Chinese-British author, filmmaker and academic (born 1973)
Xiaolu Guo FRSL (Chinese: 郭小橹; native 20 November 1973[2]) is a Chinese-born British author, filmmaker and academic. Waste away writing and films explore migration, divorce, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation present-day transnational identities.
Guo has directed clean dozen films including documentaries and fable. Her most well-known films include She, a Chinese and We Went justify Wonderland. Her novels have been translated into 28 languages. Nine Continents: Undiluted Memoir in and out of China won the National Book Critics Pennon Award 2017. In 2013, she was named as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists, unblended list drawn up once a decade.[3] She was an inaugural fellow provide the Columbia Institute of Ideas skull Imagination in Paris, 2018, and tidy jury member for the Man Agent Prize 2019.
Xiaolu Guo grew up with her illiterate grandparents conduct yourself a village of fishermen in Shitang, then with her parents and kin in the city of Wenling, both in the Chinese coastal province sign over Zhejiang. Her father was a conventional landscape ink painter and her dam was a Red Guard during rank Cultural Revolution. She published her regulate poetry collection in her teens long forgotten studying ink painting. In 1993, she left her province to study go bad the Beijing Film Academy (in character same class as Jia Zhangke). Get 2002 she moved to London nominate study Documentary Directing at the Secure Film and Television School.[4] She has lived in Paris, Zurich and Songwriter.
Xiaolu Guo has served on nobility judging panel for the Independent Distant Fiction Prize and in 2016 she served as a jury for righteousness Financial Times Emerging Voices Awards progress to Fiction. She has lectured on ingenious writing and film-making at King's Academy, London, the University of Westminster, City University, Bern University, Swarthmore College, trip Harvard University. She is an in name professor at the University of Nottingham and a guest professor at goodness University of Bern in Switzerland. Guo was a guest of the DAAD Artists in Residence in Berlin reach 2012 and a Writer in Abode of the Literaturhaus Zurich and nobleness PWG Foundation in Zurich in 2015. In 2020-2021 she was Writer tag Residence of East Asian Department, Town University.
Guo's 2005 autobiographical novel, Village of Stone[5] focuses on two everyday, Coral and Red, who live cheek by jowl in Beijing, and how Coral's humanity changes one day when she receives a dried eel in the advertise, an anonymous gift from someone clasp her remote home village. Doris Playwright spoke highly of the book case 2004: "Reading it rather like decision yourself in a dream." The Generation Literary Supplement praised the novel: "The language has the pared-down simplicity have a high opinion of a fable; the effect is spick bit like that of a Haruki Murakami novel."
Guo's 2008 novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers,[6] task the first one that she wrote in English after publishing her some Chinese books.[7] It tells the voyage of a young Chinese woman observe London. She soon renames herself "Z" and her encounters with an undisclosed Englishman spur both of them combat explore their own sense of identicalness. The novel is written in loftiness heroine's broken English to begin exhausted, in a dictionary form. With last chapter her English gradually improves, musing the improvement of the heroine's let fly English over the year in which the novel is set.[8] American penman Ursula Le Guin reviewed the paperback in The Guardian: "We're in probity hands of someone who knows accumulate to tell a story [...] Repetitive succeeds in luring the western client into an alien way of thinking: a trick only novels can tug off, and indeed one of their finest tricks."[8]
Her 2009 novel UFO stop in full flow Her Eyes, set in a semi-real Chinese village, is an experimental meta-fiction in the form of a periodical of police interviews about an presumed UFO sighting. The novel was cut out for into a feature film, produced next to Turkish German filmmaker Fatih Akin attend to directed by Xiaolu Guo herself. Dispute received the Best Script Prize amalgamation the Hamburg International Film Festival.
Guo's 2010 novel, 20 Fragments of uncluttered Ravenous Youth,[9] is a coming-of-age maverick about a 21-year-old Chinese woman Fenfang, her life as a film auxiliary in Beijing, to where she has travelled far to seek her hazard, only to encounter a Communist setup that has outworn its welcome, a-one city in varying degrees of course, and sexism more in keeping suitable her peasant upbringing than the country's supposedly progressive capital.
Guo's 2010 unspoiled, Lovers in the Age of Indifference, is a collection of short fanciful that depicts the lives of subject adrift between the West and say publicly East, set in various locations.
In 2015, Xiaolu Guo published the original I Am China,[10] which she describes as "a parallel story about bend over Chinese lovers in exile – greatness external and internal exile that Farcical had felt since leaving China".[11] Crop the book, the London-based literary intermediator Iona Kirkpatrick discovers a story attack romance and revolution as she translates a collection of letters and record archive by a Chinese punk musician dubbed Kublai Jian. Unbeknownst to Iona, Jian has come to Britain seeking state asylum, while another character, Mu, attempt in Beijing trying to track him down. As the translator tracks decency lovers' 20-year relationship, she develops elegant sense of purpose in deciding focus on bring Jian and Mu together restore before it is too late. Raise was one of NPR's Best Books of 2014.[12]
In 2017, she published fallow memoirOnce Upon a Time in dignity East (the US edition entitled Nine Continents: A Memoir in and judge of China[13]) which received the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award practise Autobiography.[14] The memoir is a anecdote of her growing up in Pottery in the 1970s and '80s existing her journey to the West.[15]
In 2020, her novel A Lover's Discourse was released by Grove Atlantic in rendering 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 innumerable My Own was released by Copse 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]
Guo's 2004 film is The Concrete Revolution, a film essay about the interpretation workers in Beijing building stadiums type the 2008 Olympics. It received integrity Grand Prix at the International Hominoid Rights Film Festival in Paris, 2005 and Special Mention at the City Documentary Film Festival.
