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In 1972 a Chinese archaeological dig excavated the tomb of a woman who had been buried for 2,100 years. The body was so well preserved that many different scientific teams were requested to dissect and examine it to determine what it could reveal about ancient Chinese civilization.

A documentary of 24th April, 1970 assassination of Chiang Ching-kuo.

Ma Yanwei, a master of ecology, and his wife Li Bei, a returnee, two sons, and a dog rented several hundred acres of land on the edge of the desert, hoping to improve the soil through ecological agriculture, slow down desertification, and protect the ecology. The arrival of the seagulls is like a mirror, but also like a sharp blade that pierces the bright moon that Yanwei raised for Li Bei over the long field in the sand sea.

This film is the second segment of my “Autobiography Series.” From the moment when my mother disclosed a long kept secret, my birth was accompanied by many struggles for my mother. Those “struggles” include: during pregnancy, “should this child be kept,” to the painful struggles in the delivery process. Struggles have also accompanied since I was born, becoming part of my life.

This documentary film recounts Dr. Sun Lizhe's remarkable experience as a barefoot doctor in rural China and offers a glimpse of China's healthcare condition during and shortly after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Described as "Chinese Dr. Zhivago" in the film, Sun's distinguished life began from his decision to become a "barefoot doctor" when he was an 18-year-old educated youth from Beijing sent down to the countryside. He had since saved numerous lives by performing difficult surgery when emergency situations arose. For example, he once manually removed a placenta from a peasant women's uterus during her placental dystocia. In villages where medical resources were extremely limited, Sun devoted himself to the healthcare of peasants, performing more than 3000 operations in the cave dwellings of Shaanxi province. In 1974 he was selected by Chairman Mao as one of China's five model "educated youths."

This is a documentary about coal miners. In the Qilian mountains of Qinghai Province, where the altitude is over 3,600 meters and the air thin, there are numerous small coal mines in which work around 200 miners aged 17 to 50. Every day, they must crawl through pits 60 to 70 metres deep just to carry out 30 loads of coal. Each load weighs 50 kilograms. The miners earn 500 yuan a month, without insurance. Miners normally suffer from pneumoconiosis after working four or five years in the mine and cannot work thereafter. They usually spend their wages on building houses, marriage, and tuition fees for their children. If they die in an accident, their family receives a 5,000 yuan pension. This film is a record of these working conditions, and of human labour. (Shot June 1995.)

Wang Keqin was a reporter who dared to expose corrupt officialdom. Because his articles directly exposed stock market corruption and local government brutality to the public, people threatened to pay 500,000 yuan for his head. This attracted the attention of Premier Zhu Rongji. Wang was instructed to employ protection. This film documents Wang Keqin's interview experience in Min County, Gansu Province. Wang Keqin once wrote reports about officials oppressing the people there, which received widespread attention, so the cadres were brought to justice. The general public increased their legal awareness as a result of this incident, which also resulted in challenges to township governance. In the days that followed, the farmers who defended their rights continued to experience retaliation from the village cadres, and they kept calling Wang Keqin about their experiences.

Langfang, about 40 kilometers from Beijing, is one of the most air-polluted cities in China. But at the local environmental protection bureau, deputy chief Li and his assistant Hu are working hard to change this.

A Day of Trans is a groundbreaking, intimate look into the lives of four individuals – across three generations set against the backdrop of China's rise on the global stage. The short documentary film explores their lived experiences, professional career paths, community involvement, social barriers, and their unique approaches to life as transgender individuals across the generations.

Nana Xu travels to the place built by her father as a prisoner during the Cultural Revolution: first a work camp, later a prison, fruit farm and treatment centre. Conversations with last remaining witnesses, where home is still shaped by a repressed past.

A girl loses her sense of smell at a very young age. In a distant land, she meets an elderly woman who sells gardenia bracelets. In that faraway place, the girl recovers her ability to smell.

It is the director's second documentary of "my village" series since she got involved with the "Folk Memory Project". She returned to her hometown to shoot footage, recording the realities she encountered in her search for memories. Her biggest question is: after experiencing the disaster of the tragic famine fifty years ago, the villagers now are not short of food, and are living a better life than before, but is the spirit of this village still starving?

