Born in Jiangxi Province in 1978, Wang Fen is a Chinese filmmaker. She graduated from Shandong Art Institute and worked as a model and actress before moving behind the camera. Her debut documentary More Than One is Unhappy, about her parents’ marriage, received a New Asian Currents Excellence Award at the 2001 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan. Her feature film The Case was the first film of the Yunnan New Film Project, a planned anthology of ten films directed by female Chinese directors, all taking place in the southern province of Yunnan. Wang currently resides in Cambridge with her partner Ai Weiwei and their son.
Selected Filmography
| Role | Title (English) | Title (Chinese) | Year |
| Director | The Case | 箱子 | 2007 |
| Director, Writer, Producer | More Than One Is Unhappy (aka They Are Not the Only Unhappy Couple) (Video Documentary) | 不快乐的不只你一个 | 2000 |
Articles
Yu, Tianqi. “Towards a Communicative Practice: Female First-Person Documentary in Twenty-first Century China,” in China’s iGeneration: Cinema and Moving Image Culture for the Twenty-First Century. Eds. Matthew D. Johnson, Keith B. Wagner, Tianqi Yu and Luke Vulpiani. New York; London: Bloomsbury (2014). 23-44.
Interviews
Li, Haisong and Chen Zeng. “Behind The Guggenheim’s ‘Turn it on: China on Film’: An Interview with Wang Fen and Ai Weiwei.” ChinaFilmInsider (October 12, 2017): http://chinafilminsider.com/behind-guggenheims-turn-china-film-interview-wang-fen-ai-weiwei/
Other
Yunnan New Film Project. “The first film begins.” China Daily (June 19, 2006): http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/yunnan/2006-06/19/content_619977.htm
Links
Wang Fen’s IMDb entry: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2862184/
Women Filmmakers and Transnational China in the Twenty-First Century 