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Two families in Awat County, southern Xinjiang, China, the Uyghur family of Aierken and the Han family of Guan Xiaoyan, make a living by growing cotton. During the busy cotton picking season, they encountered various unexpected situations such as difficulty in finding harvesting hands, injuries, and continuous rain. But with the concerted efforts of their respective family members, the year's hard work of the two families finally paid off satisfactorily. This film uses the shooting and narrative style of real movies, with the connection of local folk songs and music, as well as the exotic audio-visual language, to show the real life texture and simple family values of Xinjiang cotton farmers in an idyllic way.

This film cross-cut the "Odessa Steps" chapter from the famous war movie "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) and the actual footage of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in 2022. It uses a 21st-century "Montage d'Attraction" to explore The circle of history, the contradictions of civilization, and the crisis of life.

Legendary Peking Opera master, Yuling Fang, emigrates to New York where he works in a nail salon. Realizing there is no one to inherit his legendary skills, he decides to mount an amateur production in order to keep alive the vanishing world he loves.

Part Three: TO TASTE 100 HERBS - Dr Shen Fasheng discusses his Catholic religion, medical ethics, rural health services, centuries-old knowledge of herbal treatments and Western medical practices. The warmth, closeness and traditions of family life in China are wonderfully captured in scenes of prayer, play, chores and celebrations.

Nightingale, Not the Only Voice follows the lives of three artists, including the film’s director, on their shared journey through real and psychological oppression to self-discovery. Tang Danhong examines her past—particularly her relationship with her parents—and looks at the painful, formative moments that inform her current psychological state, her life, and her art.

Hanqi and her friends drift through the suburban area of Hangzhou. Strolling through the concrete and neon-lit landscape of the city, they experience the transformations it undergoes daily. As they drift night after night, they become the living interface of a metamorphosis that cannot be perceived or understood if not by becoming part of it. Thus, Hanqi and her friends catch fleeting glimpses of beauty in an environment that most people would only perceive as alienating, hostile or cold. Like an ambient composition by Brian Eno or Philip Glass, the film moves through minimal variations, completely immersed in its nocturnal beat. Space becomes time.

The Over the Rainbow project initiated by Shenzhen Songhe Growth-caring Foundation, along with some music professors in Yunnan or around China, went to some minority areas to guide local children' s chorus . On July 22, 2016, among 16 minority areas children's chorus the sponsored by the Songhe Foundation, over three hundred minority music teachers and children have performed their wonderful music with national characteristics for domestic and overseas audiences in Yunnan.

Ji Dan’s documentary about the daughters of a dirt-poor family living among Beijing scrap heaps, and their ferocious determination to get an education, is exhilarating, heart breaking, life affirming, shocking, despairing and ecstatic, all at once.

Since his wife left him, Jun has been a wandering soul who wonders what purpose all his suffering serves. In a simple farming village surrounded by barren hills, he takes care of a small temple. He looks at his hands: his right is blessed, and his left is deformed. He believes he has healing abilities and goes from house to house to help the sick. As the seasons pass, this gently-paced portrait of the wandering Jun is interwoven with impressions of village life, with its rituals and festivals, and poverty that makes many people desperate, and some defiant. Two sheep, destined to be sacrificed, add a grimly poetic note to this uncompromising and moving meditation on fate and the search for meaning. The body cam worn by one of the sheep also makes for some surprising shots. Meanwhile, Jun’s musings gradually reveal more about the crises he has had to endure and the reason for his self-sacrifice.

The soul is like the wind, and the wind is in the mountains. Walk into the no-man 's land and say farewell to the regretful past...

This documentary retraces the memories of dozens of individuals, exploring themes such as childhood, love and marriage, survival, faith, illness, and death. It serves as a visual taxonomy of memory.

Elke Marhöfer's observational essay takes its title from a Korean Pansori song. One of three musical interludes performed in the film, this song tells the story of a turtle locked in a futile circle of evasion with a hungry tiger. Marhöfer's film is concerned with the formal attributes of Pansori music – its traditions of storytelling and the transmittance of an alternative knowledge. The film journeys through natural landscapes, small town streets, forested mountains and busy shipping channels as it looks at the divide between the traditional and the modern. Shot in 16mm, this measured and lyrical film is an exploration into the boundaries between humans, animals and things.

A young Chinese woman living in the United States is waiting for the results of the visa lottery. This time becomes a period of reflection for her, as she is visited by the memories of family banquets prepared by her grandmother, together with the ghosts of the past. In this enchanting journey through time, noodles take on a Proustian flavour.

With his camera hidden in the back of a Beijing taxi, director Fan Jian manages to overhear the daily conversations between driver and passengers. In the cramped space of the car, customers share their secrets, their hopes, their conjectures about the future, and sometimes even offer advice to the driver.

Three sisters aged 10, 6 and 4 have to cope more or less on their own in a remote mountainous region of Yunnan. Terrible poverty in China, shown with gripping compassion by today's best documentary maker. Shorter version of Three Sisters, which premiered in Venice.

