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Tshultrim Danba and Tholing Monastery

Tholing Monastery (Tuolin si 托林寺) is the oldest monastery in the Ngari Prefecture of western Tibet. It is situated in Tholing (Zanda), Zanda County, near the Indian border of Ladakh — more than 1,800 km from Lhasa. It was built in 997 AD by Yeshe-Ö, the second King of the Guge Kingdom. In the Tibetan language, 'Tholing' means "hovering in the sky forever," and is reflected by the location of the monastery, which sits at an elevation of 12,400 feet. This documentary follows an old monk who spent his childhood at the Tholing Monastery, in the 1950s. In 1960, he fled to India, and in 1967 (during the Cultural Revolution), Tibetan residents from in and around Zanda County gathered at Tholing Monastery and demolished most of its buildings within a month. The monastery was allowed to resume Buddhist prayer activities in 1984; upon hearing this, the old monk left his life in India and returned to Tibet.

Tshultrim Danba and Tholing Monastery

NR 1993
Contemporary Shroud Fashion

Li Wake travelled to Beijing in June 1998 with a desperate post-modernist passion and had models dressed in his "shroud fashion" walk through the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Wangfujing and other venues, and virtually performed a "living dead" shroud fashion show in front of a crowd of people. The footage was then mixed with clips from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and edited into an MTV format, which was projected onto the wide screen of the Beijing Theatre, where the shroud fashion models moved from the outside of the theatre into the inside of the theatre, walking freely in front of the screen, occasionally delivering ballots to the mailboxes. At this point, revolutionary songs, Enya's score, and funeral marches alternate, and a poppy patchwork of music, video acts, and props combine to form a kind of absurd self-eulogy-like martyrdom ritual.

Contemporary Shroud Fashion

NR 1998
Yin Yang

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.

Yin Yang

NR 1997
Bajiao Street

A documentary film showing the oldest street in Lhasa, Bajiao St., also called Bakhor or Baghor), located in the town center. In the past, Bajiao was only used as a ritual circumambulation route, "a saint road" in the eyes of the Tibetans. Now it's developed into an old shopping district with colorful Tibetan houses lining the street, and the ground paved with man-made flagstones, preserving its ancient look. The film also shows the social conditions, customs, and spirtual lives of the Tibetan inhabitants.

Bajiao Street

NR 1992
The Elders

In the mid-1980s, a dozen old people in Old Latse Village in Shigatse, Tibet, voluntarily organized the reconstruction of the Gyang Temple, which was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. With the assistance of villagers, the reconstruction took 10 years. In 1995, they had admitted new members and founded a Mani Association. These old people chant Mani collectively for three days every month. In addition, following the ancient practice in the village, they pray for the safety of the villagers by piously worshiping the gods and making offerings to ghosts. But their ultimate purpose is to support any member to complete their final life journey by organizing a vigil and attending his or her funeral.

The Elders

NR 1999
Field Study Along the Yangtze River

In March 1997, a teaching and research team led by Professor Zhuang Kongshao came to the Tujia area along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to conduct anthropological research, with the aim of establishing a link between anthropological academic knowledge and field studies, as well as finding valuable research points to achieve the possibility of interdisciplinary collaborative research. "Field Study Along the Yangtze River" is a synchronous film and television work based on this survey. Now re-edited and transferred to today's university classroom, it is intended to facilitate anthropology students who are preparing to enter the field study phase, and by watching this film, it will trigger them to think about the opportunity of academic docking between theory and research sites, and further transition them into their own fieldwork thinking.

Field Study Along the Yangtze River

NR 1998
A Man with HIV

After volunteering as a blood donor, the HIV virus is found in 31-year-old Li Ziliang. He is immediately fired by his boss for fear of infection. Every time he walks on the street, he is surrounded by groups of people that stare at him. ‘One touch and you’re finished’, one of them thinks. ‘People with AIDS should be cursed. Only immoral people get AIDS’, another one comments. Nobody wants to sell anything to Li, because they do not want to touch the money that has passed through his hands. Only in distant Beijing can he walk around undisturbed. His wife is at her wit’s end, too, because she also lost all her friends. One day, she gets on her bicycle and never returns. She leaves Li behind with three children, who will not find anyone to take care of them after he has passed away.

A Man with HIV

NR 1999
The gate of heavenly peace, Tiananmen Square, June 4th, 1989

With startling immediacy, this short film captures the shock and horror the Chinese students experienced when government troops opened fire on them in Tiananmen Square. We hear students rallying for democracy just moments before they were to be gunned down. Skillfully compiled from still photographs smuggled out of China, eyewitness accounts, and news sound tracks, it recreates this tragic event in Chinese history. This unforgettable document will remind Americans that the dream of democracy does not come without sacrifice. From high school students studying world events to "Asia watchers" at universities, this film is a must.

The gate of heavenly peace, Tiananmen Square, June 4th, 1989

NR 1991
Wang Mai's Spring Festival Gala Evening

In the performance work Spring Festival Gala Evening of 1999, Wang Mai used the example of Spring Festival Gala Evening, which is well-known by Chinese audiences. He chose the most classic and popular songs and short acts of the past few years, re-acted and re-composed them into a show having no difference compared to a real gala evening with hosting, songs, dances and short acts. The whole process lasted for one hour and more than twenty actors participated.

Wang Mai's Spring Festival Gala Evening

NR 1999
Penyao Village

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.

Penyao Village

NR 1990
Dege Sutra-Printing House

Screened in the New Asian Current section of the 1993 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. Filmed at the Dege Sutra-Printing House in Dege County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Known as the "shining pearl under the snow-capped mountains of Tibet," the Dege Sutra-Printing House (at the time this was shot) contains more than 400 books, 900 volumes, and nearly 270,000 printed documents, spanning Nyingma, Sakya, Bonbu, and Gelug sect classics and various other Tibetan Buddhist texts.

Dege Sutra-Printing House

NR 1993
Jiacizhuoma and Her Matriarchal Family

Aji Dolma is the fourth daughter of the second generation of the Caita family in Lushui Village, Lugu Lake. She lives in the Mosuo matriarchal family that still retains the custom of "marrying" between males and females. In 1993, by chance, she left home and went to the provincial capital Kunming. Since then, her fate has changed. At the same time, a large number of tourists poured into her village, which brought wealth to her hometown and also brought an impact on the culture here. Several versions of the film exist, with the earliest completed in 1998 and latest in 2005.

Jiacizhuoma and Her Matriarchal Family

9.0 1998
flow

In Flow, completed in 1991, Wenyi Hou, the Chinese woman migrant artist being interviewed, struggles with the impossibility of identity formation through speech and performs instead a documentary scene that has obviously been rehearsed in order to highlight the unhumanness of being human. She asks whether it is possible that we all originated from and could be reducible to grape, in the farm of bunches, connecting and consumable, yet all brilliant and different in their own contexts, or in her words, “in another kind of time.”

flow

NR 1993