Mao: Seize the Day, Seize the Hour (1972)

Tiananmen: The People Versus the Party

The true story of the seven weeks that changed China forever. On June 4, 1989, pro-democracy demonstrations were violently and bloodily repressed. Thousands of people died, but the basis for China's future was definitely planted.

Ascension

The absorbingly cinematic Ascension explores the pursuit of the “Chinese Dream.” Driven by mesmerizing—and sometimes humorous—imagery, this observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.

The China Hustle

An unsettling and eye-opening Wall Street horror story about Chinese companies, the American stock market, and the opportunistic greed behind the biggest heist you've never heard of.

Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns to the shooting locations of his films, along with his actors, friends and close collaborators. Jia recalls the inspiration sources for his movies, such as Platform, Still Life and A Touch of Sin. The film is the memory of a filmmaker and of a country in convulsion, China, which reveals itself little by little.

Manufactured Landscapes

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

Forbidden City: The Great Within

Amidst the grand walls of the Forbidden City, the film takes us on a deep journey through the ceremonial life of the Chinese emperor, unveiling the secrets and intrigues of concubines, eunuchs, and palace maids. As the West begins to influence China in the late 19th century, the dynamics within the city shift dramatically. The film highlights the preservation and restoration of invaluable treasures and paintings, culminating in the creation of the Palace Museum. With insights from renowned China scholar, Jonathan Spence, this is an intimate exploration of the rich cultural and historical tapestry that makes up the heart of ancient China.

China's Last Little Train

In a mountainous region of Sichuan, best known for pandas and earthquakes, there are no roads, no cars, no buses. But there is … a train. This documentary tells the story of the last working narrow gauge steam railway in China.

Mrs. Fang

In a quiet village in southern China, Fang Xiuying is sixty-seven years old. Having suffered from Alzheimer's for several years, with advanced symptoms and ineffective treatment, she was sent back home. Now, bedridden, she is surrounded by her relatives and neighbors, as they witness and accompany her through her last days.

10 Questions for the Dalai Lama

How do you reconcile a commitment to non-violence when faced with violence? Why do the poor often seem happier than the rich? Must a society lose its traditions in order to move into the future? These are some of the questions posed to His Holiness the Dalai Lama by filmmaker and explorer Rick Ray. Ray examines some of the fundamental questions of our time by weaving together observations from his own journeys throughout India and the Middle East, and the wisdom of an extraordinary spiritual leader. This is his story, as told and filmed by Rick Ray during a private visit to his monastery in Dharamsala, India over the course of several months. Also included is rare historical footage as well as footage supplied by individuals who at great personal risk, filmed with hidden cameras within Tibet.

China's Lost Pyramids

In China, there exists an astonishing place. A burial ground to rival Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, where pyramid tombs of stupendous size are full of astonishing riches. In 221 BC, China's first Emperor united warring kingdoms into a nation that still exists today. To memorialise this achievement, he bankrupted the national treasury and oppressed thousands of workers to build one of the world’s biggest mortuary complexes. China's second dynasty, the Han, inherited the daunting challenge of building larger tombs to command respect and establish their right to rule without running the nation into the ground. Although no Han emperor's tomb has been opened, the tombs of lesser Han aristocrats have revealed astonishing things: complete underground palaces (including kitchens and toilets) and at least one corpse so amazingly well-preserved some believe Han tomb-builders knew how to "engineer immortality".

I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story

A documentary about Caroll Spinney who has been Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969. At 78-years-old, he has no intention of stopping.

Redefining China's Family: Women

10 May 2007 - China's staggering economic growth has overshadowed a more subtle shift in Chinese society. In domestic life, many women are now ignore the advice of their mothers and grandmothers, turning instead to counselling hotlines and, increasingly, divorce.

Tea War: The Adventures of Robert Fortune

In the 19th century, China held the monopoly on tea, which was dear and fashionable in the West, and the British Empire exchanged poppies, produced in its Indian colonies and transformed into opium, for Chinese tea. Inundated by the drugs, China was forced to open up its market, and the British consolidated their commercial dominance. In 1839, the Middle Empire introduced prohibition. The Opium War was declared… Great Britain emerged as the winner, but the warning was heeded: it could no longer depend on Chinese tea. The only alternative possible was to produce its own tea. The East India Company therefore entrusted one man with finding the secrets of the precious beverage. His mission was to develop the first plantations in Britain’s Indian colonies. This latter-day James Bond was called Robert Fortune – a botanist. After overcoming innumerable ordeals in the heart of imperial China, he brought back the plants and techniques that gave rise to Darjeeling tea.

