Sylvia Chang

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"A groundbreaking writer-director in a male-dominated industry and an improbably prolific international movie star of the first flight, Sylvia Chang is a one-woman dynamo of artistic activity whose triumphant career spans cultures East and West, genres, and disciplines. Her recent output includes musical comedy Office (2015), which she wrote and starred in for Johnnie To, and a poignant turn in Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart (2015). Born in Taiwan, Chang broke through as an ingenue in pop cinema, appearing in classical adaptations like gender-bending Qing-period love story The Dream of the Red Chamber (1977) and wuxia classics like King Hu’s philosophical kung-fu tale Legend of the Mountain (1979). A performer of eloquent restraint and power, she won her first Taiwan Golden Horse Award as actress for My Grandfather (1981); went on to work with a pantheon of Chinese auteurs operating around the globe, including Tsui Hark, Edward Yang, Stanley Kwan, and Ang Lee; and emerged as a powerful filmmaking force in her own right, directing such elegant, nuanced works as 20 30 40 (2004), Murmur of the Hearts (2015), and Love Education (2017). Altogether it makes for an unprecedented career."—Metrograph