122 Matches Found
Synopsis Le-Hun moved away to avoid her good friend Tshiu-Bi and her husband Siu-Gi, but by a twist of fate, she ended up rekindling her romance with Siu-Gi and accidentally fell pregnant with his child. Forty years later, Le-Hun’s grandson uses his camera to capture her recollection of the past and her yearning for her son.
The film explores the evolution of the bride price custom (彩礼) in contemporary rural China. It depicts how this tradition, once a cultural practice, has gradually transformed into a problematic "bad habit" (陋习). Under the pressure of exorbitant bride prices, families develop twisted values, worldviews, vanity, and competitive mentalities, creating significant social issues that affect countless rural households.
A documentary about the life of Tsai Chin, one of the first Chinese actresses to break into the West.
Along the desert, through the Gobi, across the mountains, bypassing the valley, is a piece of green land. Scattered residents have settled down in various villages by the mountain. The villagers of each town promised to return to the original site where they lived 27 years ago. Grazing sheep, galloping horses, and dog-fighting tournaments, is it the joy of reunion or sacrificial delight?
The second of Zhang Yang's Dali Documentary Trilogy. An orchestra of sound and images of Dali, a symbolic city of romance and art. It includes various sounds including those of nature and human, of different seasons, arts, and all kinds of voice in Dali. There is daring inclusion of the religious voices. The crew filmed in Dali for an entire year. It takes people to a harmonious and peaceful journey. By capturing the voice and lyrics from locals and natures, it composes the symphony of Dali. The directors give a poetic demonstration of the spirit of Dali and presents the melodies of the city’s four seasons through the lens. It is also wonderful to see the change of the clouds in four seasons.
Dissident artist Hu Jie has managed to make more than 30 documentaries. Films like Though I Am Gone and Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul are vital to understanding Chinese history and society. Widely recognized as the first artist to dare talk about the Great Famine, the labor camps, and the Cultural Revolution, Hu Jie is considered China's first historical documentary filmmakers.
"What did you dream about and what was your daily life as a teenager?” An older woman recalls her youthful memories in China during the 1970’s while unfolding in front of our eyes the recreation of the modern times from the past. Until one day, the first breathless animal appears, a White horse…
Highlights the rebellious young generation of artists in China fighting for political emancipation, artistic freedom and creating a cultural golden age during the 1980s - a significant decade of transformational change. Interweaving six main characters' memories with the director's personal narration, the film embarks on an emotional journey and tells a story of being passionate and idealistic before dreams are dashed to pieces.
Feature length making-of documentary of The Wild Goose Lake.
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.
A short film by Deming Chen.
The film follows Qu Hongrui during his final exam at the Mao Mao Cool Primary School in Da Li. Kids explore the town of Da Li, participating in a series of specifically designed tasks aimed at training their cognitive, reasoning and emotional control abilities.
The struggles of Wang Tiancheng, an elderly and cantakerous street vendor in Wuhan, China, whose business is threatened by the development of a new retail district.
A man, that animal which shapes its environment, which also shapes its brain. A fog, a bit harder than the air – the dust of stones. A hexagonal structure, like a monolith of which one dare not ask questions. Two hundred kilometres from Beijing I found a sculpture factory where men lived amidst rocks that were waiting to be broken, cut, polished. The same gestures come back again and again to write a history of deterioration and repair. This history is obliterated in the making of monuments. With the wind that inexorably scatters the traces of these actions.
Ng Meixi returns to Singapore having spent time in Mexico working with low-performing students. She joins a local school as a relief teacher but takes on a mammoth task: to pilot a new pedagogy to help students in the Normal (Technical) stream learn better. She reconfigures the classroom from a teacher-directed one to a community that aims to empower students as learners and tutors to each other. Will this work in Singapore’s result-oriented education system?
A new phenomenon of authentic Chinese rap has taken the internet by storm. But behind the unprecedented gains in popularity, there is a struggle for freedom of speech. Rappers are trying to figure out what they still can and cannot do after new censorship is announced.
