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ZHAO FEI

 

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Zhao.

 

Born: 1961, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, as son of an architect. Also written as Fei Zhao.

Education: Department of Cinematography of the Beijing Film Academy [1978-82].

Career: Ph commercials dir by Woody Allen, a.o.

Awards: LAFCA Award [1992] & NSFC Award [1993] for 'Da hong deng long gao gao gua'; Association of Chinese Filmmakers 'Golden Rooster Award' for Best Cinematographer [1999] for 'Jing ke ci qin wang'; Association of Chinese Filmmakers 'Golden Rooster Award' nom [2004] for 'Shou ji'; Association of Chinese Filmmakers 'Golden Rooster Award' nom [2009] for 'Tie ren'.

Zhao Fei: 'Whether I'm actually shooting a large scale epic film or a smaller scale film like Woody's work, what I have to focus on is the lighting. It's not so much how many people or props are involved. How do you get the lights? Where should the camera be placed? All those are the main issues whether it's an epic scale film or a smaller film. For me, shooting both films is quite similar, because it requires me to use my imagination. For 'The Emperor and the Assassin', it's a historical film of a period with not much recorded history. We read from history books and we had to imagine what the past looked like, so the lighting had to create, as you say, a very stylized look in order to capture this spirit of this pre-Ching period, which is like 3 AD. And Woody's film is also not a contemporary film. It's set in the 1920's and 1930's in the jazz age, in Chicago and New York. So not only did I need to see movies about that period, read books, understand larger issues of what America was at that time, I had to imagine and create that as well. The one I'm shooting at the moment for Woody, which is the Summer '99 project, is actually a contemporary film. It required much more realistic lighting, much more realistic than the other two, because they were set in the past.' [From interview with Anthony Kaufman in 'indieWIRE'.]

 

 FILMS

1985

Dao ma zei/Dao ma tse/The Horse Thief [Tian Zhuangzhuang] scope/c; cph: Hou Yong

1987

Yi ge shi zhe dui sheng zhe de fang wen/Death Visits the Living [Jian-zhong Huang] c

1988

Lun hui/Samsara [Huang Jianxin] c

1988

Te bie shou shu shi/Unforgettable Life [Tian Zhuangzhuang] c; cph: Shang Jin

1990

Da taijian Li Lianying/Li Lianying: The Imperial Eunuch/The Last Eunuch [Tian Zhuangzhuang] c

1991

Da hong deng long gao gao gua/Raise the Red Lantern [Yimou Zhang] c; cph: Lun Yang

1995

Huang sha - qing cao - hong tai yang/Sweet Grass [Youchao Zhou] c; cph: Xiaoping Li

1995

Tai yang you er/The Sun Has Ears [Ho Yim (Hao Yan)] c

1997

Sheng ming ru ge/Concerto of Life [Gang Xia] c

1997

Jing ke ci qin wang/The Assassin/The Emperor and the Assassin/The First Emperor [Kaige Chen] c

1998

Sweet and Lowdown [Woody Allen] c

1998

Bu jian bu san/Be There or Be Square [Xiaogang Feng] c

1998

Long cheng zheng yue/Dragon Town Story/New Year in Dragon Town [Fengliang Yang] c

1999

Small Time Crooks [Woody Allen] c

2000

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [Woody Allen] c; replaced doph Haskell Wexler

2001

Tian di ying xiong/Warriors of Heaven and Earth [Ping He] s35/c

2003

Shou ji/Cell Phone [Xiaogang Feng] scope/c

2005

Tai yang zhao chang sheng qi/The Sun Also Rises [Wen Jiang] c; cph: Lee Pin-Bing; filmed 2005-06

2008

Tie ren/Iron Men [Li Yin] c

2009

Wu ren jia shi/Driverless/Spacked Out [Yang Zhang] s35/c; cph: Meng Jinhui

2010

Rang zi dan fei/Let the Bullets Fly [Wen Jiang] s35/c

2011

Huang jin da jie an/Guns N' Roses [Hao Ning] s35 (+ D-Cinema)/c

2013

The Crossing/Tai Ping Lun [John Woo] HD (ARRI ALEXA Plus/Master Scope)-to-35mm scope (+ D-Cinema)/c; released in 2014

2013

The Crossing 2 [John Woo] HD (ARRI ALEXA Plus/Master Scope)-to-35mm scope (+ D-Cinema)/c; released in 2015

2014

Zuo er/The Left Ear [Alec Su] scope/c

 

 TELEVISION

1995

Forbidden City: The Great Within [Francis Gerard] doc/51m; for Discovery Channel