30
Seconds of Gold
Once a year, about one hundred companies
seeking dominant positions in China’s booming economy, compete
in an auction for television advertising time. This film reveals
China’s hectic embrace of market economics presenting a close
look at the TV ad auction and the companies bidding (more)
Bridge of Winds
This film takes us to a remote part of Yunan province in China where
the Lisu people have lived for generations in a village carved out
of a steep mountain gorge, cheerily battling the elements to go
about their daily tasks. (more)
China: The Great Leap Forward
Two hundred million farmers have left their roots and migrated
to the cities in search for a better life. The film focuses on one
young man and his travails in participating in the new economy.
(more)
China - One Child
Policy
In 1980, the Communist Government of China instituted a policy of
one child per family as a means of curtailing population growth.
Now, the success or failure of this highly controversial social
experiment can be assessed. This report travels from middle class
Beijing to poor farms in the countryside to see the effect of the
policy. (more)
China
Opens Up
This is a view of China in transition through the eyes of six members
of the intelligentsia. They are addressing the issue of freedom
of expression and censorship. (open)
China Revisited
The filmmaker was born in Shanghai to a privileged family that lived
an enviable life style. When the Communists came to power the family
fled. This beguiling film records her first visit back to the land
of her birth and the relatives she left behind. (more)
China: Trading in Death
Despite China's economic success, there has been no progress
in civil rights. Workers can be sent away for "reeducation" if they
complain about working conditions. People charged with crimes do
not get adequate legal representation.(more)
Chinese Contemporary
Art
There has been an astounding flowering of innovative, energetic
and challenging contemporary art in China. The film travels to artists
studios, galleries and museums where this art is evolving and displayed,
and the artists explain their techniques and philosophies. Art experts
bring historical context to the new movement. (more)
Accompanying film: Chinese
Contemporary Art Comes to America
Chinese Foot Binding:
The Vanishing Lotus
A pair of small feet -- three-inch
golden lilies -- were once the male-designated yardstick for feminine
beauty in China. A young girl's feet were broken and bound inwards
along the instep, a process that caused excruciating pain. Systematically
bound, day after day, the stunted feet began to take on the coveted
look of that profoundly sensuous image, the lotus bulb. (more)
The Chinese Hospice
In Beijing stands the only hospital in China devoted to giving the
terminally ill a death with dignity. (more)
Colonel Jin Xing
An extraordinary portrait of a Chinese ballet dancer who underwent
one of the first sex change operations in China to become a woman.
She is now the toast of the Chinese theater, despite having challenged
very traditional institutions. (more)
Death on the Silk Road
An undercover report from China reveals the suffering of people
who have been exposed to radioactivity from nuclear testing. (more)
East Wind West Wind: Pearl Buck
The extraordinary life of Pearl Buck (1892-1973), the child of missionaries
who was raised in China and developed a deep affection for the Chinese
people. She became one of the most popular American writers of the
20th Century, especially for her best-selling novel, The Good Earth.
Archival footage and interviews provide unique insight into China
in the first half of the 20th century. (more)
The Emperor's Eye: Art and Power in Imperial China
This spectacular film brings to light the priceless treasures of
China's imperial art collection, relating them to the political
climate of their time. It also describes how the collection survived
both war and revolution in the 1930-40's. (more)
Eyes of the Storm
This film focuses on the challenges faced by a variety of Hong
Kong citizens‹legislators, students, activists‹when the territory
was returned to China. (more)
From Mao to Money
This is a colorful, ironic look
at Chinese society as it is being transformed by burgeoning capitalism.
Untold wealth has accrued to those who once followed Mao's dictates.
(more)
The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tiananmen Square, June 4th, 1989
Skillfully compiled from still photographs smuggled out of China,
eye witness accounts and news sound tracks, this short film recreates
this tragic event in Chinese history. (more)
Half the Sky
The Chinese Communist revolution promised women equality after thousands
of years of subservience to men. This film takes us to remote villages
and urban factories to show how women are still oppressed. (more)
Helen Foster Snow: Witness to Revolution
An intrepid woman who reported on events in China during the turbulent
30's and gained the friendship of Mao's inner circle. (more)
Hong Kong-Shenzhen
When Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the frontier between
the former British territory and Shenzhen, the prosperous special
economic zone, theoretically disappeared. However, in actuality
the border is still closed and integration is slow to occur. (more)
In the Name of the Emperor: The Rape of Nanjing
This film is a monument to the suffering of the Chinese at the hands
of the Japanese during World War II. Includes the newly discovered
film footage of the massacre shot by John McGee, an American missionary
who was living in Nanjing. (more)
Inner Visions: Avant Garde Art in China
This documentary gives us a rare opportunity to meet young
artists and intellectuals in Beijing and hear how they steer a course
between survival and artistic expression. (more)
Interesting Times
This fascinating new series sheds light on China today through intimate
portraits of people and their professions. (more)
1. The Secret of My Success.
Lu Guo Hua is a wheeler dealer. He is the birth control officer
in a village in North Eastern China and uses his office to control
local politics. where he also turns out to be the local political
power broker. The film gives unique insights into China's first
attempts at the politics of democracy. It also confronts the realities
of the one child policy.