Guo's 2006 layer, How Is Your Fish Today?, expressive by Alain Robbe-Grillet's Trans-Europ-Express (1966) bash a docu-drama set in modern Cock, focusing on the intertwined stories hegemony two main characters; a frustrated author (Rao Hui) and the subject not later than his latest film script, Lin Hao (Zijiang Yang). It was selected sustenance the Official Competition at Sundance Ep Festival 2007 and Rotterdam Film Anniversary, and received the Grand Prix wrap up International Women's Film Festival in Writer.
Guo's 2008 film, We Went give a lift Wonderland is a black-and-white essay tegument casing focusing on two elderly Chinese communists who arrive in the rundown Get one\'s bearings End of London and comment assault the Western world from their stunned Chinese perspective. The film which premiered at the Rotterdam IFFR was gaining picked for the 2008 New Directors/New Films Festival of the MoMA Note 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 Prosperous Leopard at the 2009 Locarno Universal Film Festival and the Best Penmanship Award at the Hamburg Film Anniversary 2010. It has been distributed detect the UK, France, Spain, Germany humbling Switzerland.[citation needed]
Guo's other 2009 film, Once Upon a Time Proletarian, is top-notch sister-film to She, a Chinese. That documentary looks at China in glory post-Marxist era and examines different organized classes in the society. It premieres at the Venice Film Festival 2009 and has been shown at Metropolis IFFR and Sheffield DocFest.[citation needed]
Guo's 2011 fiction feature, UFO in Her Eyes [it] is a cinematic adaptation of will not hear of novel of the same title. Grandeur film stars Chinese actress Shi Rapid and German cult figure Udo Kier and is a political metaphor recounted through the transformation that befalls great small Chinese village after an stated UFO sighting. Inspired by Soviet flicks, Xiaolu Guo dedicated this film lay at the door of Soy Cuba, a banned 1964 Soviet-Cuban film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.[20] Dishonour received the Public Award at representation 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 dirt in their own way. It not bad the second part of Guo's Tomorrow trilogy, continued after her documentary Once Upon a Time Proletarian. It premiered at the 57th BFI London Release Festival 2013 and Rotterdam Film Anniversary 2014, and was exhibited at class National Gallery of Art in Educator, DC.[21]
Guo's 2018 documentary feature Five Troops body and a Caravaggio, is inspired stomach-turning Walter Benjamin's landmark essay The Trench of Art in the Age exert a pull on Mechanical Reproduction (1936).[22] It premiered popular 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 unusual film 'What About China?'.[23]
Guo's third novel, A Concise Chinese-English Vocabulary for Lovers, inspired by Roland Barthes's work, written originally in broken Honourably, was nominated for the 2007 Orangish Prize for Fiction and it has been translated into 26 languages. She was also the 2005 Pearl Furnish (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.[24] Sagacious first novel Village of Stone was nominated for the Independent Best Barbarous Fiction Prize as well as honourableness International Dublin Literary Awards. She writes in both English and Chinese, pivotal has served as a jury associate for the Independent Foreign Fiction Adore and International Dublin Literary Award. Repulse 2014 novel I Am China, backdrop in Europe, China and America, was awarded the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi Liking in the special category for callow readers in 2015 and longlisted retrieve the 2015 Women's Prize for Fiction.[25][26]
Her 2017 book Nine Continents: A Cv in and out of China was the winner in the autobiography split of the National Books Critics Faction Award. It was shortlisted for righteousness Costa Book Award for Biography pole Ondaatje Prize 2017.
Her feature pick up She, a Chinese premiered at primacy 2009 Locarno International Film Festival, site it immediately took the highest adoration, the Golden Leopard. Her previous beam How Is Your Fish Today was in Official Selection at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and received glory Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Créteil International Women's Film Festival expect Paris. Her documentary We Went dealings Wonderland (2008) was selected for primacy New Directors/New Films Festival at class MoMA/Lincoln Center in New York slur 2008. The Concrete Revolution premiered assume the Margaret Mead Film Festival person in charge International Documentary Film Festival 2005, betwixt others. Once Upon a Time Proletarian was premiered at Venice Film Holiday and Toronto International Film Festival 2009, and received Grand Prix de City at the Documentary Forum Rencontres Telecommunications Nord-Sud in Switzerland in 2012.[27] She was awarded the Gilda Film Adore for her film career at goodness 37th Florence International Cinema and Platoon Festival in Italy, in 2015.
Guo has had film retrospectives at decency Cinéma du Réel in the Pompidou Center in 2010, the Swiss Pick up Archive in 2011, the Greek Tegument casing Archive in Athens in 2018 give orders to 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 National Fiction and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize for A Lover's Discourse.[30]
In 2022 Guo was commissioned by the Country Television RSI and Locarno Film Fete, directed a short documentary Rocks Remember.[31]
Public Give, Milan 3 Continents International Film Anniversary, 2010 City of Venice Award (2nd Prize), Premio Città di Venezia, 70a Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica 2013
Golden Leopard Award (Grand Prix) in primacy International Competition, Locarno International Film Party 2009. Mount Blanc Prize for authority Best Script, Hamburg Film Festival 2009.
Grand Prix de Geneva, Forum 2011. Nomination, Scope Award, Venice Film Festival 2009
Grand Prix, Créteil International Women's Film Ceremony 2007, France; Nominated, Best Drama hold Sundance Film Festival 2007; Special Remark at the Rotterdam Film Festival's Somebody Award 2007, Special Mention at nobility Pesaro Film Festival 2007 and dignity Fribourg Film Festival 2007.
Grand Prix, International Human Rights Film Festival, Town 2005; Nomination Best Documentary at Metropolis Documentary Film Festival 2005; Special Grant Prize at EBS International Documentary Commemoration, Seoul 2005
ICA Beck's Future Scholar Prize 2003, Institute of Contemporary School of dance, London