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This documentary, edited over a period of six years, spans 20 years in the lifetime of three families of workers who were made redundant by their company. This work is divided into four parts, each part focusing on one family, the Zhou family, the He family and the Tao family, as well as one part about my hometown. This four-part documentary is an attempt to take a closer look at the process of privatisation in China over the past 20 years.

A Globe in a Flat World (2016) follows a wanderer’s journey into an Augmented Reality simulation of Deoksu Gung, a traditional palace in Seoul. The interior of this treasured site is permanently closed to the public in real life and only accessible as an awkwardly compressed imagery of three-dimensional experience. Inside the AR space, the aimlessly drifting wanderer becomes bodiless, impeded to take a step. Unable to find a liminal space between corridors and rooms, the wanderer loses autonomy to exit.

The forced closure of the Sungei Road flea market in 2017 leaves evicted hawkers like Fook Seng, in his 70s and with a variety of ailments, with little recourse. in his 70s and with a variety of ailments, with little recourse. For him and his partner, negotiating is imperative to their survival—beyond their informal trade, it is also the way they wend their way through the thicket of bureaucracy to access financial aid.

Tokyo Documentary Film Festival 2018 Short Film Competition Grand Prize Winner. A war widow’s letter to her fallen husband remained unopened and left a memorandum. The scenery of living beings weaving sound, light, and ghost shadows all over the place. A film and a poem to those who ever lived in this town.

Director Xiong Zaixia notes: "A 'she' (commune) is the smallest administrative unit since the Tang Dynasty. She Gong is also known as Soil-Ground or Lord of the Soil. I have found that I captured and edited Soil-Grounds in my video works unconsciously. That made me recall something. So I returned to my hometown Shunde, Guangdong several times to shoot and record over 60 Lords of the Soil in Lunjiao Town’s eastern and western villages. I want to explore how such a traditional Chinese folk belief roots geographically, becomes embedded in one’s memory, and shapes a population’s behavior."

A short film about Tay, a ladyboy, and his daily life, traveling to and from school, and silently touching up his makeup in front of the mirror.

What happens when 300 lesbians from around the world attend the largest United Nations conference? How did two busloads of lesbians headed to an underground nightclub help spark the birth of a lala (LBT) movement in China? At the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the first ever lesbian tent at an UN NGO Forum was created. Emerging from hidden shadows of shame and invisibility, Chinese lalas began a hard-fought path of deliverance from themselves, from family, and from an apprehensive environment. In doing so, they sought empowerment and change as they explored concepts and issues from self-affirmation to rights consciousness. The film powerfully moves forward to the present day and shows the drastic change in today’s young feminist lalas – their challenging of sexism and homophobia with daring public street actions on subways – a parallel action to their forerunners in 1995, with much vigor and defiance 20 years later.

This is a documentary about a 60-year-old man who is part of the first generation of Chinese rockers. After being sidelined for three years due to a stroke, he is now ready to compose again.

It is a visual record of long-lasting open wounds, Chinese medical progress, and the disappearance of memory. This documentary examines the current plight of a small group of elderly Chinese peasants who have been suffering from open wounds for over 70 years. The director visits some elderly surviving soldiers of Unit 731 – a WWII Japanese secret unit devoted to biological warfare.

A woman makes clothes in a basement but someone keeps interfering with her. She is angry but she doesn't know who she's being angry at. 'She' is actually a manikin and she's about to kidnap someone to ask for ransom money. The energetic and lively editing and sound are much alike Kim Gok and Kim Seon's previous work but their message to society is very direct and straightforward. The highlights of this movie are the unique narrative structure that twists the typical customs and the eccentric images.

On a hill overlooking the ocean in northern Japan is a telephone booth known as the "Phone of the Wind." It is connected to nowhere, but many people come to here to "call" their loved ones lost in the 2011 tsunami. The phone booth is in a private garden of a man who originally installed it to talk to his lost cousin.

In 1949, the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan. But some went into hiding, waiting in the jungles of northern Burma and Thailand for orders from Taiwan. President Chiang Kai-Shek told them to keep hiding out in the jungle and to wait until the time was ripe to “retake mainland China” from the communists. They ended up waiting for fifty years and became a lost army.