The village in the mountains of China that the director has long made the subject of her camera. The traces of memories and landscapes that fade away before one’s eyes. An 85-year-old man is recounting the story of half of his life, while a young girl draws portraits of the village elderly.
Shenzhen River (the border btw Hong Kong and Shenzhen), and the Second Line of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (the border between Socialism China and Capitalism China) were compared to the Berlin Wall. The Second Line were constructed June 1982, demolished June 2015. The First Line (Shenzhen River) still flows, running deeper and deeper after 1997. Artist Miaoyuan LONG and Zen LU (the ON/OFF media Group) documented major checkpoints along these two boundaries. It’s a piece to illustrate the Big Escape (Touch Base Policy) from mainland China to Hong Kong during 1950-70’s and the geopolitical history of Shenzhen. The 48min audio-visual live performance version was Official selection of Draft Systems 2017 WRO Media Art Biennale, Poland.
Langfang, about 40 kilometers from Beijing, is one of the most air-polluted cities in China. But at the local environmental protection bureau, deputy chief Li and his assistant Hu are working hard to change this.
Four Springs is a documentary film that presented a family's daily life in the remote town of Dushan in the Guizhou province in southwest China. From a subjective angle, the camera induced the flow of life out of the screen: the quotidian toils, singing, excursions in nature, visits among friends and extended families, funerals, reunions and departures. It presented the state of being of the two main characters, the director's own parents, and their attitude when facing irretrievable loss in life.
Weaving together footage filmed and broadcast by little-known Chinese live-streaming anchors, who struggle with real-life face-to-face social interaction because of their identity, disability and social-economic status, this cinematic collage explores how individuals satisfy their cravings for human connection through virtual togetherness, and how these virtual relationships challenge standard definitions of companionship.
A documentary about shamate, a wildly controversial subculture that emerged in China in the late ’00s.
Filmed over 17 years across Southern China, this remarkable film is an intimate and heart-wrenching portrait of Li Ermao, a transgender migrant worker, who performs in clubs looking for love and acceptance. Living as a “ladyboy” with a string of boyfriends, she faces repeated encounters of prejudice and aggression with equal measures of resilience and vulnerability. With a flair for the dramatic and her budding career as a popstar, Ermao’s story takes many dramatic twists and surprising turns as she moves between the urban and the rural, searching for identity and fighting for a better life.
Clearly, the comfort woman controversy is far from resolved - and that explains why Zhongyi Ban has now completed his third documentary on the subject. "Give Me the Sun" introduces us to a group of seven aging Chinese women whose bodies and minds were irrevocably scarred by the unspeakable brutality inflicted on them during World War II, when they were being gang-raped for months until their families ransomed them. Some were lured into sexual slavery by locals working for the Japanese Army, who promised them work in factories or hospitals; others were simply abducted and enslaved in the nearest comfort stations. Chinese scholars have estimated that close to 100,000 women were forcibly taken from their homes during the war, although lack of official documentation has made it difficult for historians to reach an agreement on the exact figure.
As the Labour Day Holiday is approaching, Ling Xiuzhen and her thirty-year old grandson decide to visit their long time no-seen hometown, Zhujiajiao, a place known for its riverfood. There is where she founded a traditional style Chinese restaurant time ago, which was transferred to her son after she retired. It's been a while since Ling Xiuzhen hasn't visited Zhujiajiao. In the recent years she has been living in Shanghai with her busy grandson, holding a monotonous life. But there are times where she leaves her routine for a second to wonder about the future, especially regarding whether her grandson would be willing or not to take care of the restaurant, following the family tradition. Ling Xiuzhen and her grandson. Two cities afar. Two generations yearning to build a bridge between them.
A cable system designed by controversial Chinese company Huawei Technologies enables communication between an expert and a machine. Time succumbs to space in a "New Cold War" played out in technological materials.
The third part in Wu Wenguang's Autobiography film series.
