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A documentary about Shaolin Kung Fu starring Jet Li

More preoccupied with "history" than Wu's other works, My Time in the Red Guards is a record of his fascination with the missed moment, Mao's Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Red Guards ironically represented the official avant-garde, a movement carried forward by youth determined to become heroes of the Revolution. Wu interviews people who had joined the Red Guards as high schoolers, most now successful professionals, some Party members. The miscalculations and cruelties of this extreme cultural campaign are spread out before us, detailed by personal recollection and further illustrated by old agit-prop newsreels. Misgivings and fond remembrance vie for position as the interviewees seem to confuse the nostalgia of youthful action with the excesses of historical fact.

A documentary following five young artists from around China, who travelled to Beijing in the 1980s to work as freelancers, exploring their lives, careers, and what aspirations they may have for the future.

In this documentary film, Lina Yang gives the viewer a look into the often sad and frustrating lives of the elderly in modern China. Their sense of uselessness, and loss of hope, is vividly portrayed.

The film documents a day in the life of Tiananmen Square in 1994, a mere five years after the crushing of a student-led democracy movement in 1989.

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.

A year after he made Bumming in Beijing, Wu Wenguang visited his main figures in Austria, France, Italy and the USA. The desire to escape everything, which was the most compelling feeling while they were still living in Beijing, has meanwhile faded and they are now confronted with the dynamics of emigration. Wu asks what it means to feels deserted by one's own country and how it is when one reacts by deserting it in turn.

Documentary on the Mosuo people in Lake Lugu region.

Documentary on the traditional funeral of Hani people.

A group of chinese students talk to the camera about love, sex, career prospects, decisions to stay or leave the country, and the impact events in Tiananmen had had on their lives.

2H combines documentary and dramatic film techniques to depict the psychological passages of two Chinese expatriates in Tokyo as they attempt to accommodate their existence to the two universal events of life - birth and death. Ma Jinsan is a 95 year-old former Kuomintang general who defected to Japan nearly 50 years earlier, shortly after the Communist revolution. Bound to Ma by chance, circumstance, and emotional need, Xiong Wenyun is an avant-garde artist desperately seeking to fulfill an innate but inarticulate desire to have a child.

The film documents a pigeon pair family that preference boys over girls.

SYNOPSIS Towards the end of 1989, several artists moved to an area near the ruins of Yuanmingyuan, the former Beijing Summer Palace. Farewell, Yuanmingyuan documents the trials and tribulations of the artists in their nubile makeshift community.

The melody of the hymn echoes in the old streets and alleys of the city. This is strange in a country that regards religion as a spiritual opium. The small, messy street was full of old people, and they began to pray with the sound of the room on the street. On the roof, a simple cross gleamed in the sun. During the Cultural Revolution, Christianity was completely eradicated. In China's political environment, Christianity has always been regarded as an extremely reactionary and evil thing, and openly believing in God would bring prison sentences. After the reform and opening up, Christianity also resumed activities. Although the Three-Self Church under official control is orthodox, house churches that are not under official control have also emerged in various cities. This film documents the activities of a house church in Nanjing.

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.

A Self-Portrait is the story of the art teacher Qiu Sha, told in photos and the words of Qiu Sha, about his youth, the changes in his family and in society. Director He Yi: 'What I remember now is the material that I came to mind of a man who has lived through the different eras in China. From all this material I not only read the history of a man and his family, I also learned something about the demands placed on life in a society over several decades.

Documentary on the Nanjing Massacre.

Liu Zeyuan is a farmer on the edge of the desert at the junction of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia. He grows food and raises camels, and his family's annual income is 5,000 yuan. Liu Picheng is a fisherman on Jingwa Island, part of the isolated Liaodong Peninsula; he is unwilling to attract attention and becomes hostile to the camera. The living environment and conditions of these two families are different, but the directors try to find some common ground while expressing the two respective unique lifestyles. In fact, these lives are firmly swayed by nature: sand storms can destroy everything, just as the ocean tide can destroy everything, and for the two protagonists, the difficult grasp of the future and their children also brings them the same loneliness. Filmed in 1989, Sand and Sea received the Grand Prix award from the 1991 Asian Broadcasting and Television Union.

A CCTV-commissioned, 8-part series shot between 1988 and 1990, but barred from being released after the events of June 4th. A production of the Structure, Wave, Youth, Cinema (SWYC) Experimental Group, an informal collective of young filmmakers founded in the summer of 1989 and devoted to the production of documentaries, that includes: this series' two directors, Shi Jian and Chen Jue, as well as Beijing TV's Wang Zijun, and this series' screenwriter, Kuang Yang (under the name Guang Yi). Tiananmen documents various aspects of life surrounding the Square: survivors of the imperial era, street performers, fledgling entrepreneurs, fashion school students, foreigners marrying Chinese nationals, and so forth. Each episode starts with a close-up of a giant portrait of Mao hung over the Square, and proceeds as a hybrid of archival footage, direct cinema, and cinema verité, weaving a permanent dialectic between the present and the past, daily life and history.

