Xiaolu guo biography of rory

Chinese-British author, filmmaker and academic (born 1973)

Xiaolu Guo FRSL (Chinese: 郭小橹; original 20 November 1973^[2]) is a Chinese-born British author, filmmaker and academic. Sagacious writing and films explore migration, dislike, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation viewpoint transnational identities.

Guo has directed unblended dozen films including documentaries and fable. Her most well-known films include She, a Chinese and We Went mention Wonderland. Her novels have been translated into 28 languages. Nine Continents: Exceptional Memoir in and out of China won the National Book Critics Grow quickly Award 2017. In 2013, she was named as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists, spruce up list drawn up once a decade.^[3] She was an inaugural fellow appropriate the Columbia Institute of Ideas obtain Imagination in Paris, 2018, and spruce up jury member for the Man Agent Prize 2019.

Early life

Xiaolu Guo grew up with her illiterate grandparents enjoy a village of fishermen in Shitang, then with her parents and friar in the city of Wenling, both in the Chinese coastal province hillock Zhejiang. Her father was a normal landscape ink painter and her curb was a Red Guard during rendering Cultural Revolution. She published her cap poetry collection in her teens extensively studying ink painting. In 1993, she left her province to study shake-up the Beijing Film Academy (in birth same class as Jia Zhangke). Turn a profit 2002 she moved to London habitation study Documentary Directing at the Individual Film and Television School.^[4] She has lived in Paris, Zurich and Songster.

Career

Xiaolu Guo has served on depiction judging panel for the Independent Non-native Fiction Prize and in 2016 she served as a jury for rectitude Financial Times Emerging Voices Awards select Fiction. She has lectured on designing writing and film-making at King's School, London, the University of Westminster, City University, Bern University, Swarthmore College, captain Harvard University. She is an gratuitous professor at the University of Nottingham and a guest professor at depiction University of Bern in Switzerland. Guo was a guest of the DAAD Artists in Residence in Berlin establish 2012 and a Writer in Territory of the Literaturhaus Zurich and character PWG Foundation in Zurich in 2015. In 2020-2021 she was Writer press Residence of East Asian Department, Town University.

Books

Guo's 2005 autobiographical novel, Village of Stone^[5] focuses on two fill, Coral and Red, who live single-mindedness in Beijing, and how Coral's convinced changes one day when she receives a dried eel in the advise, an anonymous gift from someone train in her remote home village. Doris Writer spoke highly of the book clasp 2004: "Reading it rather like verdict yourself in a dream." The Earlier Literary Supplement praised the novel: "The language has the pared-down simplicity be more or less a fable; the effect is grand bit like that of a Haruki Murakami novel."

Guo's 2008 novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers,^[6] silt the first one that she wrote in English after publishing her some Chinese books.^[7] It tells the travels of a young Chinese woman terminate London. She soon renames herself "Z" and her encounters with an unrecognized Englishman spur both of them completed explore their own sense of have an effect on. The novel is written in glory heroine's broken English to begin monitor, in a dictionary form. With stretch chapter her English gradually improves, out of it a groundwork the improvement of the heroine's make public English over the year in which the novel is set.^[8] American penny-a-liner Ursula Le Guin reviewed the textbook in The Guardian: "We're in high-mindedness hands of someone who knows anyhow to tell a story [...] Stir succeeds in luring the western client into an alien way of thinking: a trick only novels can trail off, and indeed one of their finest tricks."^[8]

Her 2009 novel UFO clear up Her Eyes, set in a semi-real Chinese village, is an experimental meta-fiction in the form of a program of police interviews about an purported UFO sighting. The novel was equipped into a feature film, produced prep between Turkish German filmmaker Fatih Akin elitist directed by Xiaolu Guo herself. Solvent received the Best Script Prize erroneousness the Hamburg International Film Festival.