In 2009, a DNA test report that "does not rule out the possibility" turned Chen Longqi from a witness to a defendant. After he was found guilty, he began to flee, fearing that he would not be able to clear his grievances in prison. Fortunately, four years and thirty days later, he met a judge who was willing to investigate again, and finally changed the verdict to not guilty. But from guilty to innocent, what he saw in front of him was the ruin of his career, heavy debts, the mental panic of long-term escape and hiding, and many people who wanted his help and were also suffering from unjust cases...

A documentary on a Korean painter Lee Jungseob. After the Korean War broke out, Lee and his family left Wonsan to flee to Jeju. While his wife and sons stay in Tokyo, Lee settles in Busan by himself.

In 2008, I (Director), setting up a tent near the shore, started shooting the scene of Naeseong stream noticeably changed due to so-called The Four River Governmental Project. The natural circulation carrying the energy of living creatures for the last 100 million years suddenly cut off. Even worse, the sands shining like a gold, which once renowned as the rare beauty in the world, became desolated simply with dark pebbles.

Free market capitalism has not only effected the flow of capital but also the global migration of labor. Laborers cross national borders to “developed” or “developing” countries and take on low-paying job in the service sector. The growing number of international laborers and new immigrants, usually of various nations and ethnicity, has now begun to have certain impact on the host society. For example, in Taiwan, the lure if high income might subject them to the employer’s exploitations. And policy makers and employers rarely take into account their sense of displacement.

This feature-length documentary explores the origins and history of Noh theater in Japan. Noh theater is an ancient Japanese classical art-form: austere and highly mythological. For a very long time, it was only performed before aristocrats and the Imperial court. An evening of Noh drama will invariably include a tale of exile, a tale of tragic love, and a ghost story. Often the plays will contain all three. Like many other classical Japanese art-forms, even the stage scenery in Noh is sharply circumscribed and defined; a bridge, a platform and a pine tree must somewhere be in evidence. While the plays may last as long as in more accessible forms of theater, the dialogue in Noh plays is very slim. The stories move slowly and elegantly to their (usually tragic) conclusions, and are enacted with stunning elegance by actors who often wear masks.

Mr. Kanamori, a teacher of a 4th grade class, teaches his students not only how to be students, but how to live. He gives them lessons on teamwork, community, the importance of openness, how to cope, and the harm caused by bullying.

Steps from glittering Yeongdeungpo, Joseph Clinic has long served the marginalized. As redevelopment forces a move to Seoul Station, this film follows its final summer—the poignant farewells and a new beginning—reflecting on a place's memory and the hope that endures beyond it.

Gong Fenghai, an educated urban youth from Beijing and also a fervent supporter of Mao Zedong decided to heed Chairman Mao's call to go to the rural area of Yanan during the Cultural Revolution. Forty years later, 60 year-old Gong wants to return to Beijing and retire there. What greets him is a hometown that is at once familiar and yet strangely distant....

Structured around a dancer's routine, the film unfolds in four stages: hope, fear, anger, and longing for stability. It interweaves these emotions with those of locals of Matsu, the military, and first-time-visiting photographers from Taiwan island.

A documentary following the reconstruction of a district in Nagata Ward, Kobe after the Great Hanshin Earthquake

What did Monk Seongcheol leave for us? Numerous anecdotes left behind by monks such as Jangjwabulwa and Samcheonbae were talked about, and a large number of people flocked to Haeinsa Temple to see the sarira. What is the meaning of the thought of Ven. Seongcheol, who tried to set Buddhism right by valiantly and diligently saying that the middle should be moderate, to modern people? Learn about the pure life at Baekryeonam Hermitage, including the content and meaning of the Baekil Method, the spirit of not possessing anything, and the strict life that the Sangha University students were told not to sleep and study. The position of Venerable Seongcheol, who insisted that Buddhist purification should be done internally rather than externally, and introduces the process of systematizing Korean Buddhism.

