# Xie Fei (director)

Xie Fei (Chinese: 谢飞; pinyin: Xiè Fēi; born August 14, 1942) is a Chinese film director, screenwriter, producer, film professor and film critic.

## Early life

Xie was born August 14 in Yan'an city of Shaanxi Province, China and went to primary school and high school in Beijing. In high school he began to love drama and cinema. He wrote journals after watching films and played roles in school theater group.
In 1960 he was enrolled in Directing Department of Beijing Film Academy, and graduated in 1965.

## Career

Xie Fei has taught at his alma mater as an instructor and professor since and was the vice-president of that institution from 1985-1989. Although he has not made many films due to The Great Culture Revolution (1966-1976) and teaching career, most of his works are critics' favorites. Several of them won international film festival awards. His A Girl From Hunan (1986) and A Mongolian Tale (1995) were commercially distributed in American movie theaters by New York Films(1965-2009).
After Song of Tibet (2000) was censored for 6 months before releasing in few theaters, he stopped making films (at the age of 59). He has worked as producer, film festival juries in China and abroad.
In 2001 he directed 23 episodes of TV drama Sun Rise adapted from a play by noted Chinese playwright Cao YU 曹禺(1910-1996).
On December 15, 2012 Xie Fei posted an open letter on Weibo a popular Chinese Blog calling for changes of film censorship and won great support from film makers.
On November 16th 2024, at the 37th Golden Rooster Film Award Ceremony Xie Fei received a Lifetime Achievment Award from China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

## Theme and Style

Xie Fei adheres to a character driven narrative principle to produce natural tension and suspense in order to arouse audience sympathy and achieve his aesthetic goal. He cares for the fates of ordinary people with compassion, showing the pursuits and frustration of characters seeking truth and goodness. The empathy, tolerance and reverence for nature, life and Buddhist concepts are specially praised in his later works. Although he truthfully exposes and criticizes cold, cruel, and immoral characters and events, he is careful never to reduce his portrayals to comic book-like exaggeration. Instead, his films reveal a deep empathy towards his main protagonists, even when those characters are revealed to have ethical flaws. This sympathetic aesthetic is present in his treatment of almost every protagonist and minor character in his films. The themes of confession, redemption, tolerance, reconciliation in A Mongolian Tale (1995) and Song of Tibet (2000) are highlighted through characters and character relationships. These two works exhibit the richer humanitarian sensibility that Xie Fei developed as he entered his fifties, so they are more charming and profound.
He is skilled in his use of many audiovisual elements of film art. His manner of shooting and editing mixes several methods of mis-en-scene and montage. In shooting scenes, he constantly probes and innovates; His interior scenes with dialogue, action, and accentuated insert shots are fluent and full of tension. Many of the landscapes featured in his films are shot on location, which have become a vital component of Xie Fei's films. These locations not only introduce the environment and add a rich visual dimension to his style, but also reflect the joys and sorrows of the characters.
Here are some memorable techniques across his filmography: In Our Farmland (1983)the opening telephoto zoom shot of Yulin picking up Xinan at the Bajing train station); In Black Snow(1990) he only uses Zhao Yaqiu’s songs as music track, which express the moods of the characters powerfully; dissolves that punctuate Li Huiquan’s recollection of childhood.; special lighting effects enhance indoor and outdoor night scenes, including top light and bottom light to portray characters; telephoto zoom close-ups of characters that exclude the background; the Steadicam long shot following the protagonist along the narrow path of the hutong courtyard; the smoldering light of Li Huquan and Fang Chazi’s cigarettes cutting through the dark; In Song of Tibet (2000) the complex following shot of Para Manor in Gyantse County; the smooth pedestal shot to reveal Yixizhuma’s house at the foot of the Potala Palace in Lhasa; In A Girl from Hunan (1986), risking censorship, he films the widow being paraded naked before being drowned by force. It is the first such portrayal seen in PRC Cinema.

## Selected films

| Year | English Title | Chinese Title | Notes |
| 1983 | Our Farmland | 我们的田野 | Best Cinematography nomination at the 4th Golden Rooster Film Awards China |
| 1986 | A Girl from Hunan | 湘女萧萧 | Don Quixote Award at The 34th San Sebastian International Film Festival |
| 1990 | Black Snow | 本命年 | Silver Bear winner in the 40th Berlin International Film Festival |
| 1993 | Woman Sesame Oil Maker | 香魂女 | Golden Bear winner in the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival |
| 1995 | A Mongolian Tale | 黑骏马 | Best Director in the 19th Montreal International Film Festival |
| 2000 | Song of Tibet | 益西卓玛 | Best Screen Writer Special Award 20th Chinese Golden Rooster Film Awards |