One of Hu Jie's 'Farmers Working in the City' films. The city is developing rapidly, with tall buildings and highways. Behind this bustling city, there is such a group of people. They come from the countryside. Maybe they are not dressed well, or they have only finished elementary school, but they work hard with their own work. The piece of prosperity pays its youth and sweat. (Shot between 1997 and 1998.)

Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.

A documentary of 24th April, 1970 assassination of Chiang Ching-kuo.

The first short documentary Jiang Yue made for the Oriental Time • Living Space program, about old men swimming in Houhai, Beijing.

An exploration of the soul of a city, made for the Turin City Government in the occasion of the “European Union Inter-Government Meeting”.

In the years before 1995, young artists who pursued free creativity came from all over the country to Yuanmingyuan, in the western suburbs of Beijing. These people settled in the rental houses of the village farmers, and then ambitiously bought paint-stretched canvases to explore and create art. The biggest difficulty they face is to make up for the monthly rent to be paid to the landlord. Selling paintings is not their only means of survival; they would also rely on other crafts to maintain their lives. Their works were very different; they have a spirit of rebellion, and they do not conform to traditional aesthetics. This is what caused Sate officials to intervene. (Shot May–December 1995.)

A documentary of the Yuanda Song and Dance Tent Show, a wandering troupe from the countryside of Henan Province that is on the road all four seasons of the year.

A 16 years old school girl, Shuming Xiao married to Mosuo minority's bandit chieftain La Baocheng in 1943. She had to leave her hometown - Chengdu, moved from a modern city to Lugu lake where the matrilineal society and the "Axia visiting marriage" system still exist. Lugu Lake is about 1000 miles far from Chengdu in remote mountain area. There are no lawfully registered marriage system or patriarchy clan relatives around the Lugu Lake, and Xiao lived here for about 54 years. During this long period, she never came back hometown.

In deep Hengduan Mountain Range, western Yunnan of China, there hides a special village which is not known by people outside. All the villagers inhabited here are children between 6 and 14. They live in the village all year round to complete their six-year study in a primary school. Quite a few documentaries focus on this area, but "A student Village" is particularly touching because it portrays the optimism of the poor and shows respect toward them. Upon finishing the film, Director Wei Xing brought it back and showed it in the village. Villagers from miles away walked to the screening and shared in the festival-like atmosphere. The documentary received great feedback after it was broadcast on television.

Resulting pic blurs the line between documentary and fiction as Yanagimachi explores the lives of a couple of groups of peddlers, and they appear to act out their personal dramas for the camera.

Documentary series on the students of reform schools in Beijing. Originally edited into a six-episode TV series and later a 90-minute feature film version was made.

Documentary made for Oriental Time • Living Space program on Ma Yun (Jack Ma) trying to sell The Chinese yellow pages in Beijing.

Documentary film of Zhou Enlai's life.

The 62-year-old Meng Jinfu is the last shaman of the Orogen ethnic group in China. He and his wife Ding Quiqin live in the deep forest of the Greater Xing'an Mountains all year round and live a primitive life. In the 1950s, the Chinese government helped Orogen people relocate from the forest to settlements. However, Meng Jingfu who had lived in the forest since childhood, eventually returned there with his wife and made a living by hunting. Though his life is difficult, he has been happy since childhood in the forest. But since then area has been deforested and the animal population has decreased, Meng Jinfu has been worried. The resettlement under the mountain has fundamentally changed the customs of the Orogen people.

Documentary of all 12 families living in the Xishuping village during one winter.

In the village of Doupo, Pianxian Township, Pengyang County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, there is a villager named Xu Wenwen. He is a Feng Shui master and who goes by the name “Yin Yang.” Due to the drought in the mountainous areas, it is difficult for farmers to use water for both domestic and agricultural purposes. In order to solve the problem of farmers' water use, Pengyang County Water Conservancy Bureau plans to help farmers repair the water cellar through government subsidies, so that the rainy season can be stored in the cellar and then used for farming, but due to limited funds, it is not Every family can receive subsidies, so everyone decides the right to play in the cellar by grasping the way. The cellar is laid, the water storage is increased, and the corn is also planted. The life of the mountain people seems to have hope.

Finalist for the 1991 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. The pottery produced in Penyao Village, Henan Province, is black, which is the same texture of the exquisite pottery of Longshan culture in China in 2000 BC. In the village, these black pottery basins and black pottery jars are indispensable to life. Wang Zhengcheng began to learn how to make pottery at the age of 13. He has always wanted to become an excellent craftsman like his grandfather in order to restore the glory of his family.

