Far from home, 17-year-old Ying Ling practices for her examination to become a mortician at one of China's largest funeral homes. The everyday routine of this unusual occupation also serves up both humorous and life affirming moments.
90 Matches Found
Far from home, 17-year-old Ying Ling practices for her examination to become a mortician at one of China's largest funeral homes. The everyday routine of this unusual occupation also serves up both humorous and life affirming moments.
Twenty years after the modern world's most notorious child murder, the legacy of the crime and its impact are explored.
Follow the lives of the elderly survivors who were forced into sex slavery as “Comfort Women” by the Japanese during World War II. At the time of filming, only 22 of these women were still alive to tell their story. Through their own personal histories and perspectives, they tell a tale that should never be forgotten to generations unaware of the brutalization that occurred.
The film prototype Dandong Fengcheng Dali Village Party Committee Secretary Mao Fengmei is a representative of excellent grassroots cadres, he firmly believes that "the Party's policy will have a good day", in more than 30 years as a village cadres, leading the Dali Village party members and the masses to carry forward the spirit of "dry", open up barren mountains, plant fruit trees, tourism, out of an integrated development of agriculture, industry, commerce, trade, travel.
A biographical drama about Lady Xian, revered as the “Holy Mother of Lingnan,” depicting her strict family ethics and campaign against corruption, set against historical events in southern China.
Tao and Dong promised each other they’d return to the village where the latter grew up, in Inner Mongolia, before following his family, who left to find better fortune in a large city in Southern China. This voyage is a mere pretext meant to reconnect the two childhood friends, who were separated for ten years. With a rare sensitivity, Tao Gu films this companion, who was lost not only “from view”, approaching him stealthily to capture all of his tragic intensity, his disillusioned generosity. Dong has remained a dreamer besotted with rock, an incensed body struggling to find money (he comes up with a jade business which does not work out), love, sex and, above all, to live following his own conceptions of liberty, under the ambiguous gaze of his parents and his “successful” brother.
Shot below the radar, this film follows the journey of Chinese factory migrant worker-turned-activist Yi Yeting, who takes his fight against the global electronic industry from his hospital bed to the international stage.
This film tells a story about an unschooled 11-year-old girl Yi-Jie, she's a truly global child who learns the world through the United Nations of Wastes while working with her YI minority parents in this recycle workshop thousand miles away from their mountain village home town
A young woman's life takes a series of unexpected turns after she leaves the Buddhist temple where she has lived most of her adult life.
This is the inspiring story of how an ordinary Chinese boy became China's biggest Rock star
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Between 2009 and 2015, Wen Hai followed the lives of workers and worker activists in southern China, the world’s factory. His astonishing film gives nameless workers a face, shows their vital sense of justice and resistance to owners who are only interested in profits – and how they escape the role of victim.
A Yangtze Landscape utilizes a non-narrative style, setting off from the Yangtze's marine port Shanghai, filming all the way to the Yangtze River's source, Qinghai/Tibet - filming a total distance of thousands of kilometers. Experimental music and noise recorded live on scene are used in post-production, painstakingly paired with relatively independent visuals, creating a magically realistic atmosphere contrasted with people seeming to be 'decorative figures' right out of traditional Chinese landscape scrolls.
On the outskirts of Beijing, a group of Mongolians work in a stable owned by a wealthy Chinese businessman. Between the repetitive work and the hope of a return to their homeland, time seems to stand still. Yet behind the farm gates to the lands of Inner Mongolia, China continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
In 1959, a group of intellectual “Rightists” from colleges and universities in Shenyang, and criminals from prisons, arrived in the desolate area of western Liaoning Province. They wanted to build a railway here for a mine. Taking the fate of Yin Shaoyao, a lecturer at Liaoning University, as its focus, this film records this group’s experience of being labelled as rightists, of “Reform through Labour”, of being starved, and killed. Their personal files reveal the details of their transformation: their personalities encouraged them to betray each other, incriminating materials were put in their files, and their political lives were destroyed. Ideological reformation killed their spirit, while physical labour and hunger destroyed their bodies. The film also records how people who resisted were suppressed and what happened to people’s humanity in this most cruel of environments.