XIONG,Jie-feng is naive but not easily-influenced. Different from other Chinese young people who prefer working in the cities, XIONG decided to go back to his hometown, Pingzhai Village in Yunnan Province, and started to plant the "Red Rice Seed," a kind of ancient species. The so-called organic agriculture has had an age-old tradition in China. The skills have been passed from generation to generation. This is the major reason why farmers connect to the land both historically and emotionally. The "Red Rice Seed" can only be planted in a traditional and organic way. If the plantation was to succeed, the problems resulted from scientific fertilizers and the overuse of chemicals since the 20th century can all be resolved.

25 years ago, American author Bill Porter (a.k.a. Red Pine) went to the Zhongnan Mountains to seek out modern Chinese hermits. His resulting book, Road to Heaven, was a touchstone for many westerners wondering what remained of Buddhist and Daoist asceticism in China. Now, for the first time, Bill Porter revisits Zhongnan to seek out those who seek from within, living quiet lives of deep devotion in some of the world's most stunning locales.

Twenty plus classmates look back into the past, tracing back through a 30 year history. One after another adapts to the random events that come to shape their lives, to the four seasons of life and nature. The years they were about experience coincided with the reforms and opening up of China. Floating in the changes of the new era, some experience compromises and the loss of ideals, whilst some keep struggling ahead with great determination. Thirty years later, Lin Xin encounters his old classmates, and records their individual lives and history; the ease of monotony, the loneliness of success, the weariness of a life of plentiful, the helplessness of poverty... all come forth in the lives of these group of people, becoming an epitome of the lives of ordinary people in small to middle-sized cities in this era, and at the same time reflecting on a generation that advances forward undefeated.

What is real and what isn’t in a replicated city? Ella Raidel made this penetrating ghost-town film in contemporary China, interweaving actors and ordinary people, sets and footage of the city. Aren’t the real estate agents, construction workers and investors simply playing a game? What remains of reality in a world dominated by the vagaries of capitalism? A Pile of Ghosts is a mysterious puzzle where the dividing line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred. In this strange world, subjected to speculation, it actually doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

By the end of 20th century, the political system in rural China was evolving towards “democratic” autonomy at the village level. This was after having undergone the countryside gentleman’s administration system, the baojia system, the local autonomy system, the people’s commune system, and the household contract responsibility system respectively over the past centuries and millennia. It was winter during the Year of the Tiger when the revised Villager’s Committee Organization Law was issued. Three thousand villagers of Dong Puo Village voluntarily elected village representatives to select the candidate for the Villager Committee. This film depicts a village in western China as a single case study, adopting the method of observing and recording events over a three year period. The film reflects the unique course of “democratic” autonomy that several hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers have encountered in the complex environment of rural politics, economy, and culture.

West Estate spotlights the severe housing problems in Hong Kong, taking the spirit of resistance outside of the protest. The damaged walls in the cage-like tenements reflect the many forms of social injustice as well as Hongkongers’ widespread sense of rootlessness. Connecting three stories from different households like puzzle pieces, the film depicts people’s despair over issues of family, sexuality, love, and freedom.

After failing to find her place in the city, Jialing returns to her borderland hometown and takes up work again in a rundown nightclub. As she tries to rebuild her life, her estranged father reappears, hoping to reconnect before the holidays.

PAN Zhaode, a rural youth living in the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, immerses himself in the work at a local distillery with enthusiasm and hope. Balancing family and work is the greatest challenge he currently faces. He travels daily between the factory and his home while also frequently visiting mental hospitals and clinics. His aging elderly father, his memory loss-afflicted mother, his wife who has left him, and his two young daughters form the reality he must confront. The cracks in personal destiny and the growing pains of social development intertwine. How will this ordinary rural youth face his limitations and adapt to the changes in his external environment?

Luo Fuxing is the ‘godfather’ of Shamate, an alternative Chinese subcultural movement. Two decades into his career he takes on a new challenge: theatre.

A hybrid documentary blending dramatized reenactments and real-life interviews, exploring the revitalization of rural Fujian through the lens of the "Elderly Learning Centers," highlighting cultural inheritance and community empowerment.

A poet’s return to his decrepit hometown turns into a carnival of absurdity with equal parts filth, irreverence and melancholy.

A portrait of the director's home village in Baiyin province. The people of the village have been isolated for years and are finally forced to vacate for the construction of the West-East Gas Pipeline.

In Hainan, there is a Guanyin Temple. The Guanyin in the temple decided to make a movie based on her personal experience. Two friends and I planned to make a documentary Guanyin Also Make Movies built from this event. Gradually, the act of us shooting the documentary, starting to echo with the act of Guanyin making the movie. To every single person, the image has its own unique significance. Therefore, we also turned the camera to ourselves, deriving Three Men Who Made a Movie Named Guanyin Also Make Movies Also Made a Movie from Guanyin Also Make Movies.

In the hilly city of Chongqing, a painter searches for the old apartment where he and his parents used to live. He asks local residents for directions, walks through narrow passages between buildings, and calls his 90-year-old mother for confirmation. But the city has changed beyond recognition. Behind the camera, his daughter documents his journey.

