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Tibetan Woman's life

Sgrolmamtsho is a peasant woman of 35 who lives in an impoverished agricultural community in the Tibetan province of Amdo. When she got married in 1993, she was only 21 and had no experience of work. Through following her daily life, the film aims to show what traditional working life is like for peasant Tibetan women. It shows them fetching water, feeding livestock, milking, cleaning the stables, cooking, household religious activity, weeding fields, transporting manure to the fields and fetching wood for fuel. The images are supported by a commentary by Sgrolmamtsho about her life and her family.

Tibetan Woman's life

NR 2006
Dr. Zhang

The protagonist of the film "Dr. Zhang" often appears in various media. After being forced to drop out of school during the Cultural Revolution in 1966, he studied by himself in a factory in Chongqing for 17 years, and attended the "Foreign Language Department of Sichuan University" in Chengdu for 17 years, in order to realize his childhood dream of "going to Russia as a translator". During this period, he struggled to make a living by cleaning the university cafeteria, and lived in a hut with limestone under the stands of the school playground. In 2002, the "Sichuan Provincial Department of Agriculture" began to select some Russian-speaking students in the "Sichuan University Foreign Languages ​​Department" to go to Russia to do translations in the form of labor export. "Dr. Zhang", who is almost 50 years old, began to contact the "Sichuan Provincial Department of Agriculture" after hearing the news.

Dr. Zhang

NR 2005
The First Line of China

Haunted by post-socialist nostalgia, 25-year-old director Hanwen Zhang returns to the cement-factory town in northeast China in which he was born and raised. The town’s official name is Sheep Pen Town, in the Shuangyang District of Changchun City, Jilin Province. People don’t really use this name, but currently refer to it as ‘the cement factory’. According to oral history, the town was known in the 1990s as ‘the first line of China’. Throughout the film, the director explores this clue to reveal a half-buried story. The town was a product of China’s rapid and radical industrialisation in the 1980s, having been constructed simultaneously with a state-owned cement factory to house the workers who migrated there. With a subtle irony and a nuanced but brave approach, Hanwen explores the history of his country and its ideology through the lenses of his own family and hometown.

The First Line of China

NR 2019
The Legend of Shaw Brothers

Shaw Yifu founded Shaw Brothers (HK), Ltd. in 1958 as the largest private studio in the world at that time called Shaw Brothers and nicknamed the Oriental Hollywood. It established a complete and mature film production marketing system which continuously enriched and perfected its practices to achieve great success. Li Hanxiang developed Huangmei Opera Film and other historical plays. King Hu created the New Ancient Swordsman Film. Chang Cheh created the first film over a million box office record. And Jia Tang and Lau Kar-leung developed their own respective styles of Kungfu in their movies. From such work, Shaw Brothers produced a lasting world-wide influence. Shaw Brothers had produced over 850 films until it stopped its blockbuster production in 1980s. From oral history and old movies, we track down the details of the past, mixed with romance and sorrow, prosperity and impermanence.

The Legend of Shaw Brothers

NR 2018
Speaking Up 2

Using the same interview techniques applied in her highly successful Speaking Up (2005), Tammy Cheung turns her attention from Hong Kong to Mainland China. In Speaking Up II, she interviews around two dozen students from a well-respected primary school in Jiangxu (near Shanghai). They are asked to express their views on different topics such as personal issues, family, gender, society, and more. Presented in a skilfully edited montage and intertwined with footage of their daily lives at school, their answers highlight the changing face of today’s China.

Speaking Up 2

NR 2007
The Legend Of Shangri-La

CG Animation Short Film "The Legend of Shangri-la" is adapted from the poem of the same title by the famous poet Tao Yuan Ming of Dong Jin Dynasty over 1000 years ago. By applying Chinese traditional painting techniques and papercutting to CG, IDMT created this unique animation film with the style and movement of Shan-Xi shadow puppet show. The combination results in this original 3D CG short film with its unique visual style. It tranquilly depicts Peach Blossom Valley (known to the western culture as Shangri-La), the earthly paradise, in Dong Jin people's mind and their desire to return to happy and harmonic life.

The Legend Of Shangri-La

6.2 2006
Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey

PAD YATRA: A Green Odyssey is the adventure of 700 people trekking across the Himalayas with a call to save the planet's "3rd pole," a glacial region now devastated by the climate chaos associated with global warming. Battling the most treacherous terrain on the planet, the trekkers spread their message of ecological compassion through human's most basic means -by walking on foot, village to village, and showing by example. Surviving harrowing injuries, illness, and starvation, they emerge with nearly half a ton of plastic litter strapped to their backs, triggering an historic green revolution across the rooftop of the world.

Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey

NR 2012
Faith

A documentary looking at an attempt to build a new church building in Yiminhe, a small town located in Ewenki Autonomous Banner, Inner Mongolia. Director Bai Xiuying is the person-in-charge of the local church, where only one of the five congregations worships in legal surroundings. As a result of the insufficient facilities, Director Bai has to rush to services in various places. She decides to build a big church that can accommodate all the congregations, and, after two years of effort, the project is approved. The documentary traces the construction during a period beset with insufficient funding. When the project is complete, the contractor refuses to hand over the church to the Christians until he is paid what he is due, and Director Bai finds herself trapped in enormous debts. Depressed but still faithful, Director Bai works hard to continue to raise money, while the congregations continue to use their original venues for gatherings.

Faith

NR 2008
Orphan

Early in the morning, the priest read in the church at the disabled orphanage. At dawn, the villagers entered the funeral ceremony during the prayer ceremony. In disabled orphanages, there are babies in the youngest children. Two children attending school together did not attend the class normally. More children with reduced mobility can only be dazed and crawl on the ground. But they are also God's people and attend worship services in the church. The autumn mist was hazy, and a new cathedral was being built in the village. Insects, kittens, puppies, orphans, villagers who worship, all life is safe. At night, the tired priest went to sleep after finishing writing. In his dream, he reached a graveyard and remained silent with his dying mother. Seasons are changing, rainy days, winter snow, orphans wear thick winter clothes, making movement more difficult. The cathedral was built, and people celebrated the biggest Christmas day of the year.

Orphan

NR 2017
The Ark

While the first reports of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan are heard on the news, elsewhere in the country Zhang Xiuhua—who is suffering from a different disease—is fighting for her life. The doctors may have given up on her, but her children and grandchildren haven’t, and they’re doing everything possible to keep her with them for a little while longer. We observe the family in restrained black-and-white as they struggle with their mother’s situation, the economic consequences of the pandemic, and each other. Pride and opposing worldviews ultimately put a strain on relationships between the brothers and sisters—but they still don’t budge from their mother’s side. Events within the family remain at the forefront, but the viewer repeatedly picks up on moments from the Covid crisis and the restrictions arising from it. In this way the film subtly interweaves a private crisis with a global emergency, and shows their reciprocal effects on a human life, at both micro and macro level.

The Ark

NR 2020
Kokonor

For centuries, Tibetan nomads were the only inhabitants on the banks of the sacred Lake Kokonor—the Blue Lake—in Amdo (eastern Tibet). Starting in the 1990s, the area saw a dramatic rise in domestic tourism: It was not just the lake’s beauty that drew tourists but the Tibetan culture in general. This influx of tourists came at a cost: the locals now find themselves having to adapt to new roles in the tourism industry. This glimpse at the Kokonor community examines the transformation of the lives of the Tibetans who live there.

Kokonor

NR 2009
Mei Mei

Mei Mei is a transvestite male actor who is eager to find his true love. He searches among gays and transvestites. In 2004 he finally meets a man of his match who also accepts Mei Mei as he is. They have a public wedding ceremony. Mei Mei is very confident about his marriage and his future. His friends throw a farewell party for him before he leaves for Shanghai where he and his love are to embark on a life together. However, things are not as perfect as planned, and his marriage proves harder than expected. Finally Mei Mei comes back to Beijing. He feels embarrassed when running into old friends. Also, he runs into financial problems worse than ever before.

Mei Mei

NR 2005
No Echo

This has been a tumultuous year for the world, with dramatic changes affecting me not only from the outside, but also from the inside. In the 20th year of my life, I put the idea of making a short film into practice for the first time, and I cut a short film from my fragmented phone footage to commemorate the passing of 2020. During the first half of the year, I spent my days at home in fear, and my desperate inward search caused a break in my relationship with the outside world. During the second half of the year, I was led by the camera to reacquaint myself with the world. I went to a music festival for the first time and attended my first funeral; I began to care about the people and things around me, and discovered landscapes I hadn't noticed in my life.

No Echo

NR 2020
Stratum 2: The Asthenosphere

This is a film both about the spectacle and the space, about how the spectacle has caused the mutation of the (physical and phycological) space in which we reside. This film is determined to be the ‘film on space’ of our times, an epic theater, the general observation of the geological structure of this time. I therefore invent or re-invent some terms for my purpose: Archae(now)logy; Ruinology; space bankruptcy; theater of life -- theater of cruelty -- theater of spectacle; the body-film; the New Berlin Wall - Iron Curtain; and “refugees without camps”, ‘the plants”, “the ghosts,” the asthenosphere, dark energy... I have stolen a great amount of found footages/ready materials or already existed films. This “stealing” is exactly the way to get connected with history and the history of film, to construct an “echo film”.

