Discover Movies

252 Matches Found

The First Emperor of China

This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China's vast territory and declared himself emperor in 221 B.C. During his reign, he introduced sweeping reforms, built a vast network of roads and connected the Great Wall of China. From the grandiose inner sanctum of Emperor Qin's royal palace, to fierce battles with feudal kings, this film re-creates the glory and the terror of the Qin Dynasty, including footage of Qin's life-sized terra cotta army, constructed 2,200 years ago for his tomb.

The First Emperor of China

5.3 1989
Exclusive Special ! Michael Jackson: 1,440 Hours in the Spotlight

This Japanese documentary follows Michael Jackson during his 1987 visit to Japan as part of the Bad World Tour. The program’s title, “1440 Hours,” refers to the length of his stay in the country. Broadcast on Nippon TV, the special offers unprecedented access to Jackson’s daily life and activities, capturing not only concert footage but also behind-the-scenes moments and his interactions with Japanese culture and fans.

Exclusive Special ! Michael Jackson: 1,440 Hours in the Spotlight

NR 1987
Dragons of the Orient

For martial arts enthusiasts and fans of Jet Li, Yang Ching, and Wang Chun, this historical filmography about the origins of Chinese martial arts, the legendary Shaolin Monastery, and modern kung fu will prove to be an irresistible treat. The documentary is told through two fictional characters, Instructor Wang and Hong Kong sports reporter Ms. Chin Chin, who chance to meet in a park. Ms. Chin Chin is writing a story about the history of martial arts and so Instructor Wang offers to help. Together they visit the Shaolin Monastery and view a weapons demonstration by the monks.

Dragons of the Orient

6.0 1988
Warlords of the Golden Triangle

A decade after working together on The White Powder Opera, Yung reunited with director Adrian Cowell and cinematographer Chris Menges for this powerful and fascinating documentary about the drug trade in the Golden Triangle. Shot in the bordering areas of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, the film shows the planting of opium, the production of heroin and how the finished product is transported to the rest of the world. The filmmakers even spoke to two rival drug cartels in the area and captured their operations on camera. Using archival footage and photos, Yung and Cowell also reconstruct the history of the drug trade from the 1940s to the 1980s. The Cantonese-language version being screened was re-edited by Yung himself, who also supervised a new narration by actor John Sham.

Warlords of the Golden Triangle

6.0 1987
岛的故事之大屿山沙之城

Four college students came to Lantau to climb. They stayed in a temple in the mountains at night. Under the hospitality of a little monk (Zhang Guorong), the students chatted with the master of the temple all night and found that the life of the monks was very different from that of the world. The four people who come here only want to climb the mountain, while the family pursues the peak of Buddhism; the family wants to see through the world, while the college students only want to see the red sun; when the men and women have a picnic on the beach, the host is talking about Zen, which is a very clear contrast between the family and the world. The next morning, the students left the temple to continue their journey. The little monk who was cleaning in front of the door just smiled and saw him off. His heart seemed to be full of understanding

岛的故事之大屿山沙之城

NR 1981
Songs of Pasta'ay

The Pasta’ay, which means "the festival of the legendary little people," is a significant ritual held every other year in the Saisiat aborigine group in Taiwan. Every ten years, they hold the Great Ritual. This film focuses on the Great Ritual in 1986. It tries to convey the Saisiat people’s affection for and belief in the legendary little people. At the same time, the film brings into light Saisiat people’s ambivalence towards tourist invasion, and their dilemma of being caught between tradition and modernization. Structured by the Pasta’ay songs’ movements, the film breaks down to 15 chapters. It carefully juxtaposes the visual with the aural elements, which are conveyed in the conceptual dichotomy between “the real” and “the artificial.”

Songs of Pasta'ay

NR 1989
Girls in Summer Dresses: Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

In 1945, the second- and third-year students of a Hiroshima girls' school are taken away to work in war factories. The remaining 220 girls of the first year try to make the best of their new-found status as the only teenagers in an almost deserted town, even amid the deprivations of wartime. On the seventh of August, an American bomber changes their lives forever. Broadcast on the 43rd anniversary of Hiroshima in memory of "the girls who lost their lives to the atom bomb." (Source: Anime Encyclopedia)

Girls in Summer Dresses: Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

3.5 1988
Prophecy

This rare documentary is one of the very last efforts from preeminent documentarist/activist Susumu Hani best known for his feature films. This one is a short documentary about the 1945 atomic bombing and its devastating consequences. The film came out of the "10 Foot Movement". A movement organized by the Japan Peace Museum, which mobilized Japanese citizen activists to buy back small segments of film footage of the effects of the atomic bomb from the U.S. National Archives. The film combines recent footage of survivors of the atomic bomb with American archival footage, portraying the sorrow of atomic bomb survivors in the Cold War period.

Prophecy

NR 1982
The Peony Pavilion

A young aristocrat is seduced by a young man who appeared to her in a dream one spring afternoon. Captive of this impossible love, the young girl is dying of melancholy. But the constancy of her love is stronger than death; she wins the pity of the judge of the underworld, manages to find her lover and come back to life. The opera "The Peony Pavilion" was composed in 1598 by the poet Tang Xianzu (1550-1617), one of the greatest playwrights of the Ming period. Of all the forms of Chinese opera that have followed one another since the 12th century, the kunqu is the one that best preserves the image of a classical art highly appreciated in educated circles for its musical, literary and gestural refinement.

The Peony Pavilion

NR 1988
Magino Village: A Tale

The movie compiles footage taken by Ogawa Production for a period of more than ten years after the collective moved to Magino village. Unique to this film are fictional reenactments of the history of the village in the sections titled "The Tale of Horikiri Goddess" and "The Origins of Itsutsudomoe Shrine". Ogawa combines all the techniques that were developed in his previous films to simultaneously express multiple layers of time—the temporality of rice growing and of human life, personal life histories, the history of the village, the time of the Gods, and new time created through theatrical reenactment—bring them into a unified whole. The faces of the Magino villagers appear in numerous roles transcending time and space—sometimes as individuals, sometimes as people who carry the history of the village in their memories, sometimes as storytellers reciting myths, and even as members of the crowd in the fictional sequences.

Magino Village: A Tale

6.8 1987
Furuyashiki: A Japanese Village

This is Ogawa Productions’ first major film from their Yamagata period. They had already started photography on Magino Village -A Tale but they were drawn to this village deep in the high country above Magino when a particularly cold bout of weather threatened crops. Inevitably, their attention strayed from the impact of weather and geography on the harvest to the “life history” of Furuyashiki Village. On the one hand, Ogawa returns to his roots by playing with the conventions of the science film. At the same time, he discovers a local, peripheral space in which to think about the nation and the state of village Japan. From this “distant perspective” in the very heart of the Japanese mountains, Ogawa discovers a village still dealing with the trauma of global warfare and struggling for survival as their children flee for the cities.

Furuyashiki: A Japanese Village

6.9 1982