The location of Hunan's southwestern Hunan, the local economy is not active, the people either go out to work or go up the mountain to mine. Due to the constant mining disasters, despite the government's efforts to rectify and regulate, many people still illegally mine. Miners often do not pay attention to the protection of mines. Many years later, many miners have pneumoconiosis. The film started shooting in 2010 until 2018, with a filming period of nearly ten years, until the death of Zhao Pingfeng, the protagonist of pneumoconiosis, leaving young children and mentally handicapped wife.
At the end of the 1990s, about 40-50 million industrial workers were laid off in China, and the family population involved was hundreds of millions. He Guoping was one of them. After he was laid off, his wife opened a rental house. He became the "housekeeper" who cooks and cooks every day. His son He Huan was also raised by a playful child. Twenty years of follow-up shooting of this ordinary family, this continued "presence", the film has a time tentacle of "seeing the growth of grass". Some people say that this is a "civilian epic".
Wang Bing is one of the greatest documentary-makers alive today, and his films offer a very insightful overview of the transformations occurring in Chinese society. Here, Dominique Auvray conducts an interview that, in addition to the biographical information, focuses above all on the relationship with things unsaid: Wang Bing attempts to do justice to his theme and the testimonies he’s gathered, but he stumbles over the words, struggling to keep his emotions in check. The pain of tackling history shows through the awkward speech.
With Chinese society rapidly changing around her, one young mother finds it is not so easy to bring ancient ways into her modern family.
Due to its proximity to the No. 6 Naphtha Cracker Complex, Ciaotou Elementary School Syucuo Branch has relocated its students four times within three years for fear of health risks. It is said that "Kisses and Hugs", a newspaper praising the benefits and prosperity brought by the petrochemical industry, is delivered monthly to local households. Through this publication, this film examines the complex relationship between industry and local community.
On October 3rd, 2016, I went on a journey with my college roommate to revisit the places I once passed by back in 2009.
Liu Chuang’s video installation constructs a speculative journey through the history of technology, infrastructure, ecology and finance, intertwining this with anthropological knowledges and science fiction’s global imaginary.
An experimental biography of Chung-I, one half of a once-conjoined twin whose separation surgery at age 3 was broadcast live on Taiwanese television. Forty years later, artist Hsu Che-yu produces a digital scan and ceramic cast of the man's body in a playfully analytical take on doubling and copies.
The shakuhachi is a famous Japanese lbamboo-flute. It was originally introduced from China into Japan in the 7th century and underwent a resurgence in the early Edo period. The film records the life of the shakuhachi performers, controllers, and learners in China, Japan, the United States
Yu Tian (played by Hu Tian) is a senior this year. He hasn't returned home for a few years while studying in a big city. The estrangement between him and his mother (Lin Jiehua) is somehow getting bigger and bigger. He is immersed in his artistic dreams and is not practical, but his mother, who has always been conservative, does not understand. His friends remained the same, still the same young people in the small town. Friends booed that he would be the most promising one among them, but he himself was convinced. He told his sister (played by Sun Nan) that he would go to the big city to make a fortune.
Since his wife left him, Jun has been a wandering soul who wonders what purpose all his suffering serves. In a simple farming village surrounded by barren hills, he takes care of a small temple. He looks at his hands: his right is blessed, and his left is deformed. He believes he has healing abilities and goes from house to house to help the sick. As the seasons pass, this gently-paced portrait of the wandering Jun is interwoven with impressions of village life, with its rituals and festivals, and poverty that makes many people desperate, and some defiant. Two sheep, destined to be sacrificed, add a grimly poetic note to this uncompromising and moving meditation on fate and the search for meaning. The body cam worn by one of the sheep also makes for some surprising shots. Meanwhile, Jun’s musings gradually reveal more about the crises he has had to endure and the reason for his self-sacrifice.
