The Organizing Committee of the 11th BJIFF announced that actor Chang Chen will act as Online BJIFF’s Film Recommending Officer.

 

For Chang, the first impression on many film fans is that he is a “harvester of famous directors”. Since 14 years old, when he played the hero “Xiaosi” in the film A Brighter Summer Day, Chang has cooperated with a number of famous Chinese directors, such as Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-Wai, Woo Yu-Sen, Tsui Hark, etc., in almost 30 years. He has successively starred in many outstanding domestic and foreign films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Three Times and The Grandmaster. 

 

As a non-professional actor, Chang Chen has played a lot of impressive roles thanks to his profound understanding of roles and focus and insistence on performance. In the film Happy Together directed by Wong Kar-Wai, he plays Chang Yuen, who looks unruly but sensitive. With this character, he was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor at the 17th Hong Kong Film Awards. In the Brotherhood of Blades franchise in partnership with Lu Yang, Chang Chen plays Shen Lian, a character that is relentless, decisive and affectionate. He won the Best Actor Award at the 25th Beijing College Student Film Festival for the franchise.。

 

It is worth mentioning that Chang has also cooperated with Gong Li, the Jury President of Tiantan Award of the 11th BJIFF in the film Eros. In the film, their interactions are mournful but not distressing, and very touching. Chang played a tailor, who fell in love with Miss Hua played by Gong Li, but chose to sew all his deep emotions in tailor-made Qipaos for her. Touching velvet fabric is like touching the warm face of his love. Through their performance, repression and suffering arising from the love he cannot own deliver the great emotional tension to viewers. 

 

While further studying performance itself, Chang Chen also continues to learn many new knowledge related to roles so as to better interprets them. For instance, in order to better play Go Master Wu Qingyuan, he specially improved his skill in the game of Go and practiced Japanese; in order to perform Razor in The Grandmaster, he went to study Bajiquan, a Chinese martial art; when shooting The Assassin, he also learned close quarters swordsmanship. His fans joked that Chang can learn a new skill in every film. 

 

In June 2018, Chang was named a jury member of the Competition Section of the Golden Goblet Awards at the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival. Chang, professional and concentrated, will also act as “Online BJIFF’s Film Recommending Officer”, and invite all film fans to participate in such a feast of light and shadow in this autumn.