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Observations of three varied corners of China’s garment industry: workers in a large-scale production line factory; a designer who rallies against the mass-machine-production of clothes and has created the eponymous hand-made collection called ‘Useless’ (Wuyong) for Paris Fashion Week; and finally the simple life of increasingly out-of-work tailors in small town Fengdang.

Since the start of the 1990s, a period during which the Chinese government criticised the Western media for biased reporting, Chinese orphanages have strictly controlled access by the media. Because of the difficulty of gaining entrance, it is extremely difficult to know what the situation has been like there for many years. Accompanied by a mother living close to the Qingdao centre, it was thus nevertheless possible for me to film this delicate subject in privileged conditions. It was there that, in 1995, I discovered for the first time dozens of children abandoned by their parents. Over the following 10 years, I came back to visit them every year, and I became their friend. As I listened to them relating their dreams of glory, I filmed their evolution over a decade...

A documentary film showing the life of Niu Hongmiao, a 20-year-old country girl who is now a prostitute in Beijing. Around the time of wheat harvesting, she goes back home to Dingxing County, Hebei Province to visit her parents.

CCTV Production celebrating Deng's life, accomplishments, and paving the way to modern China

Beijing: The Second Ring is a document of the two opposite views of traffic flow on 33 bridges along Beijing’s Second Ring. The entire piece is made up of 66 segments.

"Urumqi Middle Road" depicts the 2022 White Paper Protests in China, where people took to the streets in Shanghai and across the country to protest the draconian Zero-Covid and lockdown policies.

In the summer of 1920, Shanghai was scandalized by a sensational murder, a high-profile case and subsequent trial that was the ongoing topic of conversation in the city's numerous cafes, clubs and teahouses. Among the various reasons for its notoriety, two stand out: first, the victim was a high-class prostitute, well known in Shanghai; second, the murderer had been a mid-level manager in a respected foreign firm, a playboy who in Manhattan might have been termed a "prominent young man about town." There were detailed press reports daily as the case wound its way through the judicial system.

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as ultra-rightists in the Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the reeducation camps. The film invites us to meet the survivors of the camps to find out firsthand who these persons were, the hardships they were forced to endure and what became their destiny.

In the 1990s HIV/AIDS came to Wenlou through a blood purchasing program. To supplement their income many poor villagers sold their blood and 60% of those who sold blood contracted HIV/AIDS from unsanitary equipment. Many have died from the disease. In his documentary film, To Live is Better than to Die, Wiejun Chen tells of the impact AIDS has had in parts of rural China by showing how it has affected the Ma family. It is spring when the film takes up the family’s story.

Tayuan is the location of the first museum of the Cultural Revolution in China. However, this important Cultural Revolution museum was established with private funds. The reason for its construction here is that there is a tomb of the victims of the Cultural Revolution. This film documents the little-known massacre and the construction of the Cultural Revolution Museum in Shantou, Guangdong during the Cultural Revolution. However, a few years later, this museum was banned by the government.

Feature length making-of documentary of The Wild Goose Lake.

A local construction worker and a Chinese engineer are assigned to build a bank in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world. But time is short and resources are scarce, and there are rumours in the countryside that a new civil war is brewing. And as if all this wasn’t bad enough, their relationships to their wives are falling apart. ‘Eat Bitter’ mirrors the existential and mundane problems of the two men, while an unlikely friendship and mutual trust blossoms between them. However, the chaotic microcosm of the construction site also mirrors China’s contradictory role in 21st century Africa, with the bank itself as the ultimate symbol of money, power and illusion. Director duo Pascale Appora-Gnekindy and Ningyi Sun themselves represent each of the two cultures, and their film has a unique eye for the human fallibility and irony of it all, but also for how we can reach each other despite all our many differences.

Livestreaming your life to a devoted audience is big business. What happens when the cameras are off?

A man lies in bed illuminated by the blue-white light of his mobile phone. He doom scrolls past cute pets, outraged opinion pieces and haunting images from the world's hotspots – and he feels absolutely nothing. With curiousity and humour, director David Borenstein travels the world to investigate how bad things really are. Who is pulling the strings when the internet makes us angry, sad, horny or just plain indifferent? And is there any way back? From the American internet troll, a burnt-out superstar in the Asian influencer industry, a cynical fake-news factory in Eastern Europe, Russian state propagandists and an online dominatrix, this is an alarming contemporary diagnosis, with a bold attempt to also look at solutions.

County Magistrate, County Magistrate depicts a collective migration unfolding in an indeterminate time and place. Men, women, and children from a village move through mountains as the sky gradually grows dark, walking resolutely into the distance until they arrive at a new settlement. The abandoned courtyards they leave behind still bear traces of daily life: a steaming kettle, unfinished bowls of food, an old television flickering with static, and worn-out pieces of furniture. The camera then slowly pans to an outdoor movie screen showing After Armistice, a black-and-white film released in 1962. In the film, a man draws a business card from his pocket and introduces himself as Xianghe’s newly appointed county magistrate. At this moment, the story slips into another layer of fictional time and space.