Wedding photos are the development of emotions. The unique cultural etiquette and true temperament of the Chinese society are all recorded in the wedding photos. It makes everyone believe that this is a dream factory that can exchange money for concrete happiness. Before entering into marriage, the prince and princess are looking forward to a happy and happy love and future. On the other side, the couple who are already in marriage, what they hear is a frank conversation between them. Looking back at the photo that symbolizes the marriage contract, what kind of form does the "intimacy", "happiness", or "love" between the two transform into?
Haunted by post-socialist nostalgia, 25-year-old director Hanwen Zhang returns to the cement-factory town in northeast China in which he was born and raised. The town’s official name is Sheep Pen Town, in the Shuangyang District of Changchun City, Jilin Province. People don’t really use this name, but currently refer to it as ‘the cement factory’. According to oral history, the town was known in the 1990s as ‘the first line of China’. Throughout the film, the director explores this clue to reveal a half-buried story. The town was a product of China’s rapid and radical industrialisation in the 1980s, having been constructed simultaneously with a state-owned cement factory to house the workers who migrated there. With a subtle irony and a nuanced but brave approach, Hanwen explores the history of his country and its ideology through the lenses of his own family and hometown.
Pebble is about the life of a young Chinese christian who lived a hobo life in Beijing, battling a rare disease that’s slowly killing him. Tired of waiting for God’s salvation, one day he decided to go home.
In the process of social transformation in China, urbanization has deeply affected and changed the countryside. Heishuigetuo is a remote village with over 300 years of history which is gradually withered. Currently, there're only 15 villagers living in it. The mountain village retains the traditional features of northwestern Shanxi Province. Hou Junli is the only young man in the village. He raises more than 500 goats with his father. Liu Sanlong, 82 years old, is a farmer of the older generation living on farming. Liu Guoping is a young man among the first group of people leaving the village to work in the cities.
Hu Jie is a prodigious independent Chinese filmmaker who has produced and directed thirty or so documentaries. Also a master of wood engraving, Hu Jie breathes new life into the expressionist tradition of Käthe Kollwitz. In his works — including those produced in Paris for this film — Hu Jie recreates terrifying moments of organized crimes against the Chinese people during the famine of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution”. Bertrand Renaudineau’s and Gérard da Silva’s film offers Hu Jie his first chance to tell how he was a wood engraver before becoming a filmmaker; how, he freed the “soul of a young martyr”; and how his prints and documentaries have helped convey the experiences of the Chinese to people all around the world. (René Viénet)
The spotted dog in my hometown went missing, which started my thoughts...
Leave all the messages for the future⋯ Hamasen is one of the first modernization regions. Since the Japanese colonization era, there had been many scenic postcards recording images of Hamasen. Some of the architectures still remained in the same places as they had been in the postcards. Over hundreds of years, this piece of reclaimed land carries memories of fishing men, customs declarers, and local elders from generations to generations. Sceneries in people's memories intertwine with different time layers of maps of Hamasen. What kinds of messages do we intend to leave for the next generation?
Rise of a man from the lower castes of society to become a "Big Brother", managing prostitution and gambling businesses.
It’s about an old man, who had a rather hard life. He started off poor, then wealthy; from wealthy to unwell; And from the illness arises his determination to write.” This is what my father told me, the director to say about this film. And as the director, I documented his life which could be missed 9 years ago, and his journey, from where he lived now to his hometown, from life to death.
On an island not far from the mainland, the young father seagull is anxiously guarding the new born gulls by the nest and awaiting the return of the mother seagull. The mother seagull has given up everything she has, but the baby seagull is still hungry. The father seagull had flown away in search of more food...The main diet of black-tailed gulls is pelagic fish in the sea, molluscs and aquatic insects in coastal wetlands and estuaries. However, with the overfishing of offshore fish and the pollution of the marine environment, seagulls can catch fewer and fewer small fish in the upper layer.
In Lengshuijiang, balanced in a space made up of official images, an audiovisual program presents itself as a taciturn witness of rigid, modulated, even aberrant moments in which China constantly tried to demonstrate its success through its own fresco, an atypical form in tone of virtual reality.