Zhang Lu (director)
| Zhang Lu | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 30, 1962 Yanbian, Jilin, China |
| Education | Yanbian University - Chinese Literature |
| Occupation |
Film director, screenwriter, novelist |
| Years active | 2001-present |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 장률 |
| Hanja | 张律 |
| Revised Romanization | Jang Ryul |
| McCune–Reischauer | Chang Ryul |
Zhang Lu (born May 30, 1962) is a Korean-Chinese filmmaker. Zhang was originally a novelist before embarking on a career in cinema. His arthouse films have mostly focused on the disenfranchised, particularly ethnic Koreans living in China; these include Grain in Ear (2006), Desert Dream (2007), Dooman River (2011), Scenery (2013), and Gyeongju (2014).
Zhang Lu is a third-generation ethnic Korean born in Yanbian, Jilin, China in 1962. He first became known in his native land China as a respected author of novels and short stories, such as Cicada Chirping Afternoon (1986).
Zhang was then a 38-year-old professor of Chinese Literature at Yanbian University when an argument with a film director friend led him to take a bet that "anyone can make a film." With no technical training but with the support of film industry friends such as Lee Chang-dong, he set out to direct his first short film Eleven (2001), a fourteen-minute nearly silent vignette of an eleven-year-old boy's encounter with a group of soccer players his own age set in a post-industrial wasteland.Eleven was invited to compete at the 58th Venice International Film Festival and several other international film festivals, and this unexpected success made Zhang decide to become a full-time filmmaker. He later said, "Conveying emotion through text and through images are two very different things. If I were able to convey my views fully through text, I wouldn't have to bother with making films, right? I don't like it when I smell some sort of literature-based narrative in films." [...] "I tell people that I got divorced from literature and married the cinema."
Eleven paved the way for Zhang's first feature film Tang Poetry, financed with Korean capital. Shot in 2003 during the SARS epidemic in only three interior locations to convey the feelings of loneliness and claustrophobia, it depicts the life of a middle-aged male pickpocket with a hand tremor. The film's style was influenced by the metrics of Tang dynasty poetry that prescribe verses of only seven or five characters.
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