A Long Way Home

A Long Way Home takes us on a fascinating journey into both the grim days of recent Chinese history and the dazzling cultural scene in present-day China. The film centers around five of the most significant representatives of contemporary Chinese counterculture: the visual artists the Gao Brothers, the choreographer and dancer Wen Hui, the animation artist Pi San and the poet Ye Fu. With bravery and subversive wit, they each shed light on the social problems in their country. In doing so, the film poses universal questions that ultimately concern us all: which values determine our cultural identity and in what kind of world do we want to live.

The Man with the Lantern

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Flying the Great Wall

An epic aerial journey covering the whole length of China’s Great Wall. Across 2500km, for the first time ever, this triumph of Ming dynasty architecture has been captured in its entirety from the air. With expert narration from William Lindesay, official protector of the Wall, travel from the Yellow Sea in the East to the Gobi Desert in the far West.

Youth (Spring)

This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.

Karl Marx und seine Erben

Over the past hundred years, dramatic social upheavals have taken place in the name of Karl Marx's theories. In Western Europe, the student movement of 1968 and the Eurocommunists were inspired. And in recent times, the thinker has experienced a renaissance.

Eastern Memories

At the turn of the 19th and 20th century Finnish philologist G. J. Ramstedt travelled around Mongolia and Central-Asia. In this documentary Ramstedt’s memoirs are heard in the modern day setting, where tradition is replaced with hunger for money, and deserts give way to cities.

China - Treasures of the Jade Empire

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Mama Rainbow

For Chinese parents, finding out that their kid is gay usually presents a major tragedy, with the big majority utterly unable to accept the homosexuality of their son or daughter. However, during recent years a fresh rainbow wind has been blowing over the Chinese mainland: a pioneer generation of Chinese parents has been stepping up and speaking out on their love for their gay kids. This documentary features 6 mothers from all over China, who talk openly and freely about their experiences with their homosexual children. With their love, they are giving a whole new definition to Chinese-style family bonds.

Returned: Child Soldiers of Nepal's Maoist Army

Imagine being forced to leave your family and fight in war you don't understand - and you are only eleven years old. Sadly, for many of these child soldiers in Nepal this is a reality and the peace process has not solved their problems. These children quickly discovered that the return home is even more painful than the experience of war. Returned weaves the voices of Nepal's child soldiers, organizations working to help them, and military leader's from Nepal's opposing forces, who answer challenging questions about their use of childen as warriors.

Mass-market retailing: The end of a system?

The supermarket chains used to seem unbeatable, capturing the lion’s share of the grocery market. But for some years now they have been in crisis. In the wake of a fierce price war, retailers are resorting to increasingly aggressive commercial negotiation methods at the expense of suppliers, farmers and producers. Further competition is coming from the tech giants as Amazon and Alibaba invest in the food industry. What are the implications of all these changes on working conditions, the quality of our food and the future of our planet?

Taiwan: A Digital Democracy in China's Shadow

One Country, Two Systems? No Way! say the youth of Taiwan. But China under President Xi Jinping wants more than ever to bring the island of Taiwan back into the fold, just like Hong Kong. Can the burgeoning democracy on China’s doorstep, driven by digital technology, resist the Middle Kingdom’s advances? To China Taiwan is a breakaway province that must return to the fold. To its 24 million inhabitants it is a sovereign state with its own constitution and democratically elected leaders. Now that Hong Kong has been brought into line, Taiwan remains determined to stand up as a vibrant, young democracy. But it won't be easy. Since the Sunflower Movement in 2014 when the young came out to prevent an economic agreement with China, citizen groups have been fighting for the transparency of institutions.

100 Years

As the Communist Party of China celebrates its 100th anniversary, this documentary looks back at the party’s history, from the 1920’s, to the Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution and the reforms by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Did the Great Famine cost more than 15 million lives? How does the Cultural Revolution continue to shape Chinese politics today? What was capitalism like after Mao’s death? Through rare and never-before-seen historical footage, expert interviews and eyewitness accounts of the Great Famine, Tiananmen incident, and the Cultural Revolution, get to know how one party has so profoundly shaped China.

Surviving Progress

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

Starring Jerry as Himself

Jerry, an ordinary immigrant dad, retired in Orlando, is recruited to be an undercover agent for the Chinese police. Jerry’s family recreates the events on film and his three sons discover a darker truth. True crime meets spy thriller in this genre-bending docufiction hybrid about an immigrant’s search for the American dream. A Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury and Audience Award winner.

Fruit Farm

Nana Xu travels to the place built by her father as a prisoner during the Cultural Revolution: first a work camp, later a prison, fruit farm and treatment centre. Conversations with last remaining witnesses, where home is still shaped by a repressed past.

Last Train Home

A family embarks on an annual tormenting journey along with 130 million other peasant workers to reunite with their distant family, and to revive their love and dignity as China soars as the world's next super power.

Le Baron et l'Empereur : Japon, la voie de la guerre

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