Discover Movies

A documentary about Li Yang, who tries to teach large numbers of Chinese to speak English, using unusual methods. He holds motivational rallies, where he gets the crowd to shout out English phrases, in order to instill confidence, and tells them not to be afraid of losing face. His goal is to increase Chinese trade, and export Chinese culture, to the main world markets: North America, Japan, and Europe. After the rally, they can continue their English lessons using his taped courses.

Lai bravely went into the most dynamic red light district in Hong Kong on her own with her digital video camera to film the Whorehouse(23min) AKA Sex House. This is a brand new angle to go deep into every part of the whorehouse, and recorded a group of people who were forgotten by Hong Kong society. Everyone has their own story, with sex as human instinct, sex workers and whoremasters are also normal people. - http://www.hkindieff.hk/2010/local06.html

Photographer Wang Jiu-liang travels to more than 500 landfills, fearlessly documenting Beijing's unholy cycle of consumption through poignant observational visits with the scavengers who live and work in the dumps. While China's economic ascent commands global attention, less light has been shed upon the monumental problem of waste spawned by a burgeoning population, booming industry, and insatiable urban growth. Award-winning photographer Wang Jiuliang focuses his lens upon the grim spectacle of waste, excrement, detritus, and rubble unceremoniously piled upon the land surrounding the China's Olympic city, capital, and megalopolis, Beijing.

The camera gazes at the crowd in Tiananmen Square. Accompanied by the music of Qigong exercises, the lives passing to and fro seem imbued with an immense weight.

As Chinese Communist Party secretary, Guo Yongchang was the most powerful man in his county, located in the rural inland province of Henan. Guo invited acclaimed documentary filmmaker Zhou Hao to record his final months in office. Through Zhou’s lens, we see Guo work tirelessly to achieve his greatest desire: for Henan to match the affluence of booming coastal areas. Zhou also captures the sordid details of local-level politics in pursuit of growth: lavish parties with foreign investors, threats to local workers protesting unpaid wages, and offers of bribes and kickbacks. (dGenerate Films)

A propaganda documentary to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong.

During the Cultural Revolution in China in the late 20th century, ethnic Manchu people were persecuted and forced to give up such cultural traditions as the shaman dance (tiao tchin, meaning "spirit-jumping" or "god's dance"). However, on Changbai Mountain in Northeast China, a farmer named Guan Yunde decided to start designing and building traditional Manchu shaman drums. At age 70, he is one of a minority of ethnic Manchu people in China's Jilin province, and one of the few people keeping the Manchu shamanic tradition alive.

Anthology propaganda documentary film commissioned by the government of Foshan city. Ten documentary short on this city by ten different directors.

Hardly could anybody tell that 87 years old Lou has had Alzheimer’s disease. Over the years, Lou has forgotten almost everyone but firmly believes that 88 years old Feng is the one she is going to spend the rest of her life with.

There are the images of before, the images of after and the letters. The images of after come first, they stem from the same surveillance camera in Wuhan, empty streets that only throng with people again on April 4th, 2020.

A documentary chronicling the coming of age of a young chinese man.

Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.

The film consists almost entirely of an interview with the elderly He Fengming, recounting her experiences in post-1949 China.

Crowned as the “godfather of China rock” and yet banned from large-scale performances in Beijing over the past thirteen years, Cui Jian has made his come back in 2005 and remained an icon of the artist versus the State in the hearts of millions. Although the rocker has been reluctant to be identified with any specific political movement, whenever a new democratic voice has emerged (in media forms from underground film to the Internet), it has always found a way to embrace him, thus reconfirming Cui’s “outlaw” status. This documentary reviews his life and career paths from his early days and documents his crew and fans to three very different cities in Wuhan, Inner Mongolia and Beijing. Broadcast on HK Cable TV in summer 2006, the purpose of the video is to review Cui Jian’s career at the point of his new album release after a 6 year gap. The album is titled “Give You Color”.

The elderly are interviewed on the memories they have on the Japanese soldiers who occupied China in the late ‘30s. Some remembered, some didn’t, but the result is an endearing chronicle of what we choose to live with in the old age.

The movie follows director Zhang Yimou as he is preparing to make the movie Hero.

