Ning Ying (born 1959 in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

) is a female Chinese

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

often considered a member of China's " Sixth Generation" filmmaker coterie, a group that also includes

Jia Zhangke Jia Zhangke ( zh, s=贾樟柯, born 24 May 1970) is a Chinese film and television director, screenwriter, producer, actor and writer. He is the founder of Pingyao International Film Festival, dean of the Shanxi Film Academy of Shanxi Media Co ...

, Zhang Yuan and

Wang Xiaoshuai Wang Xiaoshuai (; born May 22, 1966) is a Chinese film director, screenwriter, and occasional actor. He is commonly grouped under the loose association of filmmakers known as the "Sixth Generation" of the Cinema of China. Like others in this gen ...

. However, this is more a result of a shared subject matter than anything else, as chronologically, Ning is closer to the earlier Fifth Generation. Her sister, the screenwriter Ning Dai, is a frequent collaborator and the wife of fellow director Zhang Yuan. In 1997, she was a member of the jury at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.

Directorial career

Part of the first class to reenter the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 (along with Fifth Generation helmers

Zhang Yimou Zhang Yimou (; born 14 November 1950) is a Chinese filmmaker.Tasker, Yvonne (2002). "Zhang Yimou" i''Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers'' Routledge Publishing, p. 412. . Google Book Search. Retrieved 21 August 2008. A leading figure of China's Cinem ...

, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Chen Kaige), Ning Ying's career veered away from the path of her male counterparts when she was allowed to study abroad in Italy's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. While in Italy, she met Italian director

Bernardo Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci ( ; ; 16 March 1941 – 26 November 2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved inte ...

, whom she would act as an assistant director for in the 1987 epic '' The Last Emperor''. Her own career first reached international prominence with 1993's '' For Fun'' (also known as ''Looking for Fun''), which would become the first of Ning Ying's "Beijing Trilogy," a loosely tied grouping of films that all take place in

— the other two films being the black comedy, '' On the Beat'' and the drama, '' I Love Beijing''. Together, the films are an analysis of the massive changes that China's national capital has undergone in the recent decades. In 2003, the trilogy was shown in its entirety by the Harvard Film Archive in an event touted as "From China with Love: The Films of Ning Ying." Ning followed her Beijing trilogy with a full-length documentary, '' Railroad of Hope'' in 2002, which followed the mass migration of cheap labor throughout China. The film managed to win the Grand Prix du Cinema du Reel in 2002. In 2005, she made ''

Perpetual Motion Perpetual motion is the motion of bodies that continues forever in an unperturbed system. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an external energy source. This kind of machine is impossible ...

'', which premiered in several major film festivals, notably

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

and

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Filmography

References

External links

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Ning Ying
at the Chinese Movie Database {{DEFAULTSORT:Ning, Ying 1959 births Living people Beijing Film Academy alumni Chinese documentary filmmakers Film directors from Beijing Chinese film producers Chinese women film directors Screenwriters from Beijing Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia alumni Women documentary filmmakers