We Sit In Silence At The Memorial Table

A silent film by Vietnamese director Truong Minh Quy in collaboration with Belgian director Nicolas Graux, was shot on the set of a film by Graux. We Sit in Silence at the Memorial Table is inspired by Educational Objectives, a poem written by Aleksey Garipov and translated to English by Nicolas Graux.

The Iron Ministry

Filmed over three years on China’s railways, The Iron Ministry traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, and language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. The Iron Ministry immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.

China. The Arts – The People

China marks the beginning of the extensive Asian theme in Ottinger’s filmography and is her first travelogue. Her observant eye is interested in anything from Sichuan opera and the Beijing Film Studio to the production of candy and sounds of bicycle bells.

WANG HONG WEI: CHINESE INDIE FILM

The player of Jia Zhangke's early film "Xiao Wu" and the famous independent film activist Wang Hongwei talked about Chinese independent films at the IFF Independent Film Forum.

News Feed on My...

I just watch the news of war in a distant country on my mobile. My fingers go back day by day to the day the war broke out and pose to see comments posted on the Facebook News Feed that I follow. Outside, I have friends who participated in anti-war rallies.

Single Woman

The film records the emotions and destinies of seven single women. Whether at a loss, confused, waiting in hope, disappointed, helpless, compromised, independent or defiant, they are closely bound up to this agitated and chaotic era. Through their different experiences they tell us about the failed marriages of middle-aged women, about life being single, and about a group of men who have not yet showed up but who appear vivid from a female perspective.

Koudelka

This is a documentary filmed in a subjective perspective. Without any commentary, the film records, in the switches and transitions of the faces, the gamut and track of emotions and vision of the author in enjoying the photographs by Koudelka—from the scenes of life in “Gypsies”, to the conflicts in “Invasion”, further to the still images in “Exiles”, and finally focused on desolately dignified “Chaos”. The four chapters of the film echo the four photo albums of Koudelka. With the indoor CD player playing the music by Shostakovich, the invasion of the landscape without the windows, intermingled with the background noise, complicates the ambient circumstances of the film and renders an immediate sense of urgency and relevance.

Preachers

This is a documentary about faith, narrating the stories of a dozen or so Christians in the city of Tongchuan, in Shaanxi Province. Through the lives and beliefs of four generations of preachers, the film reflects on the profound influence of 50 years of social change on the local church. Whether recounting personal setbacks encountered on the serving path or people’s weaknesses, growth, or disputes within the church community, the film becomes a neutral and faithful portrayal of a group of preachers, of the history of the church community and of the status-quo of belief in this faithless era.

Classmates

Twenty plus classmates look back into the past, tracing back through a 30 year history. One after another adapts to the random events that come to shape their lives, to the four seasons of life and nature. The years they were about experience coincided with the reforms and opening up of China. Floating in the changes of the new era, some experience compromises and the loss of ideals, whilst some keep struggling ahead with great determination. Thirty years later, Lin Xin encounters his old classmates, and records their individual lives and history; the ease of monotony, the loneliness of success, the weariness of a life of plentiful, the helplessness of poverty... all come forth in the lives of these group of people, becoming an epitome of the lives of ordinary people in small to middle-sized cities in this era, and at the same time reflecting on a generation that advances forward undefeated.

Twenty Two

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 Yellow Bank

A short documentary that captures the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, The Yellow Bank takes you on a contemplative boat ride across the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China. Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki, who lived and worked in Shanghai nine years earlier, uses the eclipse as a catalyst to explore the way weather, light, and sound affect the urban architectural environment during this extremely rare phenomenon.

Songhua

In northeastern China the Songhua River flows west from the border of Russia to the city of Harbin, where four million people depend on it as a source of water. Songhua is a portrait of the varying people that gather where the river meets the city, and an ethnographic study of the intimate ways in which they play and work.

Demolition

"If the old doesn't go, the new never comes" recites a teenager hanging out near a demolition site in the center of Chengdu, the Sichuan capital in western China. In Demolition, filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki deconstructs the transforming cityscape by befriending the migrant laborers on the site and documenting the honest, often unobserved, human interactions, yielding a wonderfully patient and revealing portrait of work and life in the shadow of progress and economic development.

1428

The "Great Sichuan Earthquake" took place at 14:28 on May 12, 2008. In the days after, ordinary people salvage destroyed pig farms in the mountains, collect cheap scrapped metals, or pillaging other victims' homes. Behind the media circus of official visits is an inconsolable grief of families searching for loved ones. As the Lunar New Year approaches, vagabonds and family tell of the ill-handling of rebuilding schemes and misuse relief funds. As they prepare for another visit from a high official, the refugees are swept out of the town and into tent cities. The promise to put a roof over their heads before winter seems impossible to keep.

Lost in the Mountain

The film is director Gao Zipeng’s first fiction film which takes three years to complete. It premieres on March 27, 2001 in UCCA and stars the poet A Jian, Xiao Zhao and the writer Gou Zi. The film is based on a true crime of disappearance. It creates an atmosphere of what Ma Zhiyuan, a celebrated poet and playwright of Yuan Dynasty, portrays in his famous poem “Autumn Thoughts”: Over old trees wreathed with rotten vines fly evening crows/ Under a small bridge near a cottage a stream flows/ On ancient road in the west wind a lean horse goes/ Westward declines the sun/ Far, far from home is the heartbroken one.