In a remote mountain village, the lives of three generations of a family are defined by hardship and loss. The aging grandmother fears death while her son struggles to find work and becomes increasingly anxious and impoverished. Meanwhile, her grandson returns from the city to start a chicken farming business, only to fail and go into debt. The village, named after a mythical rock representing a fallen turtle, seems to bind its inhabitants to a shared destiny of defeat and struggle.
For six years the film follows 3 young Chinese from different social levels, different regions and different mindsets into their adult lives.
The first part of Wu Wenguang's Autobiography film series.
In this documentary we watch the real story of Li Weiyi, who raised an orphan wolf to return it later to the wild life where it belonged.
The efforts of Suzanne, originally from China, to help refugees in her adopted homeland of Greece unfold like a tragicomedy.
A giant ginger mountain landscape that five cooks spent a week to make: Once magnificent culinary works of art were created in Chinese restaurants. Food was associated with a wealth of money and time. The world today is short-lived, customers have become few and far between. Chefs talk about the connection between food culture and socio-economic change in China.
The Chinese government is sponsoring a national campaign on "equal" education. UNDER THE SAME SKY documents school children in the city as well as the country to compare the two educational experiences. UNDER THE SAME SKY had been nominated for best short documentary at the 2017 Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2017 St. Louis International Film Festival, Long beach indie Film Festival and Los Angeles Chinese Film Festival. It's also been shown and won awards at 15 other film festivals around the world, including the Cannes Short Film Corner and The Impact Docs Awards.
An intimate portrait of three Chinese women in different stage of their marriage, representing 16 million other women who are deceived into marriage by their gay husbands.
Containing never-before-seen footage spanning 20 years, this monumental documentary tells the definitive story of the rise and fall of Chinese freestyle battle rap.
What does subtitle translation mean in my eyes? I have devoted my youth and effort of 4 years of campus life and 2 years of work life. When I have given up translating subtitle, I want to look back to and remember such a bygone by documentary. Subtitle is equal to public: By this documentary I want to show how a cinephile makes a link with film and makes effect to more cinephile in such a special situation in China. This documentary also displays a tip of the iceberg of the cinephile cultural history in China. Subtitle is equal to privacy: I hope to experience the progress of subtitle translation again, in order to cast my ambition and burden in the old days. I want to say goodbye to that ego with subtitle translation and move forwards to that ego with indie-documentary direction. I want to search more possibilities to the films.
Poet and photographer Ren Hang was renowned for his sensual images of Chinese youth, and in I've Got a Little Problem, Zhang chronicles the artist's struggle with the depression, public morality, and painful criticism that sent his life spiraling out of control.
People call those who haul camels to and from desert areas and take camel transportation as their profession camel caravans. However, with the development of modern transportation, the camel's transportation function in the desert has gradually disappeared, and the camel caravans have faded out of the historical stage. The documentary tells the story of the last generation of camel caravans in Minqin County, Gansu Province.
After "Old Tang Tou", Xu Tong continued to film the family of Old Tang Tou's son, Tang Laosan, in Northeast China. Tang Laosan was sent to prison for a murder case, and Tang Laosan's son, Xiaobao, unexpectedly encountered such a change in the year of his high school entrance exams, which made the fates of father and son both unpredictable.
Go With Your Gut is documentary on the theme of how you should always follow your heart. It tells the stories of 7 Chinese independent domestic brand founders. The main characters are Mao ...
This is a rare seen film about well known multidisciplinary artist YANG Chin-chih who was born in Taiwan, and has resided for more than 30 years in New York City. YANG is widely remarked as a performance artist in New York visual art world. His performances often dramatize the divided quality of the self such as the most praised piece “Kill Me Or Change” in which he dropped 30 thousand empty aluminum cans over his head within 20 seconds. The main theme of the story tangles in between YANG’s uniquely work which incorporates the actual rhythms and discords of human society and his own facial illness for a long time. Works he made were exhibiting in terms of the waste materials wantonly discarded by industrialized production. Whereas the disease he had suffered ever since his youth causes his face to become twisted for nearly 40 years. But all failed to cure with efforts of five surgical operations in his life.
Lei Suyun, the directors grandmother, vaguely remembers she was a great person. She was the director of the bureau of finance, NPC member. People used to call her Mrs. Lei. Now Lei Suyun doesn't remember things, she laments the passing of time. Her once brilliant achievements are gone with her memory.
The story of a girl attempted suicide for love and finally returned to religion.