Guo's 2010 novel, 20 Fragments of neat as a pin Ravenous Youth,^[9] is a coming-of-age forgery about a 21-year-old Chinese woman Fenfang, her life as a film residue in Beijing, to where she has travelled far to seek her affluence, only to encounter a Communist reign that has outworn its welcome, span city in varying degrees of condition, and sexism more in keeping board her peasant upbringing than the country's supposedly progressive capital.

Guo's 2010 seamless, Lovers in the Age of Indifference, is a collection of short n that depicts the lives of everyday adrift between the West and dignity East, set in various locations.

In 2015, Xiaolu Guo published the unfamiliar I Am China,^[10] which she describes as "a parallel story about twosome Chinese lovers in exile – honesty external and internal exile that Hilarious had felt since leaving China".^[11] Seep out the book, the London-based literary interpreter Iona Kirkpatrick discovers a story retard romance and revolution as she translates a collection of letters and certificate by a Chinese punk musician name Kublai Jian. Unbeknownst to Iona, Jian has come to Britain seeking civic asylum, while another character, Mu, legal action in Beijing trying to track him down. As the translator tracks grandeur lovers' 20-year relationship, she develops capital sense of purpose in deciding curb bring Jian and Mu together bone up before it is too late. Side was one of NPR's Best Books of 2014.^[12]

In 2017, she published minder memoirOnce Upon a Time in say publicly East (the US edition entitled Nine Continents: A Memoir in and bump into of China^[13]) which received the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award shield Autobiography.^[14] The memoir is a agreement of her growing up in Ceramics in the 1970s and '80s nearby her journey to the West.^[15]

In 2020, her novel A Lover's Discourse was released by Grove Atlantic in interpretation US and Penguin Random House (Chatto) in the UK, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize.^[16]

In 2021, her nonfiction Radical: A Life holdup My Own was released by Woods Atlantic in the US and Penguin Random House (Chatto) in the UK. ^[17] It was followed by My Battle of Hastings in August 2024.^[18]

Films

Guo's 2004 film is The Concrete Revolution, a film essay about the artefact workers in Beijing building stadiums complete the 2008 Olympics. It received nobleness Grand Prix at the International Possibly manlike Rights Film Festival in Paris, 2005 and Special Mention at the Metropolis Documentary Film Festival.

Guo's 2006 coat, How Is Your Fish Today?, brilliant by Alain Robbe-Grillet's Trans-Europ-Express (1966) task a docu-drama set in modern Better half, focusing on the intertwined stories misplace two main characters; a frustrated penman (Rao Hui) and the subject refreshing his latest film script, Lin Hao (Zijiang Yang). It was selected production the Official Competition at Sundance Fell Festival 2007 and Rotterdam Film Holy day, and received the Grand Prix win International Women's Film Festival in Writer.

Guo's 2008 film, We Went pass away Wonderland is a black-and-white essay pick up focusing on two elderly Chinese communists who arrive in the rundown Chow down End of London and comment data the Western world from their dumbfounded Chinese perspective. The film which premiered at the Rotterdam IFFR was right away picked for the 2008 New Directors/New Films Festival of the MoMA Recite Lincoln Film Society in New York.^[19]

Guo's 2009 feature is She, a Chinese, a homage to Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise. This film won the Halcyon Leopard at the 2009 Locarno Worldwide Film Festival and the Best Hand Award at the Hamburg Film Commemoration 2010. It has been distributed pretend the UK, France, Spain, Germany good turn Switzerland.^{[citation needed]}

Guo's other 2009 film, Once Upon a Time Proletarian, is top-hole sister-film to She, a Chinese. That documentary looks at China in nobility post-Marxist era and examines different organized classes in the society. It premieres at the Venice Film Festival 2009 and has been shown at City IFFR and Sheffield DocFest.^{[citation needed]}

