Acting
Aug 1, 1961
Beijing, China
Cui Jian
Acting
Biography
Cui Jian, a famous rock artist and a leader of Chinese rock music, is known as the father of Chinese rock music. The famous song is "Nothing to My Name" in 1986.
Feature Films (25)
This documentary is made up of three threads that provide a major retrospective of a decade of Chinese rock.
Night of an Era
A rock musician looks for his girl-friend who left while pregnant, trying to decide whether to keep the baby.
Beijing Bastards
A voyage through modern day Beijing in the taxi of the womanising Dezi. His aimless drifting between destinations and women is much like Beijing's own search for identity between perishing ancient values and an uncertain future.
I Love Beijing
A polyptych of interconnected stories in different time-zones, shifting between a Yunnan village, a campus, and the Gobi Desert.
The Sun Also Rises
Crowned as the “godfather of China rock” and yet banned from large-scale performances in Beijing over the past thirteen years, Cui Jian has made his come back in 2005 and remained an icon of the artist versus the State in the hearts of millions. Although the rocker has been reluctant to be identified with any specific political movement, whenever a new democratic voice has emerged (in media forms from underground film to the Internet), it has always found a way to embrace him, thus reconfirming Cui’s “outlaw” status. This documentary reviews his life and career paths from his early days and documents his crew and fans to three very different cities in Wuhan, Inner Mongolia and Beijing. Broadcast on HK Cable TV in summer 2006, the purpose of the video is to review Cui Jian’s career at the point of his new album release after a 6 year gap. The album is titled “Give You Color”.
Cui Jian: Rocking China
The one directorial feature by Ning Dai, sister of 5th generation filmmaker Ning Ying and wife of 6th generation filmmaker Zhang Yuan. It follows a chaotic period in November of 1993, when production suddenly halted on Zhang Yuan's TV film adaptation of a popular novel, Chicken Feathers, after the Chinese Film Bureau announced that Zhang could no longer direct the film due to submitting his previous independent feature, 1992's Beijing Bastards, to a film festival in Japan without receiving the proper authorization to do so. Ning's documentary features anguished meetings between the Chicken Feather's production crew as they debate replacing Zhang with another director, along with testimonials on the state of censorship in Chinese independent cinema of the early '90s from Wu Wenguang, Tang Danian, He Jianjun, Cui Jian, and others.
A Film Is Stopped
In 2006 the Rolling Stones made their debut performance in mainland China, bringing one of the most renowned Rock and Roll live acts to the other side of the world. Featuring interviews with long-time production manager Dale “Opie” Skjerseth and the godfather of Chinese rock Cui Juan, ‘From London To Shanghai’ explores behind the scenes of the historic concert.
From London to Shanghai
Sitian, a Chinese American conductor, returns to China to give a concert and to find her three siblings again, after having been separated from them for years after the death of their parents.
Roots and Branches
Television & Series (4)
Intimate musical performances, recorded live at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen.
NPR Tiny Desk Concerts
SINGER, formerly known as I AM A SINGER, is a large-scale singing competition program co-produced by Hunan Broadcasting System (HBS) and Mango TV. The first four seasons were adapted from the Korean reality show I Am a Singer produced by MBC. Beginning with the 2017 season, the program was rebranded as SINGER. The series brings together established vocalists from the Chinese music industry as well as internationally renowned artists to compete on stage. In each episode, the results are determined by a panel of 500 in-studio audience judges who vote to decide the singers’ rankings and eliminations. Starting with the 2024 season, the show shifted from pre-recorded broadcasts to fully live performances and introduced an additional panel of 500 online international audience judges.
SINGER
This is a chat variety show for dinner, created by Dou Wentao, a famous media person and cultural celebrity, and Youku "Looking at the Ideal". The initiator Dou Wentao invites three old friends and guests to restore the chatting scenes in real life. The topics are all-encompassing, look at the world, and inspire infinite thinking.