In the sound of rice huller, the rice falls to the jar; and in the booming sound of thunder, the rain drops falldown on the ground. Witha shovel on shoulder, we're farming under the sky. -- This is a children's folk rhymes used to be very popular among the Hakka people lived in the westernpart of Fujian Province, China. While farming is not an easy work, rice hulling is an even more laborious work. Rice-huller is a tool used by the peasants in southern China to hull the rice for thousands of years in theirfarming history. This documentary films the making of probably the last rice-huller ever made by mankind.

A cable system designed by controversial Chinese company Huawei Technologies enables communication between an expert and a machine. Time succumbs to space in a "New Cold War" played out in technological materials.

The legendary life of Ye Jiaying (1924-), a master of Chinese classical poetry. She went through war, political persecution, and wandering overseas all her life. She returned to China after the reform and opening up in her later years, and continued to create and inherit teaching, which was the lifeblood of classical poetry interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. The film interweaves Ye Jiaying's personal life with Chinese classical poetry for thousands of years, showing the significance track of her seeking existence in the long river of poetry. "Du Fu's Eight Episodes of Qiuxing" is the most important research masterpiece in Ye Jiaying. The eight poems of Qiuxing depict the rise and fall of China's prosperous Tang Dynasty. This film uses this as a metaphor for the turbulent years experienced by Mr. Ye, and invites musician Sato Congming to create film music based on the eight poems of Qiuxing, combining elegant music and modern music, bringing new life to Du Fu's poetry.

Shenzhen River (the border btw Hong Kong and Shenzhen), and the Second Line of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (the border between Socialism China and Capitalism China) were compared to the Berlin Wall. The Second Line were constructed June 1982, demolished June 2015. The First Line (Shenzhen River) still flows, running deeper and deeper after 1997. Artist Miaoyuan LONG and Zen LU (the ON/OFF media Group) documented major checkpoints along these two boundaries. It’s a piece to illustrate the Big Escape (Touch Base Policy) from mainland China to Hong Kong during 1950-70’s and the geopolitical history of Shenzhen. The 48min audio-visual live performance version was Official selection of Draft Systems 2017 WRO Media Art Biennale, Poland.

This film tells the story of the translator Wang Tiesheng. Before 1949, Wang graduated from Tongji University in Shanghai. He was a student with good morals, intelligence and health. He then served as an assistant professor in the Economics Department of Renmin University. However, he was labelled a “Rightist” in 1957 and was sent to a farm in Tianjin to undertake forced labour. There, he underwent extreme humiliating “reform” and suffered starvation. Later, on a bumpy road as he was being sent to be buried, he miraculously discovered that he was actually alive.

To find the hometown in his memories, Zhu Xin tries to restore a Song Dynasty poem from a millennia ago, setting off a journey across time and space.

It is going downhill for the social environment, and with that development the proportion of the population that is infertile is growing. Due to low fertility rates, the Chinese government has reformed its policy in this area. In the past decade, this has, among other things, affected one of the largest IVF centers in China.

The village elders of Long Bow recount tales of famine, drought, disease, and exploitation before explicating various shifts in the political line - from the land reforms of 1949 and the collectivization of the early 50s, through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the current Four Modernizations.

An independent film director visits his family's home in Taiyuan, where he discusses love, marriage, and family with his mother and shows Pasolini's DECAMERON to his father. He returns to Beijing after the Chinese New Year celebrations and pursues sex and love.

In rural China, the job of enforcing the Communist Party's one-child policy falls on government bureaucrats tasked with imposing fines, birth control, and forced sterilizations. Xu Huijing documents this process in his native village of Ma, following the tenacious efforts of the local birth control chief during an increased sterilization quota period, revealing the absurd and tragic local consequences of high-level government policy. (Chicago International Film Festival)

While in the process of making this documentary, I intended to use the words of Alexander Grothendieck—"Every one of us has the chance to rediscover exactly what it means to discover"—as the epigraph, but I finally gave it up. I don't feel like I understand the precise meaning of this sentence, but I've always been eager to understand it. -Li Hongqi

The first short documentary Jiang Yue made for the Oriental Time • Living Space program, about old men swimming in Houhai, Beijing.