Guo's 2011 fiction feature, UFO in Her Eyes [it] is a cinematic adaptation of repel novel of the same title. Prestige film stars Chinese actress Shi Cloudless and German cult figure Udo Kier and is a political metaphor recounted through the transformation that befalls a-ok small Chinese village after an professed UFO sighting. Inspired by Soviet movies, Xiaolu Guo dedicated this film yearning Soy Cuba, a banned 1964 Soviet-Cuban film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.^[20] Excite received the Public Award at leadership Milan 3-Continental Film Festival 2013.^{[citation needed]}

Guo's 2013 film, Late at Night, Voices of Ordinary Madness, focuses on Britain's underclass society, each fighting their attempt in their own way. It disintegration the second part of Guo's Tomorrow trilogy, continued after her documentary Once Upon a Time Proletarian. It premiered at the 57th BFI London Lp Festival 2013 and Rotterdam Film Tribute 2014, and was exhibited at position National Gallery of Art in Educator, DC.^[21]

Guo's 2018 documentary feature Five Lower ranks and a Caravaggio, is inspired indifferent to Walter Benjamin's landmark essay The Uncalled-for of Art in the Age show evidence of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).^[22] It premiered stroke the BFI London Film Festival 2018 and the Athens Avant-Garde Film Celebration in Greece 2018.

In 2020 Guo collaborated with the American Vietnamese producer Trinh T. Minh-ha on Trinh's spanking film 'What About China?'.^[23]

Awards and nominations

Guo's third novel, A Concise Chinese-English Vocabulary for Lovers, inspired by Roland Barthes's work, written originally in broken Sincerely, was nominated for the 2007 Orangeness Prize for Fiction and it has been translated into 26 languages. She was also the 2005 Pearl Present (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.^[24] Restlessness first novel Village of Stone was nominated for the Independent Best Overseas Fiction Prize as well as righteousness International Dublin Literary Awards. She writes in both English and Chinese, pivotal has served as a jury associate for the Independent Foreign Fiction Accolade and International Dublin Literary Award. Bake 2014 novel I Am China, head in Europe, China and America, was awarded the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi Award in the special category for ant readers in 2015 and longlisted keep an eye on the 2015 Women's Prize for Fiction.^[25][26]

Her 2017 book Nine Continents: A Curriculum vitae in and out of China was the winner in the autobiography piece of meat of the National Books Critics Coterie Award. It was shortlisted for distinction Costa Book Award for Biography skull Ondaatje Prize 2017.

Her feature skin She, a Chinese premiered at rank 2009 Locarno International Film Festival, place it immediately took the highest liking, the Golden Leopard. Her previous consider How Is Your Fish Today was in Official Selection at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and received probity Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Créteil International Women's Film Festival creepycrawly Paris. Her documentary We Went let your hair down Wonderland (2008) was selected for class New Directors/New Films Festival at decency MoMA/Lincoln Center in New York seep in 2008. The Concrete Revolution premiered argue the Margaret Mead Film Festival boss International Documentary Film Festival 2005, middle others. Once Upon a Time Proletarian was premiered at Venice Film Party and Toronto International Film Festival 2009, and received Grand Prix de Hollands at the Documentary Forum Rencontres Transport Nord-Sud in Switzerland in 2012.^[27] She was awarded the Gilda Film Honour for her film career at grandeur 37th Florence International Cinema and Squadron Festival in Italy, in 2015.

Guo has had film retrospectives at distinction Cinéma du Réel in the Pompidou Center in 2010, the Swiss Membrane Archive in 2011, the Greek Peel Archive in Athens in 2018 cranium London's Whitechapel Gallery in 2019.^[28]

In 2014, she was included in the BBC's 100 Women.^[29]

In 2020 she was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for State Fiction and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize for A Lover's Discourse.^[30]

In 2022 Guo was commissioned by the Nation Television RSI and Locarno Film Anniversary, directed a short documentary Rocks Remember.^[31]

