1. Biography

2. Filmmaking career

3. References

4. External links

Biography

Bi Gan was born in Kaili, a county-level city in the southeast part of Guizhou Province in June 1989. His paternal family came from Jiangxi, and that is why he is named "赣" (Gan), after the province. In his youth, his parents separated due to clashes emerged out of their disparate personality. Bi Gan lived with his father in a humid first-floor flat ever since his parents' divorce. His father was not good at taking care of children and usually ended up cooking noodles for him, while his mother visited him once a year during her break working in a different city. The relatively lonely life made it possible for Bi to spend his time examining and mulling over the place he was living in, which helped develop his peculiar interests in mountains and country life away from the hustle-bustle of a big city. It also helped cultivate in him a habit in thinking critically.

The teenager Bi did not have much opportunity to have contact with art, but did always enjoy writing. When he turned 15 (or 16), he started composing poems, and that became one of the very first artistic enlightenments he had. As a high school student, he considered what to do in the future and what major to choose in college. Film became a choice only after he saw Quill (クイール Kuîru), a 2004 film directed by the Japanese director Yōichi Sai. As a result, he entered the Department of Screenwriting and Directing at Shanxi Institute of Media to major in Television Production.

It was during his college time that Bi watched Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, and felt the unusual charm of cinema, "cinema can be different [from the mainstream films]; you can make what you like. What I had seen up until that point were mainly Hollywood films. What I was taught were pretty boring."^[5] Because of this particular film, he made up his mind in pursuing filmmaking. "Before that, my parents and my relatives thought I would become jobless after graduation since I didn't want to do anything."^[5]

After submitting two final projects for graduation: a feature length film Tiger (《老虎》) and a short film Diamond Sutra (《金刚经》), Bi did not immediately choose to make films. Rather, he went back home and started a company for wedding design with himself frequently acting as the master of ceremony. The company soon went bankruptcy. Even though he obtained a blaster certificate as he believed that would help him make a living, he ended up making Kaili Blues (《路边野餐》) when he managed to find a starting fund of about ¥40,000 and gathered together his college friends and some of his relatives.

Filmmaking career

In 2010, the 19-year-old Bi, Gan made his short fiction film South, which won the first prize at the university-sponsored "Guang Sui Ying Dong" (Light Follows the Motion of Shadow) Film Festival.

Two years later (2012), he made a black-and-white short film Diamond Sutra (《金刚经》), which features a story of murder in a small isolated town in the mountain. The film received Special Mention Award from the 19th Hong Kong ifva (Incubator for Film and Visual media in Asia), an award organized by Hong Kong Arts Centre,^[6] and was ranked top 10 in the 9th China Independent Film Festival (based in Nanjing, China).^[7] Through this short film, Bi finally entered and became known by the Chinese film industry.

In 2015, Bi's debut feature film Kaili Blues (since it's his first feature film that is shown publicly), written by himself, made it possible that a greater audience get to know this emerging director. The film also garnered the Best New Film Director at The 52nd Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎),^[1] The FIPRESCI Prize (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique),^[2] The Golden Montgolfiere Prize at The 37th Festival of the Three Continents (Festival des 3 Continents) in Nantes,^[3] and the Best First Feature Film Award at The 68th Locarno Film Festival (Festival del film Locarno).^[4]

In 2017, Bi wrote and directed his second feature film Long Day's Journey into Night (《地球最后的夜晚》), starring TANG Wei, {{ill|HUANG Jue|zh|黄觉|vertical-align=sup}}, Silvia CHANG, and LI Hongqi, etc. The film is also based in Guizhou Province and was released in 2018.

References

External links

• {{imdb name|7267981}}

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