This is a surrealistic documentary with a strong format which is based on the point of view of author. Tan can't fall in sleep in the night, is that because too noisy in the world, or it's just her thoughts bothering herself? It seems life itself it's a mixture with the reality and the dreams.
In a confined section of a psychiatric ward in Northeast China, patients of schizophrenia, mania, depression, compulsive sexual behaviour and alcohol addition receive the mandatory treatment. As soon as their heads are cleared, they try to break free but always fail. Under the control of drugs and unquestionable discipline, they begin to reflect on their souls, will, desire and thoughts.
In a cold mountain village in northeastern China,when a peasant gets sick they invite the local shaman to do trance healing. In the village there is Shaman XU, a renowned shaman in the area who is almost 70-year-old. He had been a teacher in his youth and an accountant for a factory production team. In his later age, serving as a spirit medium became his profession. He beats his donkey-hide drum and sings ancient melodies, inviting all kind of spirits to come.
Featuring actual correspondence between the filmmaker's father and the caretaker of his ancestral home on Hainan Island over the past 30 years, we take a glimpse into the life of a 65-year-old Hainan-born Singaporean retiree living in the bustling cityscape of Singapore, and the caretaker living in the tropical village of Qionghai, Hainan.
Li is over 70 years old, he sits in front of his window in the afternoon every day and smokes the cigarette to pass the time. The sound of water drops in the kitchen, two pigeons are roosting on roof of the opposite building, and the sunshine comes into the room, which make Li feel alive. His emotions usually could be fluctuated with the plot of the TV programmes, because he even could find out his own fitful memories from it. One was is the whole family, another one also is the whole family. During worshipping of the ancestors, he listened to his mother's arrangements and felt sincere concern from his brother. However, happy time was so short. After he returned to his rental place, the only thing that he can do is to look at the dream which was outlined in the New Year's Gala, and which gradually away from his dream. Everything just was the same as the past in this new year, he was still feel so lonely.
The film portrays two Lisu brothers aged 10 and 17 living in the Biluo Mountain where Nujiang River passes. After their father died, their mother remarried and settled at the foot of the mountain, leaving the boys to her mother and brother. There is no school on the mountain and kids spend their time shouldering the family chores. Even with the misfortune and hardship, simple happiness is never far from their life.
A Burmese-Chinese family struggles with their life between Taiwan and Myanmar. Where should they settle down?
INNER EAR INFLAMMATION can be regarded as the answer to the title of my first music documentary, ARE WE REALLY SO FAR FROM THE MADHOUSE? Both films were shot on the spur of the moment; the difference between the two is that ARE WE REALLY SO FAR FROM THE MADHOUSE? was made specifically for Yang Haisong, whose music I had regrettably never used even though he had suggested it many times, while INNER EAR INFLAMMATION is 100% ruthless contraband. The shooting and production were completed in a very short period of time, but this doesn't mean it was sloppily done. In fact, INNER EAR INFLAMMATION is by far the least regrettable of all of my works to date, including the feature films. -Li Hongqi
Late Summer captures a centuries-old Beijing theatre in its incarnation as a modern-day transient space.
Su has set up a restaurant without a permit. Unsurprisingly, the authorities send him away. Su then decides to go back home to the countryside, where his wife and children still live. He isn't exactly welcomed back with open arms.
A woman in Ecuador reads a letter from her Chinese friend, telling her about the city Guangzhou and its special African enclave Xiaobei.
Since 2010 WEI Xiaobo has been documenting his and his girlfriend’s lives and produced a series of films titled ‘The Days’. This film focuses on the happenings between 2013 and 2017, when the two get married and encounter some new problems.
Luo Zhangjie is 88 years old. Her son Qi Caizheng has lost his memories due to meningitis, and now he can't even cope with the basic tasks in his daily life. Moreover, he hits whoever gets close to him. Luo has been looking after her son, but as she's getting old, she is training her granddaughter-in-law to take care of her son.
This film depicts daily life at a school for students with hearing and vision disabilities in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. As these girls deal with their everyday teen problems at school, they express themselves in sign language, movement, and the beautiful song Caro Mio Ben, conveying their rebelliousness against the teachers, their feelings for a beloved turtle, their anxieties about the future, and their anger at the unfair gods. As if watching over the growth of these girls, the camera carefully captures their words and gestures, staring deep into their vacillating hearts.
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.