Asian Documentaries
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- DirectorHaibin DuWorkers, peasants, soldiers, students and merchants were five groups of Chinese society in the 1950s, after the so-called elimination of the exploited class. Borrowing this concept, the umbrella is taken as the clue to rediscover changes in various social classes after the economic reform, and to analyze the social problems in China. Workers making umbrellas, merchants selling umbrellas, students looking for jobs in the rain. Umbrella is used as a metaphor that can be seen everywhere. As the raindrop, what we see is sometimes clear, sometimes untraceable.
- DirectorWang BingThe impact of the decline of heavy industry on workers and their families in the Tiexi district of Shenyang, China, at the turn of the 21st century, documented unflinchingly by a fly-on-the-wall camera.
- DirectorLiang ZhaoStarsZhang WeiyeXiao YuanIt is a fantastic documentary about Chinese govt's systemic oppression and persecution toward ordinary folk who petition the government.
- DirectorKazuo HaraStarsKenzo OkuzakiRiichi AikawaMasaichi HamaguchiA documentary following Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old WW2 veteran notorious for his protests against Emperor Hirohito, as he tries to expose the needless executions of two Japanese soldiers during the war.
- DirectorWang BingA dozen aging survivors are interviewed from Jiabiangou, a complex of three work camps in Northwest China where supposed rightists were sent for re-education in the 1950s and 1960s under Mao Zedong.
- DirectorLav DiazStarsElryan de VeraAngie FerroPen MedinaThe collapse and the struggle of a poor farming clan in Philippines.
- DirectorYung ChangStarsJerry Bo Yu ChenCampbell Ping HeCindy Shui YuAt the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.
- DirectorDayong ZhaoA remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its cultural past while its residents piece together their existence. Zhiziluo is a town barely clinging to life. Tucked away in a rugged corner of Yunnan Province, Lisu and Nu minority villagers squat in the abandoned halls of this remote former Community county seat. Divided into three parts, this epic documentary takes an intimate look at its varied cast of characters, bringing audiences face to face with people left behind by China's new economy. A father-son duo of elderly preachers argue over the future of their village church. Two young lovers face a break-up over harsh financial realities. A twelve year-old boy, abandoned by his family, scavenges the hillside to feed himself. "Directed with scrupulous attention to detail by Zhao Dayong" (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times), Ghost Town is "one of the most important films to have emerged from the booming (but still underexplored) field of Chinese independent documentaries" (Dennis Lim, Moving Image Source). Ghost Town "has a strong sense of historical consciousness, an eye for unique material, and a real sympathy for the people in the film and their tough lives" (Chris Berry, Goldsmiths University). "I do not expect to soon find scenes to match Ghost Town's mountaintop funeral, the running along after a rowdy exorcism, or the scanning of faces at the town Christmas chorale. His back to prosperity, Dayong finds hallowed ground" (Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice).
- DirectorWeijun ChenStarsCheng ChengLuo LeiXu XiaofeiDemocracy in China exists, that is, in a primary school in Wuhan where a grade 3 class can vote who they want as class monitor.
- DirectorXiaolu GuoFilm shows the present state of China through twelve platforms, an old farmer, a middle aged waitress, a car washer, a weapons dealer, fish store owners, a barber, a factory owner, a park ranger, a shopping mall employee, etc. These various faces of the so-called proletarian class ask, what is a dream? Answers to this question exist in the interview with each character, but is conveyed much more clearly through the black and white image of the children putting up their future as security as shots are heard continually behind them.
- DirectorHao ZhouIn recent years, most officials in China mainland are confronted with two major problems: how to attract investment and facilitate local economy; and how to dissolve various social contradictions accompanying the modernization and development. This film narrates stories that happen in the course of three months before a secretary of CPC in County Committee leaves his post.
- DirectorHao ZhouStarsLi FuMa SuyingGeng YangboDATONG follows the life and work of a controversial Chinese Communist Mayor GENG YANBO to tell the story about how he takes a radical reform to demolish 140,000 households and relocate half a million people to give way to restoration of Ancient relic walls in order to adopt a clean economic growth from tourism and culture, which he believes will do good to DA TONG citizen in the long term. With two years in the footsteps of GENG, along with the changing ideology and confrontations from the public, the film is trying to draw a looming shape of future of China.
- DirectorNing OuMeishi Street shows ordinary citizens taking a stand against the planned destruction of their homes for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In order to widen traffic routes for the Olympic Games, the Beijing Municipal Government orders the demolition of entire neighborhoods. Several evictees of Meishi Street, located next to Tiananmen Square, fight through endless red tape and the indifference of fellow citizens for the right to keep their homes. Given video cameras by the filmmakers, they shoot exclusive footage of the eviction process, adding vivid intimacy to their story.
- StarsAndrée Bernard
- DirectorJiuliang WangWhile China's rise, and its immense challenges, commands world attention, less light has been shed upon the colossal problem of waste generated by a burgeoning population, expanding industry, and rapacious urban growth. Photographer Wang Jiuliang turns his lens upon the grim spectacle of garbage, excrement, refuse, and wreckage heaped upon the landscape that surrounds China's mega-metropolis, Beijing. Eking out a hazardous living within are the scavengers, mostly rural migrants, who struggle to maintain familial and cultural structures amid the bleakest of occupations. Wang shows the desecration of once-vital farmlands and rivers in the shadow of China's gleaming cities and planes and super-trains; the unholy cycle of construction's consumption and waste, and poignant images of the daily lives of scavengers who toil at their own peril.
- DirectorMicha X. PeledStarsSylvain FrancoisLiu KaimingGuo Xi Lam LamThe sweatshop conditions and the growing importance of China as an exporting country on a global scale are followed through by the life of a young seventeen-year-old worker in a Chinese jeans' factory.
- DirectorMeghna GuptaUnravel follows the Western worlds least wanted clothes, on a journey across Northern India, from sea to industrial interior. They get sent to Panipat, a sleepy town and the only place in the world that wants them, recycling them back into yarn. Reshma is a bright, inquisitive woman working in a textile recycling factory in small time India, who dreams of travelling the vast distances the clothes she handles have. While Reshma shows us how these garments get transformed, she and other women workers reflect on these clothes. Despite limited exposure to western culture, they construct a picture of how the West is, using both their imagination and the rumours that travel with the cast-offs.
- DirectorDavid McIlvrideRoger WilliamsStarsJason PriestleyMark AngeloOrsola De CastroRiverBlue chronicles an unprecedented around-the-world river adventure, led by renowned paddler and conservationist, Mark Angelo, who ends up uncovering and documenting the dark side of the global fashion industry.