Documentary short film by Zhang Yiqing.

Documentary on a 58-year old lady from a rural village in Sichuan.

This documentary is about a group of people led by the anti-high artistic attitude of the underground culture of the end century during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1995 for three consecutive days and two nights, supported by the unprecedented courage of the Taipei County Cultural Center; the planning is broken.

Short documentary film for Oriental Time • Living Space by Jiang Yue.

Documentary on the life of Chinese poet and scholar Wen Yiduo with reenactment sequences on his last few days. Shot but not fully finished or aired in 1996, a different 33-minute re-edit version was aired later in 2001.

In China the marriage ritual is not a matter of a boy and a girl who are in love with each other and want to officially confirm their relationship. The protocol consists of six stages that must be completed according to the rules: the proposal, the negotiations, the engagement, the cognisance of the birth dates of the betrothed couple to ratify the marital relationship, a visit to the fortune-teller for the most favourable wedding date, and finally the wedding ceremony. MARRIAGE follows a marriage broker during the extensive, complicated and relentless negotiations for two marriages, somewhere in the southwest of China, between Jian and Qiong, and between Yu and Zhao. In addition, the film depicts the daily life in the villages, which is filled with manual labour on the land (the men) and around the house (the women). The film ends with the wedding celebrations, when the bride is carried across the mountains to her future husband’s house in an adorned, closed palanquin.

Video, colour and sound (mono)

Young students from across the country are invited to Beijing to perform a play written by future Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian. The film documents their feverishly intense rehearsals, the phenomenal public reception of their performances, and their desperate attempts to sustain their euphoria and pursue artistic careers in Beijing.

Documentary on Zhou Enlai's various contributions to Chinese diplomacy, from 1949 to 1976, commissioned for the 100th anniversary of late Premier's birth. From Baidu: "China's peaceful foreign policy has enabled China to gradually break through the imperialist hegemonic political and diplomatic blockades of the United States and the Soviet Union, and successfully gain the status of a major diplomatic power, opening up great possibility for the New China." The film won multiple awards in China.

Shanghai government decided to build a grand overpass on Chengdu Road, thus buildings need to be demolished and hundreds of households have to be relocated. This documenytary, shot from summer 1993 to early 1994, focused on 6 of these households.

Propaganda documentary explaining the Korean War from the Chinese side.

Short documentary film for Oriental Time • Living Space directed by Jiang Yue. This was a "demo" that Jiang made for Living Space's new producer, Chen Mang, after the departure of the original producer, Lu Wangping. From the example set by this film, Living Space thereafter developed the slogan: "Telling the stories of ordinary people.”

This is an earlier version of the film A River Stilled (静止的河). It's a documentary film about a young couple who live on opposite sides of the river at a time when their houses are about to be demolished as part of building the dam for the Three Gorges Dam project.

"The sulphur-iron mine is located at the common boundary of Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou province, with an area of 1774 square meters. The Yong Ning River originated from here, flowing northward 108 kilometers into the Yangtze River. The mine was established in 1950 and its products are mainly exported, with some concentrated uses within in the county. We found this place in the newspaper by accident; it's called Big Tree County. Many years ago, it was part of the forest along the Yangtze River. A sulphur-iron mine was discovered in the 1920s, which started large-scale sulphur smelting. Now the old way of sulphur smelting is ranking first in the country[sic]. On our second day there, in this remote valley in the southern part of Sichuan province with hundreds of thousands of people living there, we met a boy named Tan Cong. We then got to know his family, as well as a local school teacher, and some of the locals smelting the sulphur."

This is a documentary of a trip into the Sacred Mountains of China with Red Pine (Bill Porter) to meet Buddhist and Taoist monks and nuns who live as hermits and practice their religion. These are some of the people about whom Red Pine wrote in his book, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits.

In 1992, more than 130 female workers in Jialong Garment Factory lost their jobs. That year, in order to transfer capital to Indonesia, the factory announced the closure of the factory at the same time as the union was established. The boss, Zhu Yinglong, a professor at Taiwan University, refused to pay severance payment in accordance with the standards of the Labor Law Law. The employees had nowhere to ask for help and decided to take to the streets to seek justice.

This program illustrates how video activists have developed sophisticated use of small format video, with poetic and powerful imagery, complex mixes of sounds and scores and an effective editing style that belies the urgency under which it is being made. The video movement in Taiwan has made successful use of home cassette distribution, via both mail and street vendors. The Green Team collective has pioneered in this effort with over 100 titles in distribution, documenting the struggles of farmers, students, workers and environmentalists.