Documentaries
Between his feature film efforts, Zhang strives to continue producing long-form documentaries. 1994's The Square documents daily life in Tiananmen Square, in the immediate years following the events of the 1989 Democracy demonstrations. The surreptitious shoot took the guise of a program production crew for China Central Television (CCTV).
The late 1990s, meanwhile, saw Zhang indulging again in his interest in documentary form with Demolition and Relocation in 1998, an account of the destruction of Beijing's Hutongs. In 1999, Zhang made Crazy English, which followed Crazy English-founder and motivational speaker Li Yang in a film Zhang himself described as a cross between Triumph of the Will and Forrest Gump. 2000's Miss Jin Xing, meanwhile, follows Zhang's interest in society's marginalized with a touching portrait of China's most famed transsexual, Jin Xing, a man who in 1996 decided to become a woman. Jin's story is told through a series of interviews with those who know her as well as with Jin herself.
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