Person

One of the most widely recognised directors from China’s ‘New Generation’ of filmmakers and multi-media artists, Ju Anqi was born in Urumqi, Xinjiang, where his parents had been sent from southern China during Mao Zedong’s ‘Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement’, in which ‘sent-down youth’ were sent to the countryside to learn from the farmers. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1999. Ju’s experimental films have been exhibited in the Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New York) and Lincoln Center (New York). Ju’s debut film, ‘There’s a Strong Wind in Beijing’, shot on film eight years past its expiration date, was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival in 2000. ‘Poet on a Business Trip’ (2015) premiered at the 44th edition of the International Film Festival of Rotterdam and won the Grand Prize at the 16th Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea. Ju Anqi’s 2016 film, ‘A Missing Policeman’, co-starred more than 20 contemporary artists, critics and curators from China. His work has been shown to wide acclaim within and beyond China, including in The Vågestykke Project, National Public Art Organization, Bergen University College, Norway (2017); ‘Art of the Real’, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea (2016); ‘Tales of Our Time’ Film Program, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2016); ‘No Real Body’ – Third Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ural, Russia (2015); in a solo show, ‘Action Trilogy’ at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Ju Anqi currently lives and works in Beijing.