Born: 1961, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, as son of an architect. Also known as Zhao Fei.

Education: Department of Cinematography of the Beijing Film Academy [1978-82].

Career: Ph commercials dir by Woody Allen, a.o.

Awards: LAFCA Award [1992] & NSFC Award [1993] for 'Da hong deng long gao gao gua'; Association of Chinese Filmmakers 'Golden Rooster Award' for Best Cinematographer [1999] for 'Jing ke ci qin wang'; Association of Chinese Filmmakers 'Golden Rooster Award' nom [2004] for 'Shou ji'.

Fei Zhao: 'Whether I'm actually shooting a large scale epic film or a smaller scale film like Woody's work, what I have to focus on is the lighting. It's not so much how many people or props are involved. How do you get the lights? Where should the camera be placed? All those are the main issues whether it's an epic scale film or a smaller film. For me, shooting both films is quite similar, because it requires me to use my imagination. For 'The Emperor and the Assassin', it's a historical film of a period with not much recorded history. We read from history books and we had to imagine what the past looked like, so the lighting had to create, as you say, a very stylized look in order to capture this spirit of this pre-Ching period, which is like 3 AD. And Woody's film is also not a contemporary film. It's set in the 1920's and 1930's in the jazz age, in Chicago and New York. So not only did I need to see movies about that period, read books, understand larger issues of what America was at that time, I had to imagine and create that as well. The one I'm shooting at the moment for Woody, which is the Summer '99 project, is actually a contemporary film. It required much more realistic lighting, much more realistic than the other two, because they were set in the past.' [From interview with Anthony Kaufman in 'indieWIRE'.]

1985        Dao ma zei/Dao ma tse/The Horse Thief [Tian Zhuangzhuang] scope/c; cph: Hou Yong

1987        Yi ge shi zhe dui sheng zhe de fang wen/Death Visits the Living [Jian-zhong Huang] c

1988        Lun hui/Samsara [Huang Jianxin] c

1988        Te shu shou shu shi/Unforgettable Life [Tian Zhuangzhuang] c; cph: Shang Jin

1990        Da taijian Li Lianying/Li Lianying: The Imperial Eunuch/The Last Eunuch [Tian Zhuangzhuang] c

1991        Da hong deng long gao gao gua/Raise the Red Lantern [Yimou Zhang] c; cph: Lun Yang

1995        ?/Sweet Grass [Youchao Zhou] c; cph: Xiaoping Li

1995        Tai yang you er/The Sun Has Ears [Ho Yim (Hao Yan)] c

1997        Sheng ming ru ge/Concerto of Life [Gang Xia] c

1997        Jing ke ci qin wang/The Assassin/The Emperor and the Assassin/The First Emperor [Kaige Chen] c

1998        Sweet and Lowdown [Woody Allen] c

1998        Bu jian bu san/Be There or Be Square [Xiaogang Feng] c

1998        Long cheng zheng yue/Dragon Town Story/New Year in Dragon Town [Fengliang Yang] c

1999        Small Time Crooks [Woody Allen] c

2000        The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [Woody Allen] c; replaced doph Haskell Wexler

2001        Tian di ying xiong/Warriors of Heaven and Earth [Ping He] s35/c

2003        Shou ji/Cell Phone [Xiaogang Feng] scope/c

2005        Tai yang zhao chang sheng qi/The Sun Also Rises [Wen Jiang] c; cph: Lee Pin-Bing; filmed 2005-06

2008        Tie ren [Li Yin] c

1995        Forbidden City: The Great Within [Francis Gerard] tv-doc/51m; for Discovery Channel