On the Hunting Ground

Tian began as an amateur photographer and as an AC at the Beijing Agricultural Film Studio. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, together with a cohort of Fifth Generation directors which included Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. One of Tian’s most renowned works is The Horse Thief: like many of his early works, it is about ethnic minorities in China, and American director Martin Scorsese named it as his favorite film of the 1980s. Tian’s work has also drawn fire from the Chinese government, especially The Blue Kite, a film about the adverse effects of Communist rule: the Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward and especially the Cultural Revolution. Footage of The Blue Kite was smuggled out of the country; Tian has denied complicity in the act. After a hiatus of some nine years, he returned with a critically acclaimed remake of Fei Mu’s famous film Spring in a Small Town (1948), often referred to in English as Springtime in a Small Town (2002) to differentiate it from the original. In 2004 he made the first HD feature of China, a documentary called Delamu, on ethnic minorities in Yunnan and Tibet. His latest feature, The Go Master (2006) is a biopic of the legendary Chinese Go player, Go Seigen. —World Cinema Foundation