Xie Fei

Xie Fei (Chinese: 谢飞; pinyin: Xiè Fēi; born August 14, 1942) is a Chinese film director, screenwriter, producer, film professor and film critic.

Xie was born August 14 in Yan'an city of Shaanxi Province, China and went to primary school and high school in Beijing. In high school he began to love drama and cinema. He wrote journals after watching films and played roles in school theater group.

In 1960 he was enrolled in Directing Department of Beijing Film Academy, and graduated in 1965.

Xie Fei has taught at his alma mater as an instructor and professor since and was the vice-president of that institution from 1985-1989. Although he has not made many films due to The Great Culture Revolution (1966-1976) and teaching career, most of his works are critics' favorites. Several of them won international film festival awards. His A Girl From Human (1986) and A Mongolian Tale (1995) were commercially distributed American movie theaters.

After Song of Tibet (2000) was censored for 6 months before releasing in a few theaters, he stopped making films (at the age of 59). He has worked as producer and on film festival juries in China and abroad.

In 2001 he directed 23 episodes of TV drama Sun Rise adapted from a play by noted Chinese playwright Cao YU 曹禺(1910-1996).

On December 15, 2012 Xie Fei posted an open letter on Weibo a popular Chinese Blog calling for changes of film censorship and won great support from film makers.