Stratum 2: The Asthenosphere

NR 2021
Rooster the Golden Comb

How should I love you, my child? This story is a mother’s agonizing journey of parenting. Wu Jun, a mother in her 50s, has been in emotional turbulence for over a decade. In 2004, Quanquan, her then-16-year-old daughter, suddenly jumped to her death. Unexpectedly, Quanquan’s last words had nothing to do with her parents. The mother was filled with agony and bewilderment, questioing what she had done wrong, and her beloved husband, unable to bear the weight of the loss, moved away from Hangzhou. To start anew, Wu raised another girl, Tingting. Amid intense education competition, she racks her brains to pave the way for Tingting’s better future. However, the girl became rather difficult after entering puberty. Why is parent-child relationship so challenging? How should a mother face her own life? By the beautiful West Lake, Wu starts to read her late daughter’s favorite fable, ROOSTER THE GOLDEN COMB – Fate is as cunning as the fox in the story…

Rooster the Golden Comb

NR 2023
Wugong Sutra

The "Wugong sutra" is also known as "Transfer to the Sky". A prophecy written by the people since the Five Dynasties Northern Song Dynasty is said to be the proverb of the Tiangongshan Zhigong, Huagong, Yigong, Tanggong and Baogong Wugong Bodhisattvas. The salvation people were robbed at the end, often used by rural secret social organizations, and also banned by the imperial court rulers. The belief in the "Five Annals" in the rural society of northwestern Yunnan has abandoned the function of politics, and only pays attention to the practical effect of the Wugong sutra curse on treating and saving people and protecting one side. This film is a field survey of the Wugong sutra as a folk belief in rural society in northwestern Yunnan.

Wugong Sutra

NR 2014
The Yangtze River's Green Sailors

Descending from a long line of fishermen on the Yangtze River, Liu Gujun had to redefine his professional activity when the construction of the famous Three Gorges Dam began. His father, who has recently passed away, had to stop fishing the river due the growing pollution that the dam has created and asked his son to start cleaning the river. In the Chinese tradition of respect for the elder, Lui Gujon took the last wishes of his father very seriously. As such, he puts all his energy and invests every penny of his personal wealth into the ambitious project of cleaning up the river. For lack of sufficient grants from the government, Liu even contracts heavy loans to build a small flotilla of cleaning boats.

The Yangtze River's Green Sailors

NR 2012
Uniquely You

The film focuses on the stories of three children with autism and their families. When a husband, unable to bear the fate of his child's autism, chooses to jump from a building; when 'mom' becomes the only word in the universe of a child who cannot communicate with the outside world; when an autistic child, carefully cared for into adulthood, comforts their crying mother by saying, 'I will take care of mom'... These are not just stories—they are real-life glimpses into the lives of over ten million people with autism.

Uniquely You

NR 2025
Flower Chasers

In China, beekeeping is an ancient and traditional profession. Every spring, beekeepers migrate huge distances with their bees in search of the best nectar to harvest the highest quality honey. Relying on the changing seasons and fluctuating temperatures, making a living is becoming increasingly difficult in this traditional industry. Flower Chasers follows the journey of young beekeeper Xiaolong and his family as they travel across China in search of flowers and honey, witnessing the precarious living conditions beekeepers face, along with the threat of an ecological crisis.

Flower Chasers

NR 2023
Memories of journey

An essay film that interweaves meditations on travels with stories of journeys in China across a century: A student expedition into the heart of China in the 1930s, a young traveler's visions of the melancholic landscapes of his homeland, the narratives of movements in early Chinese silent films. Through these fragments of travelogues, the film explores the nature of consciousness in motion and what it means to use archives, images, and cinema as documentations as well as vehicles for travel.

Memories of journey

7.0 2022
Building Archaeology

The documentary Building Archeology (jiànzhú kǎo) (2011) considers the more recent past. It’s made up of three vignettes about different buildings in Beijing: a museum, an abandoned hospital, and a detention center. The latter two vignettes are especially interesting. In the second, a woman wanders around the ruins of a hospital built in a week to deal with the 2003 SARS outbreak. The third concerns a former prisoner, tracing out a map of the detention center where he was held in 2011.

Building Archaeology

NR 2011
Shuang Jing

The story happened near the Shuangjing subway station in Beijing. The female stall owner was aggrieved by the selective enforcement of urban management and expressed that she would fight to the end for fairness. When the urban management team forced her to close, she burst into tears and complained of social injustice. Even in the urban management team, she had to ask for fairness. But in the face of institutional chaos, she finally chose to compromise and continue the cat and mouse game. The old man is a Christian, is he helpless in obedience to fate? How many people's melody played by the Huqin sounded in the smog of Beijing?

Shuang Jing

NR 2015