A group of Miao minority Christians live in Maidichong, a small village in a remote mountain area in Yunnan Province. Christianity was brought to them by an English missionary called Samuel Pollard in 1903. Pollard created the Miao script for these villagers and translated the Bible into their language. For years, singing hymns and the gospels have brought joy to these Miao, and carried them though hard time, including the Cultural Revolution. At that time, they were forced to renounce their faith for Communism. Memories of this period remain strong among the villagers, but today, the holy songs once again reverberate through Maidichong, as the villagers’ belief in divine grace never truly disappeared.

Early film by Cui Zi’en.

A film crew follows underground punks through Communist China in the year of the Olympics.

Treatment is one of two films Wu Wenguang released in 2010 after a 5-year absence. The film deals with Wu’s memories of his deceased mother and his search for emotional healing.

On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its unconditional surrender. Allied senior generals held at the Advanced Prisoner of War Camp in Liaoyuan were successfully rescued, including U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright, who had been captured by the Japanese army. Narrated mainly through Wainwright’s recollections, this film faithfully reproduces that period of history as well as the horrific Bataan Death March.

After bidding farewell to her career following an injury, National paragliding champion GU Ying journeys to the uninhabited areas of Hoh Xil on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau to film wildlife. Over ten years of working deep on the plateau, she documents both the beauty and harshness of the land, capturing the conflict and coexistence between humans and wildlife. She also becomes a part of this land.

In November 2022, the lockdown measures in Wuhan city became increasingly strict. A group of trailer workers dragged their carts through the metal barriers. This absurd game seemed endless, but an unexpected protest changed everything.

This film presents various appearances and performances of events and people, aired on television and internet, and various reports, criticisms, describes and topics in 2008. All these were happened around us, everybody has their own opinions, viewpoints and judgments. The year 2008 has past already, but those events are still happening every day. Every day is a version of yesterday. It seems like the year of 2008 will never ended.

In August 2014, Ai Weiwei was invited as one of the participating artists for the Fukushima Nuclear Zone by the Japanese art coalition Chim↑Pom, as part of the project "Don't Follow the Wind". Ai accepted the invitation and sent his assistant Ma Yan to the exclusion zone in Japan to investigate the site. Ai brought about two projects, "A Ray of Hope" and "Family Album" after analyzing materials and information generated from the site.

Recounts the struggle of the villagers of Taishi against local authorities in 2005.

Pomegranate, the city flower of Xi'an, was introduced to China from Iran during the Han Dynasty. Based on the pomegranate, this documentary shows a deep reflection on the intrinsic connection between the two cities of Xi'an, China and Isfahan, Iran, through the perspectives of an Iranian professor of history and a Chinese documentary filmmaker. At the intersection of tradition and modernity, it links the historical heritage and spiritual commonalities between China and Iran, and deepens the understanding of the history and modernity of the two cities from a new perspective.

CHINESE DREAM is an episodic documentary, set in an African milieu of Guangzhou, China. For the first time in its history China becomes an immigration goal. In 2018 about 300.000 immigrants from numerous African countries live in China. The protagonists of CHINESE DREAM are Chinese from different social classes and occupations who interact with them on a daily basis. CHINESE DREAM shows how ordinary Chinese citizens see immigration from the African continent.

Alan Zhang's film delves into the journey of Beibei, a young woman grappling with societal expectations amidst the COVID-19 epidemic. As Beibei navigates the complexities of life, marriage, and her roles as a wife, mother, and daughter, the film provocatively questions the constraints of conventional gender roles. The film immerses us in the life of Beibei, who refuses to let her identity be defined by others, who demands the right to find out for herself who she is and what she wants. Moving from city to city and from lover to lover, she defies society’s expectations of what a woman should do and be. Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, the film boldly challenges traditional gender expectations, showcasing the struggles and triumphs of emancipated women like Beibei.

