A microcosm of China past and present flows through Xu Tong’s intimate docu “Shattered,” in which the maverick indie filmmaker continues to refine his techniques and concerns shown in his previous “Wheat Harvest” and “Fortune Teller.”
Social & External
唐希信
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
One long tracking shot through a park in Chengdu.
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.
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.
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.
KJ is a biography of a HK musical genius. At the age of 11, KJ won the Best Pianist price and went to Czech to perform with a professional orchestra. Touching on subjects such as the meaning of life, God and the artistic process, the director’s 6-year-conversations with KJ reveal how a young man inspires by his music teacher, Nancy Loo and how he conflicts with his peers and parents. KJ is not about the victory of a genius, but how he learns to be a "human being".
A veteran, Mr. Long’s life was full of legend. Yet, he lived his life in silence and never told others about his experience in the battlefield. There were many scars on his body and he got three shots only in the Songshan Battle. One of them went through between the bones and the scar had been apparently seen so far.
This investigative documentary gives a comprehensive record of the development of China's "August 3 Crackdown on Mafia" campaign. Li Xiaoming, the main character of the film, escapes from the incident and goes through many ups and downs. The film explores that period from a personal point of view, slowly revealing the untold story of that period.
Before the Flood is a study of the final weeks of a dying city, as thousand-year-old Fengjie on the Yangtze River is reduced to rubble and its inhabitants uprooted to make way for the new Three Gorges Dam that will flood the entire valley.
A documentary chronicling the coming of age of a young chinese man.
Nicknamed "Mayor of the Night Market", Ninth Uncle has been a temporary worker managing the night market for over 30 years. Despite of his success in the night market, his family life appears quite the opposite. Almost 70 years old now, he continues his life in the night market. As the night falls every evening, Zhong Shan Road and its hundred years of history are now facing reconstruction and the night market full of yummy food venders [sic] is soon to be gone. Ninth Uncle helplessly watches the empire he worked his whole life for slowly fall apart.
Yu Guangyi's stunning debut explores a grueling winter amongst loggers in Northeast China as they employ traditional practices through one last, fateful expedition. For generations, the lumberjacks of Heilongjiang, China have made their living harvesting timber amidst a barren, wintry landscape. These woodcutters confront the elements, living in makeshift cabins surrounded by snow and ice. Hand tools, sleds and horses are the only technology they employ to drag massive trees down the perilous slopes of Black Bear Valley. At constant risk of injury and death, they attempt to appease the mountain gods with ancient rituals and sacrifices. Despite their heroic efforts to subsist, the deforestation caused by their decades-long customs may lead to their ultimate demise.
This is a documentary about the father of a miner. In 1955, more than 300 young people from Shanghai came to Sanlidong Coal Mine in Tongchuan City, Shanxi Province with the hope and dream of supporting the construction of the Northwest. After 50 years, most of the builders of that year were gone. In the land where black coal is buried, the fate and breathing of the miners are always stirring. The film uses 15 clips to record the old miners, the deceased and the era that is still living in the area, witnessing the tenacity and dignity of life with a group of miners. They are: Shu Guoqi, Gu Longxiang, Shen Longgen, Wang Zhengxiang, Yao Hongchang, Ge Dengfa, Zhang Baisheng, Lu Rongchu, Zhou Shougen, Luo Shijun, Ding Fuzhen, Tong Guang, Gao Zhangshun, Chen Yixiang, Zhu Yongsheng.
In 1978 Deng Xiaoping set up Shenzhen as a Special Economic Zone in China, and this decision led to the rapid development of Guangdong economy. Numerous factories have been established, millions of people are attracted because of gold rush. Over 30 years later, young people who were away from their home have already stepped in the midlife. Guangdong has become a representative of job hunting and has been drawing a newly young generation who has faith and uncertainty to the future. This video revolves around three working-class boys who are the 90s generation.
Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.
101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
Tony Lip, a bouncer in 1962, is hired to drive pianist Don Shirley on a tour through the Deep South in the days when African Americans, forced to find alternate accommodations and services due to segregation laws below the Mason-Dixon Line, relied on a guide called The Negro Motorist Green Book.
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
Five high school students from different walks of life endure a Saturday detention under a power-hungry principal. The disparate group includes rebel John, princess Claire, outcast Allison, brainy Brian and Andrew, the jock. Each has a chance to tell his or her story, making the others see them a little differently -- and when the day ends, they question whether school will ever be the same.
Spanning the years 1945 to 1955, a chronicle of the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. When organized crime family patriarch, Vito Corleone barely survives an attempt on his life, his youngest son, Michael steps in to take care of the would-be killers, launching a campaign of bloody revenge.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Anakin Skywalker, a young slave strong with the Force, is discovered on Tatooine. Meanwhile, the evil Sith have returned, enacting their plot for revenge against the Jedi.
A stranger in the city asks questions no one has asked before. Known only by his initials, the man's innocent questions and childlike curiosity take him on a journey of love, laughter and letting go.
Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.
Driven by tragedy, billionaire Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to uncovering and defeating the corruption that plagues his home, Gotham City. Unable to work within the system, he instead creates a new identity, a symbol of fear for the criminal underworld - The Batman.
An insurance salesman begins to suspect that his whole life is actually some sort of reality TV show.
Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker who only wants to bowl and drink White Russians, is mistaken for another Jeffrey Lebowski, a wheelchair-bound millionaire, and finds himself dragged into a strange series of events involving nihilists, adult film producers, ferrets, errant toes, and large sums of money.
Caleb, a coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.
Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.
Stanley, a meek bank employee, turns into an eccentric and maniacal green-skinned superhero who can bend reality, after wearing a wooden mask that was created by Loki, the Norse god of mischief.
For Jimmy Smith, Jr., life is a daily fight just to keep hope alive. Feeding his dreams in Detroit's vibrant music scene, Jimmy wages an extraordinary personal struggle to find his own voice - and earn a place in a world where rhymes rule, legends are born and every moment… is another chance.
After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, the universe is in ruins due to the efforts of the Mad Titan, Thanos. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers must assemble once more in order to undo Thanos' actions and restore order to the universe once and for all, no matter what consequences may be in store.