Wan Jen

Wan Jen (born 1950, Taipei) is a Taiwanese filmmaker. He is a member of Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement of the 1980s.

Biography

After graduating foreign languages department at Soochow University, he moved to USA, where he received MA in Film from Columbia College in California. While in America, he managed to create two well-received short films. In the early 80s he came back to Taiwan. In 1983 he was invited to direct one of the segments in an omnibus film The Sandwich Man. His episode is entitled The Taste of Apple (蘋果的滋味). The two other parts were directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien and Zeng Chuang-hsiang. This movie, together with another anthology film - In Our Time (1982) - is considered a landmark in the emergence of the so-called Taiwanese New Wave. Among his other films, the most significant are Ah Fei (1984), Super Citizen Ko (1995) and Connection by Fate (1998).

Wan Jen focuses mainly on issues concerning Taiwanese society - both historical and current ones. His works are valued for their political and social criticism. other title Sacrificial Victims 大選民, possibly co-directed with Liao Ching-sung