Zhang Yimou (born November 14, 1951) is an internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker and former cinematographer, and one of the best known of the Fifth Generation of Chinese film directors. He made his directorial debut in 1987 with the film Red Sorghum. One of Zhang's recurrent themes is a celebration of the resilience, even the stubbornness, of Chinese people in face of hardships and adversities, a theme which has occurred from To Live (1994) through to Not One Less (1999). His works are particularly noted for their usage of colour, as can be seen in his early trilogy (like Raise the Red Lantern) or in his wuxia films such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers.Zhang Yimou was born in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. As a child he suffered prejudice and derision because of his family's association with the Kuomintang (Nationalist party). His father had been a major under Chiang Kai-shek and an elder brother had followed the Nationalist forces to Taiwan after their 1949 defeat in the civil war.When the Cultural Revolution erupted in 1966 he was forced to suspend studying and worked, first as a farm hand, and then, for seven years, as a labourer in a cotton textile mill, much like the one he portrayed in Ju Dou. During this time he took up painting and amateur still photography. He had to sell his blood for five months to get enough money to purchase his first camera when he was 18.the Beijing Film Academy opened in 1978, Zhang was already 27, over-aged and without the prerequisite academic qualifications. He wrote a personal appeal to the Ministry of Culture, citing "ten years lost during the Cultural Revolution"[citation needed] and offered a portfolio of his personal photographic works.[3] The authorities finally relented and admitted him into the Department of Cinematography.[3]As a result, Zhang graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982 along with compatriots Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang (the latter two from the Directing class). They are often referred to collectively as the Class of 1982.[citation needed] The students saw films by European, Japanese and American art directors, as well as Chinese—far more than any of their predecessors—including the works of Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Scorsese, Truffaut, Fei Mu, Wu Yonggang, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Malick and Alain Resnais.[citation needed]As was the norm, Zhang and his co-graduates were assigned to small inland studios, and as a cinematographer, he began working for the Guangxi Film Studio.[3] Though penciled in to work as director's assistants, they soon learned there was a dearth of directors (owing to the Cultural Revolution), and appealed successively to make their own films.[citation needed] Zhang's first work, One and Eight (as director of photography), was made in 1984 together with director Zhang Junzhao. Zhang Yimou's input was telling: he shot from obscure angles, and positioned actors and actresses at the side, rather than center, to heighten dramatic effect, using a “unique and emphatic visual style, based on the asymmetrical and unbalanced composition of the shots and the shooting of color stock as though it were black and white".[citation needed]Zhang's next collaboration, under director and fellow graduate Chen Kaige was to be one of the defining Chinese films of the 1980s: Yellow Earth (1984). The film today is widely considered the inaugural film for the Chinese Fifth Generation directors that were a part of an artistic reemergence in China after the end of the Cultural Revolution.Along with his work in One and Eight, Zhang's contribution to Yellow Earth signaled a cinematic departure from the propagandist films of the Cultural Revolution.Local critics immediately sat up and took notice of this new cohort of daring artists who were defying conventions of Chinese cinema.Zhang continued to work with Chen for the latter's next film, The Big Parade (1985). Their collaboration was one of the most fruitful of the Fifth Generation period.