Suzhou is a city where the ancient and the modern co-exist. For more than 2,500 years, the city has passed down a large number of intangible cultural heritages, including lantern painting, nuclear carving, Song brocade, Ming furniture, boat dots, Suzhou embroidery, Xiangshan gang construction, woof silk and jade carving. The film tells the story of the past lives of these nine crafts and the tender stories that occur between the inheritors and their crafts from the perspective of 12 representative inheritors.

Short-movie from Stories on Human Rights, 2008.

This is the inspiring story of how an ordinary Chinese boy became China's biggest Rock star

Chinese cities expand and gradually absorb the countryside. The village of Yangji was yet another victim to the expansion, which benefits local developers linked to the government. Rural residents are forced to vacate their simple dwellings and make room for new houses and entrepreneurs from the cities. The vast majority of local resistance will subside despite meager compensation and low prospects for decent housing, but Azhong is one of a handful of people who choose to fight against the corrupt system.

Freediving champion Jessea Lu nearly died during a world-record attempt. She revisits the site of her near-death in this documentary, facing past traumas and struggling back to life.

Fairytale chronicles the making of an installation-cum-performance of the same name. In 2007, Ai Weiwei invited 1001 Chinese citizens of varying ages and backgrounds to travel to Kassel, Germany, for one week each, all expenses paid. This film describes the many challenges facing the artist and his volunteers in coordinating the work.

In 2002, Ju Anqi made a film about a tour by the poet Shu through Xinjiang, the most western-lying, autonomous Uyghur province of China. All that we know about Shu is that he plays a poet who sends himself on a business trip - an absurd, satirical starting point that sets the tone for the film. For a variety of reasons, it was not until 2013 that Ju started editing the rough, lyrical material that he had shot in what is now a very restless Xinjiang: it's like an excellent wine that has had time to mature. Structured around 16 poems which he wrote on the road, Shu’s physically exhausting journey takes him along endless rocky roads, passing shabby inns and through impressive landscapes from one prostitute to the next. In its documentary authenticity, Poet on a Business Trip is also an historic document that exudes an atmosphere of loss, providing an unsentimental yet melancholy glimpse of a country in transition and a mirror for the existential irreversibility of time. (c) iffr.com

The film tells about China, the liberation struggle of the Chinese people, the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the transformation of the country after the victory of the Communists led by Mao Zedong, the elimination of illiteracy, the restoration of the economy destroyed during the civil war, the signing in Moscow of the Treaty of Friendship, Union and Mutual Assistance between the USSR and the PRC.

A Hi8 video recording of a journey through Mongolia and China as part of the author’s own photographic project, “What Remains”.

Jia Zhangke travels with painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand as they as they meet everyday workers in the throes of social turmoil. Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by China's Three Gorges Dam project. Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being "de-constructed" by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu's paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects' shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.

This film selects intangible cultural heritage items such as porcelain carving, colored glaze (glass art), and Lu-style interior painting (inside-bottle painting), telling the stories of their origins, development, inheritance, and innovation, as well as the heartwarming stories behind the inheritors.

A calling inhabits the blank pages, unfolding a secret writing of hers. The unseen written traces seep from the murmuring land, pushing through fragmented voices to become new forms, beings made material. Framed as a dialogue with my grandmother, this film explores an alternative form of personal writing by Chinese women in political shifts, absent and abundant. The 'blank' becomes an image, carrying a search for agency; of land transformed and of women unheard. By breaking down linguistic structures, the film opens a space for imagining, reading, and performing, allowing for emergence.

Fireworks of Yesteryear (去年烟火), also known as When We Met, is a live action adaptation of the extra from the novel What Era Do You Think This Is (都什么年代了啊) by Qi Xiao Huang Shu (七小皇叔). This is a peak of the film's production; it is the behind the scenes content.

The film "Safe and Sound" starts with a weekly piano class at the ward school, telling the story of several little assistant teachers with different personalities and their families' different life experiences and changes in fate. After a few years of bone marrow transplantation, the protagonists Haoxin and Qinxin choose to leave Yanjiao, where they have lived for many years, return to their unfamiliar hometown to start a new life, and return to campus.The film focuses on the daily life of themselves and their fellow leukemia patients before they left Yanjiao."Returning to Hometown for School" often means "Pressure" and "Confusion" for them. After experiencing multiple "Separations", the"Future"seemed so uncertain to them.

In many times, people exist as a part of just background to each other. This desolate scenery brings you a certain feeling. As time overlaps on the cold street, you will get caught in a deeper hole.

This documentary shines a light on the unsung life stories of restorers of cultural relics working inside the Forbidden City, together with the history of the antiques and the palace, the procedures of restoration and the development of cultural protection.