Informed by the conviction that film was a means to advocate patriotism, Lai established China Sun Motion Picture Company in the early 1920s. He teamed up with friends to follow Dr Sun, traversing provinces for several years and filming precious historical moments such as Sun's inspection of the country and the Northern Expedition led by Chiang Kai-shek after the death of Sun. Some of those footage was edited into A Page of History, available to the public today, albeit deteriorated and incomplete. The Battle of Shanghai records the famous conflict at the beginning of the war in 1937 when, fervently resisting the invading Japanese army, 800 soldiers defended a warehouse until the very last moment. Shot by Lai and his team at the risk of death, the film is now an invaluable visual document in Chinese modern history.

This Documentary offers a poetic portrait of the film-maker’s grandmother, Shou Ai Xia, who suffers from dementia. It explores the fading memories of her ordinary life and the vivid hallucinations reflecting her decades of commitment to the Chinese Communist Party, providing a pathway beyond the traditional views of dementia.

A movie about the cotton’s workers in Xinjiang Province, North-West of China.

A documentary on the making of China's war epic "The Battle at Lake Changjin".

Ai Weiwei’s Appeal ¥15,220,910.50 opens with Ai Weiwei’s mother at the Venice Biennial in the summer of 2013 examining Ai’s large S.A.C.R.E.D. installation portraying his 81 day imprisonment. The documentary goes onto chronologically reconstruct the events that occurred from the time he was arrested at the Beijing airport in April 2011 to his final court appeal in September 2012. The film portrays the day-to-day activity surrounding Ai Weiwei, his family and his associates ranging from consistent visits by the authorities, interviews with reporters, support and donations from fans, and court dates. The Film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam on January 23, 2014.

In 2064, the human body no longer has secrets. The world record for the men’s 100-meter dash set by Jamaican athlete Powell more than fifty years ago remains unbroken. Twenty-three-year-old athlete Mara is preparing for the next Olympics until a gunshot shatters the highway order like a curse.

A propaganda documentary on Hangzhou before and after the liberation.

Shot over the course of ten years on both film and video, the film consists of a series of carefully composed tableaux of people and environments. Pedestrians shuffle across a bustling Beijing street, steelworkers linger outside a deserted factory, tourists laugh and scamper across a crowded beach, worshippers kneel to pray in a remote village. With a painterly eye for composition, Wang captures China as he sees it, calling to a temporary halt a land in a constant state of change.

The Great War: Director's Cut (2013)

The short film tells the story of a terrifying moment experienced by a China Southern Airlines crew at a local airport during the armed coup attempt in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2016.

Takeuchi Ryo revisited the protagonist of the documentary many years ago and completed his ten-year promise with the Yangtze River.

Wang Xilin, 86, is one of China's most important modern classical composers. During the Cultural Revolution he was the target of severe persecution, enduring beatings, imprisonment and torture. With excerpts from his Symphonies, he revisits for this film some of the horrifying events that still live on in his memory as testimony to an era that saw the dehumanization of the entire Chinese nation.

A documentary on the filming of the movie House of Flying Daggers

Mr. An is almost 90 years old. He loves life, dance and the smiling young Xiao Wei, his daily life companion. His wife, secluded at home, is quite unhappy about this friendly and love relationship. Xiao Wei’s husband doesn’t seem to care. One morning Mr. An get sick and has to be hospitalized. Xiao Wei start to wonder if she shouldn’t end the relationship.

During the Spring Festival travel rush in 2011, the documentary crew went back to the police station near Guangzhou Train Station.

In June 2008, Yang Jia carried a knife, a hammer, a gas mask, pepper spray, gloves and Molotov cocktails to the Zhabei Public Security Branch Bureau and killed six police officers, injuring another police officer and a guard. He was arrested on the scene, and was subsequently charged with intentional homicide. In the following six months, while Yang Jia was detained and trials were held, his mother mysteriously disappeared. "One Recluse" is a documentary that traces the reasons and motivations behind the tragedy and investigates a trial process filled with shady cover-ups and questionable decisions. The film provides a glimpse into the realities of a government-controlled judicial system and its impact on the citizens’ lives.

Director Lam Can-Zhao leads a small film crew as they shoot a film about a stray dog in the streets of Guangzhou, leading viewers into an unpredictable, peculiar and incredible journey.

In 1989, a group of avant-garde artists who had collaborated in private for years received permission to organize their own exhibition at the National Art Museum of China. However, one of the terms was to exclude performance artists from participating. The seven artists who were left out took action. At the opening ceremony, their lives changed as the sounds of gunfire rang out.

