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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Gu Changwei

Chinese film director (1957-)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ716018 ↗
Source-derived summary

Gu Changwei (born 12 December 1957) is a Chinese cinematographer and film director. Gu was born in Xi'an, Shaanxi in the People's Republic of China.

Career

Gu Changwei began his cinematic career in the now legendary 1982 class of the Beijing Film Academy, today known as the Fifth Generation. Trained as a cinematographer, Gu was assigned to the Xi'an Film Studio after graduation where he served as a primary collaborator with classmates Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou on their early films, notably King of the Children (for Chen Kaige) and Red Sorghum (for Zhang Yimou), both in 1987. Since then, Gu has worked with both men on multiple occasions, including on Chen's magnum opus, 1993's Farewell My Concubine. Like fellow cinematographer Zhao Fei, Gu has had the opportunity to work with major American directors as well, with Tony Drazan, in his filmed adaptation of Hurlyburly and most notably with Robert Altman, on his film The Gingerbread Man (1997).

Directing

Beginning in 2005, Gu Changwei branched out into film direction with his debut Peacock, a three-hour-long epic about a small family in the 1970s and 1980s. The film was well received and won the Jury Grand Prix-Silver Bear at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival. His sophomore feature, And the Spring Comes, was released in 2007.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gu Changwei” is chinese film director (1957-). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Changwei, Chinese and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1957, 1982, 1987, 1993—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1957-12-12. For this dossier, Changwei, Chinese and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “chinese film director (1957-)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q716018. VIAF identifies the subject as 89891222. The Library of Congress control number is no2005052162. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1982, 1987 and 1993.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gu Changwei”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gu Changwei primary sources, Gu Changwei archive and Changwei research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gu Changwei”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gu Changwei” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.