The work of James Ivory was a fixture in independent filmmaking of the late 1960s and 1970s. Roseland, for example, Ivory's omnibus film about the habitu?s of a decaying New York dance palace, garnered a standing ovation at its premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1977, and received much critical attention afterward. However, it was not until A Room with a View, his stately adaptation of E. M. Forster 's novel, that Ivory gained full international recognition.
With a handful of international film awards and two Academy Award nominations for best foreign film (Ju Dou in 1990, and Raise the Red Lantern in 1991), Zhang Yi-Mou has emerged as the most distinguished and celebrated of mainland China filmmakers. This success is particularly admirable in view of the fact that, following a promising early education, Zhang was tragically forced to work for ten years as a field laborer during China's notorious Cultural Revolution and was not admitted to the Beijing Film Academy until he was twenty-seven.
