Chen Kai Ge is a Chinese film director and a leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema. His films are known for their visuals and epic storytelling. Kaige won the Palme d'Or Award at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and the International Federation of Film Critics Award in 1993.

Chen Kaige was born in Beijing, China, and grew up with fellow fifth-generation alumnus Tian Zhuangzhuang as a childhood friend. During the Cultural Revolution, Kaige joined the Red Guards. His father, Chen Huai'ai was a well-known director in his own time and as a teenage member of the Red Guards, Kaige, like many other youths, denounced his own father - A fateful decision he eventually learned to regret.
This period of his life continues to influence much of his work today, notably in the unblinking depictions of the Cultural Revolution in Farewell My Concubine and in the father-son relationship in Together. With the end of the Cultural Revolution, Kaige joined Beijing Film Academy in 1978, where he graduated in 1982 as part of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers.

Upon graduating, Kaige was assigned to a studio in Guangxi along with his fellow graduate mate, Zhang Yimou. His first movie, Yellow Earth (1984), established itself as one of the most important works of Fifth-generation filmmaking. Although it was simple, its powerful visual imagery and revolutionary storytelling style marked a sea change in how films were seen and perceived in the People's Republic of China. The Big Parade (1986) and King of the Children (1987) expanded on his filming reputation. In 1987, he was awarded a fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council and served as a visiting scholar at the New York University Film School.
Early in 1989, he did further experimenting in a music video for the song "Do You Believe In Shame?" by Duran Duran. Later that year, he made Life on a String, a highly esoteric movie that uses mythical allegory and lush scenery to tell the story of a blind san xian musician and his student. In the same year, he was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.

His most famous film, Farewell My Concubine (1993), was nominated for two Academy Awards and was the winner of the Palme d'Or Award at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, which follows two Beijing Opera stars through decades of change in China during the 20th century. Kaige followed up the unprecedented success of Farewell My Concubine with Temptress Moon (1996), another period movie starring Leslie Cheung and Gong Li. Though it was well-received by most critics, it did not achieve the accolades that Farewell My Concubine did, and many were put off by the film's convoluted plotline. Almost as famous as Farewell My Concubine is his The Emperor and the Assassin (1999), an epic involving the legendary King of Qin and the reluctant assassin who aims to kill him.
In 2002, Kaige made his first, and to-date only, English-language film, Killing Me Softly, a thriller starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes, though it proved to be both a critical and popular disappointment. Together (2002) is an intimate film about a young violinist and his father. In 2005, he directed The Promise, a fantasy wuxia picture. The Promise saw Kaige shifting to a more commercial mindset, a shift regarded by some as a "radical stylistic turn" from his previous works.

In 2006, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 28th Moscow International Film Festival.
In 2008, Kaige directed the semi-biography Forever Enthralled, which is a return for him in the sense of directing a film based on Chinese opera. He later went on to direct Sacrifice (2010), which is a re-imagining of the famous play The Orphan of Zhao. The film was a box-office hit and many critics saw it as his "return to form".

Kaige has also acted in several films, including Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987) and on his own movie The Emperor and the Assassin and Together (1999).

His 2012 film Caught in the Web was selected as the Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.

Kaige's first wife was Sun Jialin (孙加林), whom he met while working at the Beijing Film Factory, between 1975 and 1978; they married in 1983. He later married Hong Huang, the daughter of Zhang Hanzhi, a diplomat who had worked as an English translator for Mao Zedong. She graduated from Vassar College in New York and is the current CEO of China Interactive Media Group. In the early 1990s, after their divorce, Chen lived with Ni Ping, a female television personality. In 1996, Kaige married actress Chen Hong, with whom he has two children, Chen Yuang and the rising up-and-coming actor Chen Feiyu.

Chen Kaige is the holder of a green card in the United States.

(Source: Wikipedia) Edit Biography