The Muyu Middle School in Muyu, Qingchuan County, Sichuan, collapsed in the 512 Wenchuan earthquake, killing 286 students according to official statistics; but the actual death toll is not just that. The director Pan Jianlin, who has been in the area since the sixth day after the earthquake, uses interviews to contrast the different perspectives and statements of the students who escaped the disaster, the teachers who are afraid of taking responsibility, the parents who are desperate, the government officials who are hiding the facts to maintain the government's image, and the rescue workers who are on the run, creating a ridiculous tragedy that is like a Rashomon.

An idealistic, young journalist in Beijing profiles China's biggest real estate speculator. Their divergent life experiences and clashing values challenge the journalist’s worldview, revealing deep generational and societal changes happening in the country.

Through text, researcher-writer Alexandra David-Néel’s journey across the Himalayas a century ago unfolds via her letters home—seeking answers in a world fractured by colonial entanglements, wars, and human ferocity. In audiovisual spaces, the filmmaker's experiences in eastern Tibet are reflected via her own lens and those of native Tibetan people. What begins through her encounter with a legendary school in the region becomes, by the film’s completion, an elegy — as violence eclipses “history”, yet fails to erase memory. Meandering between past and present, the work invites viewers into a meditative space open to contemplations on life, death, history, remembrance, the self, and more.

Kang Mao is the lead singer of Chinese punk rock band SUBS. She's a prominent figure in China's burgeoning rock scene and uses music in her fight for freedom of expression. This intimate portrait of an extraordinarily brave woman gives us a rare glimpse into a society where rock music is silenced by censorship and bans. SUBS travel to Norway but getting the audience to engage with their message is no simple matter.

Memories from red guards, three Chongqing people and one cemetery.

This film is about China's first completely volunteer run rural school. The school, situated in Woyanglu of Anhui province, consists of one hundred volunteer instructors. Each volunteer has given up the security of a steady job and the material comforts of city life to become rural teachers. Their altruistic mission is carried out independent of all authorities.

Set in Taiwan and Hawaiʻi, territories where languages of the Austronesian family are spoken, this documentary focuses on the questions, desires and challenges of young indigenous peoples to learn the languages of their forebears— languages that are endangered or facing extinction.

Educational documentary film produced in 1989.

A ordinary village in Jiangxi Province, is the hometown of the director. The youth are heading for the city, the author is anxious of his hometown to be changed too dramatically in the coming days. He records down the precious shots of the villages in its four seasons, and then turns to those youth struggling in the city: their worries, their joys and their missing of the hometown. In the film, the author tries to explore the meaning of hometown for those being forced to look for new chance in the city by the market, although his story is not ending......

With Chinese society rapidly changing around her, one young mother finds it is not so easy to bring ancient ways into her modern family.

Produced and broadcast by China Media Group, this series adopts an international perspective to showcase the dramatic changes in the lives of ordinary Tibetan families across education, economy, healthcare, and cultural heritage. It vividly presents the transformations of Xizang Autonomous Region over 60 years, particularly since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, countering external false narratives. The series has received awards from the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union.

In a Manhattan apartment in New York, there lived a 96-year-old solitary elderly person, Gao Yaojie. Seen as the first grassroots AIDS activist in China, Gao was forced to flee to the United States from China at the age of 82. The elderly woman’s long and tumultuous life mirrors the turbulent modern history of China. The film documents the lonely last three months of Gao Yaojie’s life. On 10 December 2023, Gao Yaojie passed away in New York.

Starting from the children’s party where Zhang Shengjia celebrated his ninth birthday at a KFC fast food restaurant in 2006, the Chinese artist and filmmaker’s essayistic archive film unfolds a cheerful cultural history of the birthday cake from a Chinese perspective. The convention reached China from Western Europe and North America in the early 20th century and merged with local birthday traditions. The constantly growing influence of Western consumer culture since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of the 1980s was exemplified in 1990 when almost 13,000 customers were registered on the opening day of the country’s very first McDonald’s restaurant in Shenzhen.

Rise of a man from the lower castes of society to become a "Big Brother", managing prostitution and gambling businesses.

In a Chinese prison yard every week, Ding Yu, a beautiful TV journalist sits face to face with a convicted criminal. They discuss his crime, his kids, his hopes, his ambitions. Her camera crew captures it all. But these are no ordinary prisoners, shortly after their interview, they are executed. This is the story of a remarkable woman and her equally remarkable TV series, "Interviews Before Execution".

Huang Da-wang , an extravaganza from Taiwan sound/ performance art scene, is also known as Black Wolf or Yingfan-Psalmanazar. He has developed a distinctive style of improvisation and electronic noise, and has a unique performance - the "Black Wolf Nakashi" show. This film follows him in the city, from sound to body, from bedroom to ruins.

Ten years ago, while my dad was suffering from depression, my mom hid all the truth from me. Years later, she entered a marriage again, and I found that she gradually became happier, and the void created by Dad’s death seemed to only trap me. So, with a little anger and a lot of confusion, I began to try to talk to her.