As the world continues to come face to face with the consequences of decades of environmental degradation, Danny Kim’s documentary Zero Waste explores the ways that five individuals in South Korea have taken it upon themselves to create solutions to the country’s plastic waste problems, which has been exasperated by the global pandemic, and whether their efforts can be enough to make up for decades of neglect. Both sobering and uplifting, Zero Waste paints a portrait of both the magnitude of the problem, and the perseverance of those people willing to address them.

In 2018, Taiwan was kept busy by noises of the election, among which the process of restarting the coal-fired power plant in Shen’ao was the most controversial and eye-catching. I followed the diving and canoeing instructor, recorded the rose coral reef and searched for a rare species of mollusk, the Epimenia babai Salvini–Plawen, in the waters of the local conservation area, and explored the ecological truth of Silence at the bottom of Deep Shen’ao together.

My hometown, Niutoushan, Chiayi, used to abound with lotus roots. in the 1980s, able to bulk export to Japan and Hong Kong. For the villagers, digging for lotus roots equaled digging for gold. But the prosperous era has lost to history, the population has plunged from more than 100 households to only 27. The very few who are unwilling to break their connection to land insist on growing lotus roots and self-worth thereof. For the elders, their value is carried in their “eagle hands,” a mark of their lifelong hard work. As for the youth who choose to stay even though most of their peers turn to seek work in the city, they discover their merit along this journey features ups and downs, and the inevitable stagnation of traditional industry, the farmers persevere and continue to dig out their long-lost cultural values with their “eagle hands”.

Danse Macabre is a dance that explores deaths that are remembered and forgotten in history, including those of kings, citizens, and stateless people. In Thailand, many deaths were suspicious in nature over the past 90 years, but nobody dared to question them.

The first in Wang Haibing’s ‘Three Families’ trilogy (which also includes 1993’s Deep Mountain Boatman and 2000’s Days in the Mountains) -- all of which won the Sichuan International TV Festival “Golden Panda” award in their years of premiere.

YB BOX reveals the unique culture of Korean autonomous prefecture in Yanbian, Jilin Province, China. It narrates the journey and unforgettable experience of three young beatboxers as they travel from Yan Bian to Beijing and Shanghai to support one of the worldÂ’s top beatboxers, Killa Kela. Yan Bian is the capital of beatboxing in China. This relatively small city has a vibrant creative culture, where beatboxing, DJing, breaking and other forms of hip-hop thrive. While the main sounds are drum-beats, the masters can add a range of other sounds until a magical and unbelievable effect is created. Born in the 70s in New York, beatbox arrived in Yan Bian via the internet. Led by Gui Jing, the film shows how creative culture can emerge and grow in the most unexpected places and reveals the energy, curiosity and innovation of ChinaÂ’s youth.

The zone is a virtual space. People come to the zone and start talking about their solitude and loneliness.

Naoshi is a hale old man of 79 from the Kesen district of Iwate Prefecture who has spent his whole life working as a woodcutter and carpenter. When the tsunami hit in March 2011, the wooden beams of his house didn’t even warp after water reached the second floor, although his son was washed away and drowned in the flood. Naoshi is determined to rebuild his house in the exact same spot, to live out his days in the place he was born and continue to honour his son’s memory.

Time to Remove Superman It is fragmentarily a story of death and it can also be connected to the opposite - birth. When I did research for this work, what was really interesting was an article read that 'We came from dirt and we go back to dirt' is everywhere in all religions and philosophies of all cultures. And I found that sentence and thought over different things and I reached it was meant to be only that way. Regardless of primitive or modern society, religions or philosophies couldn't help but think human body is rotten away and it is cremated and made dirt. We know the process but we haven't seen that. I thought it would be meaningful if I made that out to show. We've watched a mummy disappearing in a movie using CG but I thought I could visually display a message that things we cherished or in which knowledge was contained were made dirt or on the other way, they had been dirt before they came to us.

With a camera and one simple question, the Chinese filmmaker Liu Wei heads for the University of Beijing and Tiananmen Square. "Do you know what day it is today?" he asks passers-by, mainly students and young people. "June 4th, 2005," most people answer correctly, but many of them already guess where the conversation is leading. This is the 16th anniversary of the student uprising at Tiananmen Square, which was bloodily quashed by the government.