2. The War of Love. Hu Yanping
is a divorce lawyer dealing with women victims of marital breakdown
and domestic violence. She also runs a successful dating agency
in her time off. .
3. Xiao's Long March. A poor
boy from a provincial town, unemployed and fed up with living with
his parents, reluctantly enlists in the Chinese Army where he learns
about his "place" in China's so called classless society
4. This Happy Life. Mr. Fu
is the harried director of China's busiest train stations. His working
life is chaotic and his private life traumatic.
The Ladies of the Lake: A Matriarchial Society
This stunning film takes us to a rare matriarchal community in southwest
China. The ancient Mosuo culture has survived both the time of the
concubines and the Cultural Revolution. (more)
Lost City: Beijing
This film looks at the issues of urban gentrification and preservation
in Beijing today, as the old neighborhoods are being demolished
for 'development' (more)
Lost Magic of the Shanghai Art Studios
At the end of the 1950’s, the Shanghai Art Studios were among
the most important in the world. Then came the Cultural Revolution
and the director was imprisoned. (more)
Love Songs of The Miao in China
This richly photographed film captures the courtship rituals of
the Miao who live deep in the mountains of China, preserving the
traditions of the past. Young men and women woo each other with
soulful songs.(more)
Macao: A Chinese
Las Vegas?
Since the former Portuguese colony Macao was ceded to China in 1999,
it has become China's "Empire of Gambling." It derives all its income
from tourism, thanks to its sleek new casinos and shopping malls.
Thousands are employed by the casinos, with 80% of the population
indirectly making their living from them (more)
Mao's New Suit
Two young Chinese women designers are out to make their mark in
the international fashion industry. Their optimism shows the human
face of changing China. (more)
No Sex, No Violence, No News.
Nothing of social or political import is broadcast on Chinese television
which is a tool for promoting consumerism. (more)
Plum Blossom in Snow
Falun Gong is an ancient meditative practice that enjoyed a revival
in China in the 1990’s. For years, however, the government has been
brutally cracking down on practitioners. (more)
Red Capitalism
China's economic revolution is illustrated by the change undergone
in Shenzen, a farming village that has become an industrial center.
The lure of free enterprise is so strong that millions of Chinese
want to work there and guards have been posted to control the flow
of migrants. (more)
Reunion.
During the Cultural Revolution a daughter was given up for adoption
to a farm family. Now, a parent herself, she journeys to meet the
father she never knew. (more)
Robert Fortune: the Tea Thief
Tea played an important role in the British Empire's expansion as
it sought to dominate trade throughout the world. A Scottish botanist
successfully stole the secret of growing tea from China.
(more)
Shanghai Bride
The effects of the one-child policy combined with a rapid revolution
in China's values and lifestyles, have created increasingly selective
middle-class Shanghai women. For working class men, finding a wife
is a quest that requires money, time, and the strength to withstand
countless disappointments. (more)
Sparrow Village
In a rural village of southwestern China a bevy of young girls yearn
for an education. Their parents are poor and mostly illiterate;
going to school costs money the families can ill afford. (more)
To Live is Better
Than to Die
A real-life picture of an ordinary Chinese family devoured by a
disease caused by official negligence and then being persecuted
by the government in their struggle for help (more)
Trash Trade
Japanese waste is turning into gold in the hands of Chinese dealers
who extract valuable metal and plastic from mountains of scrap.
But not all Japanese trash is welcome. (more)
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
Chinese author Jung Chang's grandmother was born into a still feudal
society, and became a warlord's concubine. Her mother, became a
high ranking Communist Party official. This film brings to life
the memories Chang recorded in her best-selling autobiography, Wild
Swans. (more)
Women in China
A two-part documentary on the conditions of women in today's economically
oriented Chinese society. It visits four diverse parts of China
(more).
Women of the Yellow Earth
This BBC film takes us to the heart of rural China, where one woman
about to have her third child is in trouble with the family planning
officials, and another excitedly plans for her traditional wedding.
(more)
World Without Fathers or Husbands
The women of Mosuo Province, China, have enjoyed their matriarchal
way of life. (more)
Zhang's Diner
An impoverished Chinese couple moves to Beijing from their home
town in search of a better life. They invest what little they have
in a shabby diner. The couple's problems at times reach almost comical
proportions, but they carry on, through joy and worry, determined
to succeed. (more)
