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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Go Grandriders

17 riders with avarage age 81 decide to follow the dream of their youth and start their journey to ride around Taiwan island.

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.

The Shoe Shiner's Journey

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.

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.

People's Park

One long tracking shot through a park in Chengdu.

Mapi

Springtime, Maoshan Town, Taizhou Shi, north Jiangsu Province in China. As the villagers of Maoshan prepare for their annual temple fair to pay their respects to Chairman Mao, tempers are reaching boiling point. Organizing this festival is a not easy matter, as director Jin Shifang will attest. Not only does he have to deal with wayward loudspeakers and corrupt police, but he also has to put up with infighting and subordinates just waiting for him to make a wrong move. This observational film captures the lives of ordinary people in rural China caught in changing times, letting audiences to think it over.

Pathway

Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.

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.

A Yangtze Landscape

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.

Exile Shanghai

Six life stories of German, Austrian and Russian Jews which intersect in exile in Shanghai. Out of narratives, photographs, documents and new images of the biggest and most contradictory metropolis of the Far East an entity develops in which the historic exile takes and turns on a completely current power and appeal.

Morning Sun

The film Morning Sun attempts in the space of a two-hour documentary film to create an inner history of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). It provides a multi-perspective view of a tumultuous period as seen through the eyes—and reflected in the hearts and minds—of members of the high-school generation that was born around the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and that came of age in the 1960s. Others join them in creating in the film’s conversation about the period and the psycho-emotional topography of high-Maoist China, as well as the enduring legacy of that period.

Kano

A Taiwanese high school baseball team travels to Japan in 1931 to compete in a national tournament.

Karate Kid: Legends

After a family tragedy, kung fu prodigy Li Fong is uprooted from his home in Beijing and forced to move to New York City with his mother. When a new friend needs his help, Li enters a karate competition – but his skills alone aren't enough. Li's kung fu teacher Mr. Han enlists original Karate Kid Daniel LaRusso for help, and Li learns a new way to fight, merging their two styles into one for the ultimate martial arts showdown.

Wolf Man

With his marriage fraying, Blake persuades his wife Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit his remote childhood home in rural Oregon. As they arrive at the farmhouse in the dead of night, they're attacked by an unseen animal and barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. But as the night stretches on, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable.

Sinners

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

Locked

When Eddie breaks into a luxury SUV, he steps into a deadly trap set by William, a self-proclaimed vigilante delivering his own brand of twisted justice. With no means of escape, Eddie must fight to survive in a ride where escape is an illusion, survival is a nightmare, and justice shifts into high gear.

Princess Mononoke

Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict.

Cube 2: Hypercube

Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.

The Godfather Part III

In the midst of trying to legitimize his business dealings in 1979 New York and Italy, aging mafia don, Michael Corleone seeks forgiveness for his sins while taking a young protege under his wing.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched in every way, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance in hopes of stopping Shadow and protecting the planet.

Mufasa: The Lion King

Mufasa, a cub lost and alone, meets a sympathetic lion named Taka, the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of a group of misfits searching for their destiny.

Havoc

When a drug heist swerves lethally out of control, a jaded cop fights his way through a corrupt city's criminal underworld to save a politician's son.

Bring Her Back

Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are introduced to their new sibling by their foster mother, only to learn that she has a terrifying secret.

Run Lola Run

Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend Manni. He lost 100,000 DM in a subway train that belongs to a very bad guy. She has 20 minutes to raise this amount and meet Manni. Otherwise, he will rob a store to get the money. Three different alternatives may happen depending on some minor event along Lola's run.

War of the Worlds

Will Radford is a top analyst for Homeland Security who tracks potential threats through a mass surveillance program, until one day an attack by an unknown entity leads him to question whether the government is hiding something from him... and from the rest of the world.

My Name Is Joe

Two thirtysomethings, unemployed former alcoholic Joe and community health worker Sarah, start a romantic relationship in one of the toughest Glasgow neighbourhoods.

F1

Racing legend Sonny Hayes is coaxed out of retirement to lead a struggling Formula 1 team—and mentor a young hotshot driver—while chasing one more chance at glory.

Absolution

An aging ex-boxer gangster working as muscle for a Boston crime boss receives an upsetting diagnosis. Despite a faltering memory, he attempts to rectify the sins of his past and reconnect with his estranged children. He is determined to leave a positive legacy for his grandson, but the criminal underworld isn’t done with him and won’t loosen their grip willingly.

The Fantastic 4: First Steps

Against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, Marvel's First Family is forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, while defending Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer.

Out of the Furnace

Two brothers live in the economically-depressed Rust Belt, when a cruel twist of fate lands one in prison. His brother is then lured into one of the most violent crime rings in the Northeast.