Wheat Harvest

A documentary film showing the life of Niu Hongmiao, a 20-year-old country girl who is now a prostitute in Beijing. Around the time of wheat harvesting, she goes back home to Dingxing County, Hebei Province to visit her parents.

2008-11-01 | zh

Dialogue Between Blue & Green

Taiwan's democracy is the envy of Chinese people all over the world. At the same time, when this two-party system-'blue' and 'green'-get at each other's throats, it seems to cast a dark cloud over this beacon of advancing democratization. How does the young generation, many of them first time voters, feel about the political environment they've inherited? Will they allow for their political differences to drive a deeper wedge into the Taiwanese society? A year and a half before Taiwan's 2012 Presidential Election I gathered a group of young people from across the blue and green spectrum to participate in a political dialogue. Although they're from opposing parties, they were willing to talk politics. Through these deliberately arranged dialogues, what sparks will fly?

2012-07-02 | zh

First Vote

A soon-to-be first-time voter, the filmmaker’s thought-provoking journey into the Rust Belt and South captures four Asian American voters’ ardent first time grassroots political participation ignited by the 2016 rise of “Chinese Americans for Trump.” FIRST VOTE is a character driven cinema verité style film chronicling the democratic participation of four Asian American voters from 2016 through the 2018 midterm elections.

2020-05-05 | en

Chinese Closet

A large majority of LGBT people in mainland China remain in the closet. Most of these closet doors are kept tightly shut by pressure from friends, family, and society itself. This documentary hopes to explore the experience of coming out in China through a series of interviews with out homosexuals. The interviews touch upon the discrimination, suppression, and even violence they have endured as well as the touching moments where they experienced compassion and understanding. The documentary also covers gay rights activist and proud mother of a homosexual, Wu Youjian, who stands strongly by her son and other gay men in full support.

2009-03-10 | zh

A Young Patriot

A documentary chronicling the coming of age of a young chinese man.

2015-04-01 | zh

Shanghai Youth

As a special generation born in the New China, the hundreds of thousands of educated youth from Shanghai went through enormous hardship during their work in Xinjiang from 1963 to 1966. Because of the specific historical conditions and context, they have been strikingly stamped with the mark of the times and have had to struggle to understand the relationship between themselves and the nation.

2015-06-09 | zh

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.

2012-10-12 | zh

A Filmless Festival

This film documents the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, from the preparations before the opening ceremony to the process of its forced cancellation, the event which spurred the Cinema on the Edge series. The footage used for the film was captured by audience members, local artists, invited directors and special guests, festival volunteers and workers, as well as journalists and members of the media. It is a film produced by the collective.

2015-01-02 | zh

Planting for Life

Old Jia gave up his city life and returned to the countryside with his wife. He abandoned chemical fertilizer to practice natural farming. His philosophy attracted a big group of admirers from the city, whereas local villagers disagreed on his approaches.

2014-10-01 | zh

Children at a Village School

2014-03-22 | zh

The Last Moose Of Ao Lu Gu Ya

Documentary about a tribe of indigenous people in northern China.

2013-01-02 | zh

Immortals in the Village

In a cold mountain village in northeastern China,when a peasant gets sick they invite the local shaman to do trance healing. In the village there is Shaman XU, a renowned shaman in the area who is almost 70-year-old. He had been a teacher in his youth and an accountant for a factory production team. In his later age, serving as a spirit medium became his profession. He beats his donkey-hide drum and sings ancient melodies, inviting all kind of spirits to come.

2017-11-21 | zh

Ninth Uncle

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.

2014-08-23 | zh

December Swallow

Director's Statement This film describes the story of small people on the margins of society, focusing on two groups, one is a cancer hotel, and the other is test drug patients. These people have no life, just to live. Xiaoyan, who has cancer, lives in a small hotel and waits for a bed in the hospital. Their simple understanding is: being able to live in the hospital represents a chance of life. In order to survive, I waited for more than two months, and finally, it was my turn to be hospitalized, but most of the hospitalization fees raised at the beginning were used to buy medicine. Zi Xiu, who took care of Xiaoyan, had to join the drug testing industry. In exchange for Xiaoyan’s chance of survival. In the film, scammers defrauded life-saving money for cancer patients, unfilial men refused to treat the elderly and maliciously deducted commissions from testers and other heinous behaviors. The rhythm of the film is like an illness tormenting patients, slow and profound.

2019-01-01 | en

Game Theory

This is a story about a five-year battle waged between the farmers of two villages and the local government over land-use rights. This documentary illustrates the subtle changes being made to the rules of the game between officials and citizens, and provides deep human insight into the loss, despair and increasing awareness experienced by common farmers in the pursuit of land-use rights.

2010-03-30 | zh

Timber Gang

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.

2006-01-01 | zh

Fangshan Church

A lively community of Christians inhabit Fangshan, a remote rural town in Jiangsu Province. At the start of the millennium, a church was built there with support of local inhabitants' relatives from Taiwan. On Sundays, up to 900 people gather to worship, while spending most of their days maintaining a modest living as farmers. Their faith governs how they handle family conflicts, illnesses and other difficulties. Still, they must contend with constraining forces in their community, from ancient folk religious practices to laws forbidding evangelism.

2005-05-05 | zh

Torch Troupes

In this vivid portrait of China's musical heritage, Sichuan Opera performers strive to keep a centuries-old artform alive. After thriving for 300 years, Sichuan Opera is an endangered art form. Having survived the Cultural Revolution, state-sponsored opera troupes now face extinction in the era of private enterprise. Opera master Li Baoting began his career at eight, but now performs pop songs with showgirls in cheap bars. His colleague Wang Bin performs in travelling tents, trying to resist the massive cultural changes threatening to wipe out this artform.

2006-05-05 | zh

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.

2008-01-01 | zh

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.

2007-01-01 | zh