Xiaolu Guo
| Xiaolu Guo | |
|---|---|
 Xiaolu Guo, 2008 |
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| Born | 1973 China |
| Occupation | Novelist and filmmaker |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Period | 1987 to present |
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www.guoxiaolu.com |
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Xiaolu Guo (simplified Chinese: 郭小橹; traditional Chinese: 郭小櫓; pinyin: Guō Xiǎolǔ) born 1973[1]) is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker, who uses film and literary language to explore themes of alienation, memory, personal journeys, daily tragedies and develops her own vision of China's past and its future in a global environment.
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[edit] Nominations and awards
[edit] Novels
Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She was also the 2005 Pearl Award (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.[2] Her previous novel Village of Stone was nominated for the Independent best Foreign Fiction Prize as well as the International Dublin IMPAC Awards.
[edit] Film
Her feature film She, a Chinese premiered at the 2009 Locarno International Film Festival, where it immediately took the highest prize, the Golden Leopard. Her previous feature How Is Your Fish Today? was in Official Selection at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Créteil International Women Film Festival in Paris. Her documentary "We Went to Wonderland" (2008) was selected for the New Directors/New Films series at the MoMA/Lincoln Center in New York in 2008.
[edit] List of books
- Lovers in the Age of Indifference (2010)
- UFO in Her Eyes (2009)
- 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (2008)
- A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers (2007)
- Village of Stone (我心中的石头镇 Wo xinzhong de shitou zhen) (2003)
- Movie Map (电影地图 Dianying ditu) (2001)
- Film Notes (电影理论笔记 Dianying lilun biji) (2001)
- Fenfang's 37.2 Degrees (芬芳的37.2度 Fenfang de 37.2) (2000)
- Who is my mother's boyfriend? (我妈妈的男朋友是谁？ Wo mama de nanpengyou shi shei?) (1999)
[edit] Filmography
[edit] As director/producer
- She, a Chinese (2009)
- Once upon a time Proletarian (2009)
- An Archeologist's Sunday (2008)
- We Went to Wonderland (2008)
- Address Unknown (2007)
- How Is Your Fish Today? (2006)
- The Concrete Revolution (2004)
- Far and Near (2003)
[edit] As screenwriter
- The House (Menghuan tianyuan) (1999)
- Love in the Internet Age (Wangluo shidai de aiqing) (1998)
[edit] Books
[edit] A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers
The novel tells the story of a Chinese woman who is sent by her parents to study in London. She soon renames herself "Z" because she finds that no one can pronounce her name, then meets an English man without a name. Through the encounter, they both get to discover their own identity as well as the impossibility of two lovers to communicate.
The novel is deliberately written in the heroine's broken English to begin with, in a post modern, near experimental dictionary form. With each chapter this broken English gradually improves, reflecting the improvement of the heroines's own English over the year in which the novel is set.
[edit] Nominations
On April 17, 2007, this book was nominated for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.[3]
[edit] 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
The story of Fenfang, a peasant girl from northern China who moves to Beijing at the age of seventeen. She moves through a series of jobs, ending up making a living as a movie extra and trying her luck as a scriptwriter.
The novel is written as a series of snapshots of her life as well as one of her movie scripts, as she negotiates boyfriends, a changing China, and tries to educate and define herself. The novel was rewritten by the author from her earlier Chinese language novel "Fenfang's 37.2 Degrees."
[edit] Films
[edit] UFO In Her Eyes (2011)
In 2011, Guo is set to release UFO In Her Eyes, a cinematic adaptation of her most recent novel of the same name. The film is a political metaphor recounted through the phantasmagoric transformation that befalls a small Chinese village after an alleged UFO sighting. The movie's score is composed by the Somali-Canadian musician Mocky.[4]
[edit] She, a Chinese (2009)
The inner and exterior journey of a young woman in the landscape of village and city, East and West, love and desire. This film won the Golden Leopard at the 2009 Locarno International Film Festival.
[edit] Once upon a time Proletarian (2009)
Sister film to She, a Chinese, this documentary attempts a subjective anatomy of contemporary China in the post Marxist era. It premieres at the Venice Film Festival 2009 and has been shown at Rotterdam IFFR and Sheffield Doc/Fest.
[edit] We Went to Wonderland (2008)
Two elderly Chinese communists arrive in the rundown East End of London and comment the Western Wonderland from their astonished Chinese perspective. The film which premiered at the Rotterdam IFFR was immediately picked for the prestigious New Directors/New Films series of the MoMa / Lincoln Film Society in New York.
[edit] How Is Your Fish Today? (2006)
A writer's dreamed trip between city and village, reality and fiction, in a chaotic contemporary China. How Is Your Fish Today? explores the way we imagine reality and how zombies truly live in our modern world, the way a writer plays with his subject and his story telling, and suggests how one's life gains meaning and weight through imagination.
[edit] The Concrete Revolution (2004)
A meditation on the price paid for the building of the new China. This film essay starts with unemployed peasants rushing into Beijing to work on the demolition and construction of the city. New China uses these people's desperation to realize its huge ambitions. But the workers don't belong in Beijing, and Beijing has no place for them either. They long to return home.
As China sends rockets into space and prepares to host the 2008 Olympics, this poetic film essay shows a crucial turning point in China's history, and captures a rapidly disappearing past and erosion of its roots.
[edit] Film Awards
- She, a Chinese
Golden Leopard (Grand Prix) in International Competition, Locarno International Film Festival 2009.
- How Is Your Fish Today?
Grand Prix, Créteil International Women Film Festival 2007; nominated at Sundance Film Festival 2007; special mentions at the Rotterdam Film Festival's Tiger Award 2007, the Pesaro Film Festival 2007 and the Fribourg Film Festival 2007.
- The Concrete Revolution
Grand Prix, International Human Rights Film Festival, Paris 2005; Special Jury Prize at EBS International Documetary Festival, Seoul 2005
- Far and Near
Beck's Future Prize 2003, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Booktin Interview Xiaolu Guo
- HOW IS YOUR FISH TODAY? site for Independent Lens on PBS
- She Went to Wonderland Multimedia profile on Xiaolu Guo, with clips from her films and a video interview.
- Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, reviewed in Northwest Asian Weekly.
- Entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