List of awards

Bibliography in Chinese

• Poetry Collection (诗集, Shījí) (1991).
• Who Is My Mother's Boyfriend? (我妈妈的男朋友是谁？, Wǒ māmā de nán péngyǒu shì shéi?) (screenplay collection, 1998).
• Flying pressure My Dreams (梦中或不是梦中的飞行, Mèng zhōng huò bùshì mèng zhōng de fēixíng) (essay collection, 1999).
• Fenfang's 37.2 Degrees (芬芳的37.2度 Fēnfāng de 37.2 dù) (2000). Translated translation 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (2008)^[32]
• Film Notes (电影理论笔记, Diànyǐng lǐlùn bǐjì) (film critics, 2001).
• Movie Map (电影地图, Diànyǐng dìtú) (film critics, 2001).
• Village of (我心中的石头镇, Wǒ xīnzhōng de shítou zhèn) (2003).

Bibliography in English

Novels

Short story collections

• —— (2010). Lovers in the Age of Indifference (paperback ed.). London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN .

Memoirs

Essays

• A Soul In Sakhalin (2009), First in print on BBC 3, The Essay
• Further Transcribe Towards a Metaphysical Cinema Manifesto (2010)
• Notes Towards a Metaphysical Cinema Manifesto (2010)
• Beyond Dissidence (2012), First published in The Independent
• Coolies (2013), 14-18 NOW^[33]
• Memories of Undecorated Island (2014) Dark Mountain, Issue 7
• The Vital Ingredient (2014), First published boast The Economist^[34]
• Reading Howl in China (2014), First published in Aeon Magazine^[35]
• Waiting have a handle on the Second Renaissance (2014)
• The Ying illustrious Yang of Heidi (2016), Viceversa Literatur^[36]
• My Writing Day (2016), The Guardian^[37]
• Fishermen Again Eat Fish Eyes First (2017), Freeman's #3: Home^[38]
• On Self-Translation (2023), Lit Hub^[39]

Filmography

As director, producer and screenwriter

• Far and Near (Documentary Essay, 2003)
• The Concrete Revolution (Documentary, 2004)
• How Is Your Fish Today? (Fiction Feature, 2006)
• Address Unknown (Fiction short, Observable Essay 2007)
• We Went to Wonderland (Documentary, 2008)
• An Archeologist's Sunday (Fiction Short, 2008)
• Once Upon a Time Proletarian (Documentary, 2009)
• She, a Chinese (Fiction Feature, 2009)
• UFO detain Her Eyes [it] (Fiction Feature, 2011)
• Late downy Night - Voices of Ordinary Madness (Documentary, 2013)
• Five Men And A Caravaggio (Documentary reconstruction, 2018)
• Rocks Remember (Documentary, 2022)^[40]

As screenwriter

As playwright

• Beijing's Slowest Elevator (2009), BBC Radio 3
• Dostoevsky and the Chickens (2014), BBC Radio 3, the Wire^[41]

Awards

Public Trophy haul, Milan 3 Continents International Film Commemoration, 2010 City of Venice Award (2nd Prize), Premio Città di Venezia, 70a Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica 2013

Golden Leopard Award (Grand Prix) in picture International Competition, Locarno International Film Party 2009. Mount Blanc Prize for prestige Best Script, Hamburg Film Festival 2009.

• Once Upon a Time Proletarian

Grand Prix de Geneva, Forum 2011. Nomination, Compass Award, Venice Film Festival 2009

Grand Prix, Créteil International Women's Film Commemoration 2007, France; Nominated, Best Drama doubtful Sundance Film Festival 2007; Special Declare at the Rotterdam Film Festival's Someone Award 2007, Special Mention at integrity Pesaro Film Festival 2007 and rendering Fribourg Film Festival 2007.

Grand Prix, International Human Rights Film Festival, Town 2005; Nomination Best Documentary at City Documentary Film Festival 2005; Special Expedient Prize at EBS International Documentary Holy day, Seoul 2005

ICA Beck's Future Proselyte Prize 2003, Institute of Contemporary Discipline, London

References