Photo credit: Each Other Films

Born in a renowned ancient city Shaoxing, China, Zhou Quan went to Australia to attend junior high and high school. His AFI thesis film WOMAN IN FRAGMENTS was selected for film festivals including Montreal, Hawaii, Urbanworld and Toronto Reel Asian. It also won the Silver Award at DC Chinese Film Festival and 3 awards at Asians On Film Festival.

In 2012, Zhou Quan interned for producer Terence Chang at Lion Rock Productions in Beijing. In 2014, he co-founded Each Other Films with Jacqueline W. Liu and I-Fu Chen in Los Angeles to develop feature film projects for both USA and the Greater China Region markets. He is now at Director Hou Hsiao- Hsien’s Golden Horse Film Academy in Taipei for one month’s training. Here is what director Zhou Quan says about his AFI thesis film WOMAN IN FRAGMENTS.

WOMAN IN FRAGMENTS is a tender story between a mother and daughter Anne in Chinatown in the U.S. Anne refuses to speak Chinese to her mother while her mother could only speak very limited English. The mother supports Anne from her childhood on to develop her talent in dance. A sudden discovery of her mother’s disease softens the mother-daughter relationship and Anne then understands what her dance teacher says “you never allow yourself to be vulnerable”. The reconciliation comes when Anne started to speak (broken) Chinese with her mom and help her out in the laundry shop while she is now able to express intense emotions in her dance.

I graduated from the American Film Institute with an MFA in Directing in 2013. Those two and half years at AFI were the most intense yet most enjoyable time in my life, not only because I learned the craft of visual storytelling, but also because I experienced the process of creative collaboration.

I discovered my passion for cinema when I was in a film analysis class of Hitchcock’s PYSCHO, in Melbourne Balwyn High School. That was the first time that I realized how powerful cinema could be as a medium to tell a story. Filmmaking is my way to communicate and engage with people, my real emotions and memories.

I think Hollywood needs China’s market and China needs Hollywood’s craft of filmmaking. As a Chinese filmmaker trained in the States, I’d like to strengthen my capacity of working in both industries. I can bring my American knowledge and skills when I make films in China, and I can also consult, collaborate or assist American filmmakers and production companies who are interested in cooperating with China. China doesn’t have to copy Hollywood’s standards and rules, but we have to build a healthy system based on local contexts, like rules for agency and management, working hours, and even craft service, etc.

I co-founded Each Other Films with two of my producing partners in Los Angeles in the spring of 2014, and we are developing Chinese language feature films together. One of my partners is a producing alumnus from opportunity to explore and understand diverse cultures, my key to expressing reactions to the world and my process of materializing the mental sphere.

WOMAN IN FRAGMENTS was inspired by my personal experience with my family and the dynamic between my mom and my grandmother. It is a fictional story with my AFI and the other one is a directing alumnus from USC. I have two projects lined-up for the next 5 years as director. I’m very honored and excited to have the renowned producer Terence Chang attached as one of the producers for my first feature, which is a coming-of-age period film set in 1998 in my hometown Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province of China.