People's Park

One long tracking shot through a park in Chengdu.

The Rocking Sky

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of WWII, this documentary film describes the eight years of dauntless air-force fighting of the republic of China during the Anti-Japanese War, with only 300 combat-capable aircraft from China while Japan had over 2000.

Yumen

Set in a quasi-ghost town that once thrived with oil in China's arid northwest, Yumen is a haunting, fragmented tale of hungry souls, restless youth, a wandering artist and a lonely woman, all searching for human connection among the town's crumbling landscape. One part "ruin porn", one part "ghost story”, and entirely shot on 16mm, the film brings together performance art, narrative gesture, and social realism not only to play with convention and defy genre, but also to pay homage to a disappearing life-world and a fading medium.

Water Margin

Part mournful meditation through documentary footage, part experimental narrative. This film looks at the life of the Chinese who have been displaced within their own society.

Karamay

In 1994, the oil-rich city of Karamay in Northwest China was the site of a horrible fire that killed nearly 300 schoolchildren. The students were performing for state officials and were told to stand by while the officials exited first. After the fire, the story was heavily censored in the Chinese state media. To this day, the families of Karamay have not been allowed to publicly mourn their children.

Children in the Morning Light

Intersection

A young, tormented boy struggles to let go of his abuser, guided by haunting dreams and a mysterious new coworker.

Mice and Mystics

The movie will be based on the Plaid Hat tabletop game, created by Jerry Hawthorne, which is a role-playing adventure following players loyal to the king who are imprisoned in a seaside castle and turned into mice by the evil Vanestra. They must fight their way out of the castle as they face dangerous foes including rats, cockroaches, spiders and the castle’s house cat, Brodie.

Jeevan Sangharsha

A poet gets dejected with the materialistic society around him. The only person he gets some sympathy from is a washed out working girl who gives him shelter. Rejected by publishers, he gains fame when his death is reported by a newspaper.

The Rape After

The figure of an evil genie is stolen by a photographer. At night the genie comes to life and rapes his girlfriend while both of them are drunk.

Don't Blink

A young man talks to his psychiatrist about strange visions he has been having in his dreams.

They See You

Years ago in a small town, the disappearance of several children remains a mystery. When three outcast brothers steal a strange board on Halloween, they unknowingly summon a horde of ghouls and open the door to the nightmare from the past.

A Hand Cuffed Passenger

Elvis Presley: Prince from Another Planet

Prince From Another Planet takes its title from a New York Times headline that accompanied its rave review of the King of Rock 'n' Roll's four sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden (80,000 tickets sold), the weekend of Friday through Sunday, June 9-11, 1972.

Submarine Alert

Nazi spies use a stolen shortwave transmitter prototype to broadcast top secret shipping info to an offshore Japanese sub. To nab the spy ring, the Government has the West Coast's top radio engineers fired and shadowed to see if the Nazis recruit them to complete work on the prototype radio. Radio engineer Lew Deerhold, a resident alien without a job to pay for his adorable little ward Gina's life-saving operation, falls prey to the spy ring, and is swept up in a maelstrom of deceit and danger.

Behind the Britcoms: From Script to Screen

Moira Brooker and Philip Bretherton (Judith and Alastair from As Time Goes By (1992)) host this behind-the-scenes look at the work of the writers behind many of our favorite "Britcoms" (British situation comedies), revealing how their ideas make it to the screen.

Coca Inc. Hecho de Coca

Trapped

Ko-Ko is chased by a cartoony spider while Max deals with a mouse in his office.

Místa

A coming of age story about love, loss and revenge centers around two teenage friends, Adam and Marek, whose aimless lives in a small town are suddenly disrupted by the appearance of Anna, the troubled daughter of a rich and influential local businessman. Initially her free spirit energizes Adam but soon he finds himself thrown into a spiraling chain of events. His innocence is about to be abruptly replaced with the adult emotions of guilt, fear and revenge.

Little Big Men

In 1982, Cody Webster and a small group of friends from Kirkland, Washington, sat anxiously in a dugout waiting to take the field for the championship game of the Little League World Series. Their focus was just about what you’d expect from any 12-year-old: hit the ball, throw strikes, cross your fingers and then maybe – maybe – you’ll win. Adults in the stands and watching from home saw a much broader field of play. The memories of American hostages and a crippling oil crisis were still fresh; the economic malaise of the late 1970s still lingered; and the new President was recovering from an assassination attempt even while confronting new threats from the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, back on that tiny baseball field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, no American team had won a true international Little League World Series Championship in more than a decade. When the Kirkland players rushed from their dugout that day, they stepped onto a much bigger field than the one they saw.

Chouriki Sentai Ohranger: The Movie

When Bulldont decides to steal humans to make a movie showing humanity the errors of their ways, the Ohranger pursue in order to get them back.

The Charge of the Brave

It takes place in 1827, in Carmen de Patagones, in the context of the confrontation between the militias of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and the navy troops of the Empire of Brazil. It is the story of a fort lieutenant who falls in love with a young woman.

Traficantes: Sexo, traición y muerte