A documentary that follows two men. One resigned from factory work to study composition because of his love for music. He has more than 100 original songs and once had a music career in Beijing. Eventually he returned to his hometown, Xuzhou, to make a living performing by the roadside because he could no longer afford to eat. The other was born in Taiwan before moving to Xuzhou to stay with his father's family in Xuzhou when he was 15 years old. Soon after his father died he taught himself the piano, music composition, MIDI music production. He had many students, including idols and stars, even as he still lives in a low-rent house, gets by selling e-waste, and educates people who love music for free. They are misfortune, ordinary, dressed in ragged clothes, and sing the most beautiful songs.

Jiabiangou Elegy recounts the persecution of inmates at the Jiabiangou labor camp in Jiuquan, Gansu province, and examines the way the victims’ final affairs were handled. During the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957–59, over three thousand people were sent to Jiabiangou for re-education through labor. These people were labeled rightists, counterrevolutionaries, and anti-party dissidents. Over a three-year period, more than two thousand died from abuse and hunger; only a few hundred were rescued in the end. The film includes interviews with the few remaining Jiabiangou survivors and their children, and presents the conflict between the preservation and destruction of memory.

An intimate portrait of a peasant-turned oil painter transitioning from making copies of iconic Western paintings to creating his own authentic works of art.

An immigrant artist in Iowa retreats to frozen prairies, forests, and swamps, trying to find a meaningful story and escape from the anxieties of dislocation. Delivered as a film-letter to the protagonist’s little sister in rural China, the film considers his self-exile as well as mental health struggles that were too shameful to address back home.

An Sai, Shanbei, An isolated village on the Loess Plateau, Northern China. Two young outsiders are moving in, While two young locals are struggling to escape. Comes into view a donkey full of luggage, Comes also into view a young couple, He carries her on a bike...

This landmark documentary reveals the tragic life of a gifted young woman who was executed for speaking out during the height of Chairman Mao’s rule.

This documentary reviews and summarises the development of homosexuality as an issue in the past three decades in China. We interviewed thirty prominent figures in the gay community, who have experienced the changes of views and life-styles regarding homosexuality.

Before the Flood is a study of the final weeks of a dying city, as thousand-year-old Fengjie on the Yangtze River is reduced to rubble and its inhabitants uprooted to make way for the new Three Gorges Dam that will flood the entire valley.

A remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its cultural past while its residents piece together their existence. Zhiziluo is a town barely clinging to life. Tucked away in a rugged corner of Yunnan Province, Lisu and Nu minority villagers squat in the abandoned halls of this remote former Community county seat. Divided into three parts, this epic documentary takes an intimate look at its varied cast of characters, bringing audiences face to face with people left behind by China's new economy. A father-son duo of elderly preachers argue over the future of their village church. Two young lovers face a break-up over harsh financial realities. A twelve year-old boy, abandoned by his family, scavenges the hillside to feed himself.

At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.

Filmmaker Hu Jie uncovers the tragic story of a teacher beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revoution. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution exploded throughout China, as Mao's Red Guards persecuted suspected Rightists. Bian Zhongyun, the vice principal of a prestigious school in Beijing, was beaten to death by her own students, becoming one of the first victims of the revolutionary violence that would engulf the entire nation.

The 92-year-old previous nightclub dancer Coby Yee decides to get back on stage again after joining the senior dance troupe Grant Avenue Follies. Together they go on a tour for the last time, bridging once isolated Chinese communities in the US, Cuba and China.

Yu Xiuhua was raised to hope for little from her life in the rural Chinese province of Hubei. At 19, Xiuhua’s mother encouraged her to marry a man nearly twice her age, fearful no one else would accept a wife with Xiuhua’s condition — cerebral palsy. But as her 20th anniversary approaches, Xiuhua’s poetry goes viral, and she becomes the voice of a rising feminist movement throughout China.

A tale charting the rise and fall of the Chinese property market through the experiences of Yana, a young entrepreneur.

In a quiet village in southern China, Fang Xiuying is sixty-seven years old. Having suffered from Alzheimer's for several years, with advanced symptoms and ineffective treatment, she was sent back home. Now, bedridden, she is surrounded by her relatives and neighbors, as they witness and accompany her through her last days.

Liu Liu is living in a strange new land. While his mother looks after the shop, he goes exploring. Encountering a ghost monster, a fierce battle begins. Behind the shop counter, Liu Liu’s mother listens to audiotapes to teach herself Hungarian. Bored and frustrated, Liu Liu goes in search of adventure. Exploring this new and foreign land, he encounters a mysterious monster.

J Fever, China’s greatest “rap poet”, reinvents the origin myth of fire, in an exquisite performance with Shanghai Philharmonic in Shanghai Concert Hall, featuring composer Soulspeak and Yehaiyahan.