Zhang Junzhao

Zhang Junzhao (; October 1952 – 9 June 2018) was a Chinese film director and screenwriter who was mainly active in the 1980s. A graduate of the Beijing Film Academy and a contemporary of acclaimed directors Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang Junzhao was a prominent early member of China's Fifth Generation filmmakers. His 1984 film One and Eight is well known as the film that marked the advent of the Fifth Generation, He became involved in propaganda plays put on by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, both as an actor and a director. In 1978 he entered the newly reopened Beijing Film Academy. After graduating in 1982, he and his classmates Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou were assigned to Guangxi Film Studio in Nanning.

Filmography

One and Eight

In 1984, as an assistant director at Guangxi Film Studio, Zhang Junzhao teamed up with cinematographer Zhang Yimou and designer He Qun to make a war film called One and Eight (Yige he bage). Set in North China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the film tells the story of eight criminals and a wrongly accused officer being held as prisoners by the Communist Eighth Route Army. When almost all the regular soldiers are killed, most of the nine men make the choice to fight beside the remnants of the army and acquit themselves with honor and bravery.

Although it was the first film production of Guangxi Studios, predating the internationally acclaimed Yellow Earth (1984), the release of One and Eight was stalled for three years by "official objections to portions of the storyline and consequent re-shooting and re-editing." Nonetheless it, along with Yellow Earth, is widely considered to be one of the inaugural Fifth Generation films. Moreover, although wartime setting and the protagonists' overriding patriotism were common elements of communist Chinese cinema, its emphasis on the individual over the group, its existential tone, and its beautiful and innovative cinematography helped to set it apart as the herald of a new generation of Chinese filmmakers.

Other works In the period between One and Eight and The Shining Arc, Zhang Junzhao also made two less remarkable films: Come on, China! (1985) and The Lonely Murderer (1986). The former was a sports film made in the wake of the four-year world championship of the Chinese national women's volleyball team. Neither garnered a great deal of attention, and both are often omitted in surveys of Zhang Junzhao's work. However, Zhang was the first of them to turn away from such films for the sake of popular entertainment. Justifying his actions, he "suggested finding a middle ground between the elite and the popular taste, calling, somewhat naively, for compromise and harmony between audiences and artists."

Later life and death Because of health issues, Zhang made few films in his later life. His final work was the 2002 television drama Linglong Girl . Zhang died on 9 June 2018 in Dalian, Liaoning, at the age of 65.