Actress Jing Tian among four rising stars of Chinese cinema
BEIJING: Actress Jing Tian and the film-making trio of Liu Jian, Jevons Au and Huang Huichen are widely regarded as the fastest rising stars in Chinese cinema.
They are ahead of a new generation of showbiz luminaries who dare to confront conventional wisdom and to take Chinese cinema to a new stage of maturity – rather than pandering to the lowest common denominator in making movies.
Jing, 28, is best known for her starring role as a military leader in Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall.
A graduate of Beijing Dance Academy and Beijing Film Academy, she has also appeared in big productions such as costume epic The Warring States ( 2011), and acted alongside Donnie Yen in Special ID ( 2013) and Jackie Chan in Police Story 2013. She is next to make highprofile appearances in Kong: Skull Island ( 2017) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018).
Her dynamism is best epitomised by her flawless appearance while promoting The Great Wall in Beijing.
After she had answered several questions in Mandarin, she was posed a quick question in English on what she liked best about her character, the commander Mae Lin.
Unfazed, Jing replied in perfect English: “Girl power! She’s strong, very strong. But so are all the other warriors in the movie. What made me like this movie so much was that the women and men in the military are equally strong, equally important. There is no weaker sex in The Great Wall, everyone is just as strong, just as brave.”
On the tough training for the role, she said: “I had to learn martial arts and how to use some of the weapons. From one metre to four metres, these props kept getting bigger throughout the training process. The actresses also had to learn how to work with cables as our characters need to hang from them in the movie. These cables were attached to something like a hula hoop; the hoop allowed us to spin and twist 360 degrees in mid-air.”
Also seen as pivotal to the development of Chinese cinema is filmmaker Liu Jian, 47.
He had embarked on a career in animation in 2001 with a threeminute short featured in Feng Xiaogang’s comedy Big Shot’s Funeral. He made his debut with animated feature with Piercing I. The film was dubbed China’s first independent animated feature and won critical acclaim. His second animated feature, Have a Nice Day, will have a world premiere at the Berlinale as one of the competition entries, the first Chinese animated film to compete for the Golden Bear.
Meanwhile, Jevons Au is a leading figure among a new generation of Hong Kong filmmakers. He started with short films. His Romancing in Thin Air ( 2012) was named best screenplay by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. Au is one of the directors of Ten Years ( 2015), the controversial dystopian film about the future of Hong Kong under Beijing’s growing influence, named best film at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Au’s Trivisa ( 2016), produced by Johnnie To, was co- directed with fellow young directors Frank Hui and Vicky Wong and was featured in the Forum section of the Berlinale last year. Hong Kong film critics named it best film.
Also seen as a fast rising star is Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Huang Hui- chen.
Huang began taking part in social movements when she was 20. She described herself coming from an “abnormal family” — an alcoholic father and lesbian mother. Her background gave her a different lens through which to see the world. Small Talk was her first feature-length documentary about her mother, who survived social discrimination. It was nominated at the 2016 Golden Horse Film Awards and will be shown in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale.
I had to learn martial arts and how to use some of the weapons. From one metre to four metres, these props kept getting bigger throughout the training process. The actresses also had to learn how to work with cables as our characters need to hang from them in the movie. Jing Tian, star of ‘The Great Wall’