If you were on YouTube yesterday, you would have seen Monkey Bee short plastered all over the site. The classic tale of the Monkey King Tale is again retold in a special way. (Kinda reminds us of The Forbidden Kingdom in an East meets West version of Monkey King.) In an exclusive YouTube worldwide premier, Jamie Hewlett, the visual mastermind behind Gorillaz and “Tank Girl”, has crafted a live-action masterpiece to accompany the first single from the massively ambitious “Monkey: Journey To The West”. The album, a collaboration with Damon Albarn, is out now on XL Recordings. The music and short film are an interesting mix of Chinese melodies, punk rock, Lord of the Rings, and Gorillaz animation. We wish there were English subtitles.

Monkey: Journey To The West is conceived, written and directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, composed by Damon Albar with visual concept, costume, design and animation by Jamie Hewlett. Part of the videos were used by the BBC to promote the Beijing Olympics entitled “Journey to the East”.

Monkey Bee

An in-depth, behind the scenes look at the making of Jamie Hewlett’s short film, “Monkey Bee”

Behind the scenes at the Monkey Bee shoot

More about Director Chen Shi-Zheng

Chen Shi-Zheng is a China-born, New York-based director, choreographer, singer, and actor. As a child in Changsha, Hunan during the Cultural Revolution, he was taken under the wing of traditional funeral singers, who were among some of the great masters of Chinese opera. He became a leading young opera actor, performing until his mid-20s in many productions throughout China, and simultaneously recorded albums of folksongs and contemporary pop music. He immigrated to the United States in 1987, and has since established a crossover career in which he explores his own artistic expression that transcends an East/West divide and erases the boundaries between music, theatre, dance and film. In 2000, Mr. Chen was awarded the title Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.