The story is that of Taiwan’s history, revisited through a man, Mo-lin Wang, founder of the Taiwan Artist Theatre. The film is made up of two alternating scenes composed of two visual and narrative registers.

After "Old Tang Tou", Xu Tong continued to film the family of Old Tang Tou's son, Tang Laosan, in Northeast China. Tang Laosan was sent to prison for a murder case, and Tang Laosan's son, Xiaobao, unexpectedly encountered such a change in the year of his high school entrance exams, which made the fates of father and son both unpredictable.

At the beginning of 2020, the new corona virus epidemic broke out. On January 23, Wuhan city went into a lockdown. 9 million people in Wuhan, together with front-line personnel from medical systems and other industries across the country, started the fight against the corona virus in Wuhan! The content of "Wuhan Day and Night" comes from the thousands of hours of material that more than 30 local photographers in Wuhan have been shooting for several months on the front line of the fight against the epidemic since the beginning of the epidemic. The film takes the medical staff and patients in the intensive care unit of the hospital as the main line, and the volunteers who transport pregnant women late at night as the auxiliary line, showing the touching stories of fighting against the epidemic.

In this vivid portrait of China's musical heritage, Sichuan Opera performers strive to keep a centuries-old artform alive. After thriving for 300 years, Sichuan Opera is an endangered art form. Having survived the Cultural Revolution, state-sponsored opera troupes now face extinction in the era of private enterprise. Opera master Li Baoting began his career at eight, but now performs pop songs with showgirls in cheap bars. His colleague Wang Bin performs in travelling tents, trying to resist the massive cultural changes threatening to wipe out this artform.

Into the Island is the first chapter of Groundwork, a three-part film and exhibition series exploring the conceptual development and field research of contemporary architects cultivating alternative modes of engagement with new project sites.

A visual diary of a short trip to the Fishing City of Hechuan, China. An elementary school teacher tells her students her impressions of that distant place she visited and the people she met. One of them is the poet Lin, who tells her about the history of this place through stories and legends.

Beijing is a city of endless noise, the roar of construction and gridlocked traffic never too far off. The capital is also home to a flourishing experimental music scene, where young Chinese respond to their surroundings with a cathartic racket. Howling into Harmony takes an intimate look at the lives of three local musicians and their parents, exploring the delicate balance between rock n' roll rebelliousness and family, Westernized culture and deeply-rooted nationalism. Using underground music as an entry point, the film explores the world of young Chinese in the big city.

Peasants that were targeted as counter-revolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution in China share their stories in this documentary by Xu Xing.

An exploration of the soul of a city, made for the Turin City Government in the occasion of the “European Union Inter-Government Meeting”.

Shot over 14 months, this film records the everyday lives of children at a boarding kindergarten in Wuhan, Hubei Province. It shows how they experience an education overburdened with social and historical background. It catches their moments of laughter and happiness, their struggles against setbacks that they do not always understand, their thoughts about issues that arise both in their own and in the adult world. It is a film that makes everyone laugh, but the naivety of the children is always shown from their own perspective. Deep insights are embedded in the seemingly light-hearted scenes and not only about childhood. For the film is also a metaphor for the adult world. As the opening line of the film says: "They are our children, but maybe they are us ourselves."

San Yuan Li, the collaborative project by Ou Ning, Cao Fei, and the members of U-thèque Organization, is a case study of the typical “urban village” phenomenon of Guangzhou in 1990s. Armed with video cameras, the crew penetrated San Yuan Li as “city flâneurs,” presented a highly stylized portrait of the village, attempting to rethink the debt of history, to document the confrontation and reconciliation between the newly urbanization and the patriarchal-clan-based traditional community, as well as the weird architectures and cultural landscape emerging from this previously rural area. At the end, all the colored footages were eidted into a piece of black-and-white video poetry. The project was exhibited in the 50th Venice Biennale for the first time, and then screened worldwide.

The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes.

In the summer of 2019, 18-year-old Wang Yuan released his first solo album, which he co-wrote, and also held his first solo concert. Then he stepped off the stage, packed his bags and flew across the ocean to study at Berklee College of Music, alone. It was a summer of turning around, a momentous decision.