The filming of the movie began in 2016, starting at the closing ceremony of "indiePlay China Indie Games Competition". The movie focuses on independent game developers, some of whom won the prize at the ceremony while others didn't, and their dissimilar life experiences afterwards: disbanded or reorganized, bankruptcy or fortune, achieved hilarious comeback or withdrew from public. They all once dedicated to make games they love, but their future varies on their thoughts.

Considered as the first of its category and still being held event, Beijing Queer Film Festival is the only community-based non-governmental film festival with a special focus on gender and sexuality in China. As LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) issues remain politically sensitive, in addition to China’s strict media censorship, the film festival has encountered enormous difficulties in its development. During the past ten years, the festival venue has shifted from the western suburb of the city to the eastern suburb of the city, and from the city to the countryside. In 2011 it went back to the city and took the strategies of the ‘guerilla warfare’ because of government intervention and censorship. Based on the footages recorded and collected by each year’s organization committee, the film interviewed the committee members and let them tell the stories of the festival and of themselves.

A Sony a7IV cinematic exploring the many faces of Japan. From the ancient culture in Kyoto to the vibrant city streets in Tokyo and Osaka. This short film was shot with the Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 in 4K with SLOG3 and some post video stabilization.

National Route 6, or ‘Rokkoku,’ runs from Tokyo to Miyagi via Chiba, Ibaraki, and Fukushima prefectures. After the nuclear incident, residents were forced to evacuate from some areas. The film turns its camera on daily life and ways of living in towns along the Rokkoku—such as Okuma, Futaba, and Minamisoma—approaching the subject through the lens of food.

7 years after the Handover, 7 Hong Kong filmmakers expressed their love and concern about gay, lesbian and bi-sexual. Let’s talk about love and desire, as well as sex and gender through drama, documentary, experimental short and animation.

The director, who works as a contract worker at a major corporation, wants to become a permanent employee. One day she discovers an apple tree in front of the company building. She observes its growth day by day, and after four months of watching, she decides to secretly pick an apple, ripe and crimson, and take a bite. Why did she do it?

Shixue back to 9th Chemi, this is a three-line factory. For her, the factory is like her Disneyland, and the theme of this Disney is socialist industrialization. This Disney is about to disappear. What will be left?

From far up, humans look like ants. Or like a virus, driven by consumption and mass production, attacking the earth's resources.

Jinguashih and Jiufen were once the biggest gold mining towns in Taiwan. As the collectors and amateur artists later came to this place, a community is gradually growing.

Back in her family home, Wenqian Zhang settles in with her camera. A Long Journey Home tells the story of this cohabitation via a relational and temporal journey that stirs up emotions while challenging contemporary China’s “making a family” from the inside. This is a brilliant quest for emancipation seeking a place among one’s own people.

With splendid 3D images, this movie will get you closer to the true features of Mt. Tai, "Most Revered of the Five Sacred Mountains", the symbol of Chinese spirit.

HUNG Chun-hsiu spent seven years filming three residents of Kinmen island: an owner of a local photography shop, a retired officer and a Chinese woman from Sichuan province who came to Kinmen with the hope for a better future. Using photographs and archival materials, HUNG explores the personal stories of three residents and how they reflect upon the upheavals between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

On the 16th of February 2002, the DPRK celebrated the 60th Birthday of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. The mass gymnastic display titled “under banner of army-based policy” was given by 10,000 school youth and children at the Pyongyang Indoor Stadium.

Charged with violation of the Water Act, the indigenous community living under the San-ying Bridge was forced to witness their shelters and homes being torn down by the government every year, while the sand and gravel processing plant on the east bank grew larger and larger; the garbage mountain on the west bank higher and higher. This absurd cycle became so familiar that the children of the community began to build and demolish make-believe houses as a game.

Two young Chinese women draw themselves into an irreconcilable relationship with each other, one in a small town of Southwestern China, and the other in an old apartment in Toronto.