG Zijun graduated in 1985 from the Journalism Department of the then Beijing Broadcasting Institute and was assigned to Beijing Television. In 1991 he participated in initiating China’s “New Documentary Movement.” In 1993 he took part in the early organizational work of the Television Documentary Academic Committee of the China Television Association. Major works from that period include: in 1986 he worked on post-production for CCTV’s reform-oriented current-affairs film Talent Challenge 人才挑战 ; in 1987, at the invitation of Xinhua News Agency and the Shorinji Kempo Federation of Japan, he collaborated with Chen Jie on the Nanjing Massacre anti-war reflection film Understanding and Choice; from 1988 to 1991 he shot the documentary series Scenes of the Capital 京城散记 ; from 1991 to 1993 he filmed the series Work-Study Students 工读生 ; in 1994 he made the documentary Big Red Jujube 大红枣 ; and in 1995 he shot a sample film titled Nanjing’s Blood Evidence for CCTV’s reenactment segment of Oriental Horizon 东方时空 . He worked as a program producer for more than twenty years. In 1997, at Beijing Television, he founded China’s first mass-participation, citizen-shot programme People’s Homeland 百姓家园 . In 1999 he became the producer of the programme Documentary 纪录 , at the time the only documentary slot willing to air in prime time (the drama prime-time hours on satellite TV). That same year, Beijing Television’s Documentary formally signed a cooperation agreement with Fuji Television (Japan) to produce the series Our Study-Abroad Life — Days in Japan. His academic work includes serving as the chief coordinator for the international academic symposium of the Beijing International Television Festival for three consecutive years (1999–2001). In 2005 he shifted his research focus to narratology methodology (screenwriting theory). In 2012 he led research on a pre-evaluation method for television drama ratings at Beijing Television.