In Yuncheng County, Shandong, there is a girl born in the 90s named Han Wenjing who was paraplegic in a car accident in her childhood. As Han Wenjing gets older and older, she is worried about her future life. Marriage has become the biggest concern of parents. Han Wenjing got acquainted with a soldier online, but finally broke up under his father's opposition. The younger sister-in-law also had a dispute between the two over her marriage. When Han Wenjing was depressed, her father proposed to carry her to Liangshan. First, fulfilling Han Wenjing's wish was also compensation for Han Wenjing. Later, Han Wenjing met a dumb while studying e-commerce sales. The dumb liked her very much. Both parents were satisfied when they met. However, Han Wenjing felt that she still couldn't accept the disabled and wanted to try to combine healthy people, even if it failed. Under the pressure of her parents and sister-in-law on Han Wenjing, Han Wenjing still insists on her choice

A Long Way Home takes us on a fascinating journey into both the grim days of recent Chinese history and the dazzling cultural scene in present-day China. The film centers around five of the most significant representatives of contemporary Chinese counterculture: the visual artists the Gao Brothers, the choreographer and dancer Wen Hui, the animation artist Pi San and the poet Ye Fu. With bravery and subversive wit, they each shed light on the social problems in their country. In doing so, the film poses universal questions that ultimately concern us all: which values determine our cultural identity and in what kind of world do we want to live.

Tan Pin Pin employs a strictly external perspective for this portrait of her hometown, the tropical economic powerhouse of Singapore, interviewing political exiles in London, Thailand and Malaysia, who are to this day unable to return home.

Six teenage girls in China learn to ride horses, compete in matches, build friendships, and deal with loss, all seen from a mother’s eye.

In China, most families have difficulties facing their lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) children. They have to contend with common social beliefs that homosexuality is shameful, abnormal, a perverted condition caused by deviant family relationships. Many parents see their kids as their property, and fathers often assert their authority to ensure that no harm comes to the family reputation. The documentary 'Papa Rainbow' features six Chinese fathers who talk openly and freely about their experiences with their LGBT children. Speaking out against discrimination and stigma, they redefine what it means to protect a household. They fully embrace their kids for who they are, and become pioneer activists fighting for an equal and diverse society.

Digitizing union newspapers in the quiet of a dark room, a filmmaker reflects on their relationship to labor.

Quentin Lee returns to Hong Kong, where he was born and raised. As he explores his desire to move back there from Los Angeles, he interviews local artists, filmmakers, friends, and family about why they are in Hong Kong and why they choose to be there.

In America, everyone has a family story of immigration. Every family, at some point, has had somebody leave their native country behind to search for a better life. How did they hold onto their identity? How did they adapt to their new life? Every family has a special story. In my case, it's my Chinese-American story. My father would always tell us his story about walking for 7 days and 6 nights, before swimming for 4 hours to Macau to escape communism in 1966. His story would fall on my deaf ears until I returned to China with him.

Follows Vietnamese migrant workers, to examine the reasons behind their numerous escapes and to trace the family situations of those who were deported from Taiwan.

A major documentary paying tribute to the centenary of Chinese animation, the film presents, for the first time on the big screen, a panoramic view of the tumultuous and remarkable development of Chinese animation over the past century, through detailed historical materials, vivid narratives, and profound reflections. It takes audiences on a journey through time, reliving the childhood memories of several generations, and witnessing the extraordinary path of Chinese animation from its inception to its rise, from exploration to its glory.

Paper Airplane is a feature-length documentary that looks at the breakdown of China’s socialist systems, which had previously provided jobs and security, now having turned to capitalism allows disenfranchised youths to fall into new lifestyles that sometimes involve the underworld of drugs.

The story of the six Chinese survivors of the Titanic disaster was written out of history. In The Six, we learn how these remarkable men beat the odds to make it off the ship alive, only to be singled out for expulsion from the US within 24 hours of their arrival. We track down their descendants for the first time. And we trace their extraordinary journey from Southern China to becoming silent witnesses to one of the twentieth century’s most infamous and intriguing events.

By following the case of Huang Jing, a woman teacher who died of date rape, this documentary captures changes in China between 2003 and 2005, before and after the injunction to respect and protect human rights was incorporated into the constitution. By highlighting grassroots activity by women, the film illustrates awareness of human rights, women’s struggle against judicial corruption, and women taking action against domestic violence in China.

A young Chinese folk singer left his hometown to the big city, only to return to his musical traditions. On this journey, his humor, anger and powerful folk songs all comes from the rural life of past. That's the real taste of soil and dust.

Director Liu Jiayin casts her parents and herself as fictionalized members of a Beijing family that has fallen on hard times and ekes out an existence by making bags out of oxhide for sale.