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.
Groot discovers a miniature civilization that believes the seemingly enormous tree toddler is the hero they’ve been waiting for.
Six vignettes pit an assortment of characters against each other in everyday situations.
Simone and Jean have just married and, looking for a home in the Paris region, are lucky enough to find a house with a garden in a residential suburb. Expecting their first child, the young couple began to observe how the parents of neighboring families were raising theirs.
During a summer stay on the mainland, Tinker Bell is accidentally discovered while investigating a little girl's fairy house. As the other fairies, led by the brash Vidia, launch a daring rescue in the middle of a fierce storm, Tink develops a special bond with the lonely, little girl.
The place is the notorious Starck Club (so called because it was the first major project designed by Philippe Starck in the US.) The Starck Club opened in Dallas in 1984 and not long after hosted the 1984 national Republican Convention. Ironically, it was actually legal to buy MDMA aka ecstasy there, people would put it on their credit cards. The DEA stepped in and made it a category 1 drug on July 1, 1985... In a time when ecstasy was legal & guyliner was cool.
Jurek Kiler has become a VIP - sponsoring the Polish government, playing tennis with the President, meeting world leaders. He must oversee a transfer of a substantial amount of gold. However, in his past activities, he has made enemies. Mighty ones. And thus Jurek Kiler's next adventure begins as he has to face attempts at kidnapping, assassinations and problems in his love life...
"AA" is a documentary about Akira Aida (mostly known as Aquirax Aida), a japanese music critic who introduced free jazz, improvisation, and progressive rock to Japan. It's based on interviews with 12 critics and musicians who had connections with him. This is a documentary that considers the past, present and future of improvisation.
Two young indigenous brothers from the La Sierra Tarahumara region of northwest Mexico return home from Benito Juarez elementary boarding school, only to find their fates pulling them in opposite directions in director Laura Amelia Guzmán's dramatic meditation on the value of culture and the cost of progress.
John Falk is on a routine mission with the Gothenburg police special unit GSI. With the help of a Norwegian undercover police and a civilian infiltrator in one of Gothenburg's heaviest criminal gangs, the GSI are trying buy six assault rifles and thus get them off the street. But suddenly everything changes when a new unknown player suddenly and immediately wants to buy not only those weapons but even more, including armor-piercing shells. GSI realizes that this can not be any ordinary robbers. Someone will start a war on the streets of Gothenburg. At the same time as the situation gets more and more complicated for John Falk's infiltrator Frank Wagner when the leader of the gang he infiltrated realize that one of his own leaking to the police.
Mecha Mutt, a revolutionary remote-controlled lunar rover resembling a large canine, goes rogue at Houston's Annual Science Expo. Scooby-Doo! Mecha Mutt Menace is the fourth in a series of direct-to-video short films.
Director Dag Yngvesson begins making a documentary about the porn industry, until he is asked by a desperate director to shoot film for his next adult movie. After agreeing, he is led deeper and deeper into the world of porn, speaking frankly with many of the industries most famous icons (Jeanna Fine, Bill Margold) and a 19-year-old newcomer named Selena who discusses her career choice on film with her mother. Viewers are invited into many areas of the industry previously not discussed including the private lives of its stars and the inner workings of the industry, in particular how directors go about casting their stars.
Jun Hau Timi is a romantic tale of unexpected love in the heart of London. Samir, a dashing and fitness-conscious man from Nepal, is searching for the perfect partner. Shristi, a young and beautiful woman from India, is exploring life in the United Kingdom. One day, Samir decides to visit Tower Bridge in London. As he stands admiring the iconic landmark, he notices Shristi walking nearby. Captivated by her beauty, he approaches her and introduces himself. Shristi warmly responds, and the two strike up an instant connection. Eager to share the city's charm, Shristi takes Samir on a tour of London's landmarks, including London Bridge and other picturesque spots. Their friendship deepens as they spend more time together, and a spark of love begins to grow. The story conveys a simple yet profound message: love can happen anytime, anywhere, with someone who feels like destiny
Fictional vampires have long stalked the world of movies, books and comics, but a new international subculture has emerged that takes things to an arguably unhealthy level. What would compel willing victims to donate their own blood to be consumed by self-proclaimed vampires? Real-life blood-drinkers are interviewed, as well as make-up artists, vampire hunters, psychologists and experts of all stripes.
Joseph is a man plagued by a violence and rage who is driving him to self destruction. As he falls further into turmoil, Joseph scours the landscape in search of a single grain of redemption that might restore hope to his fractured life.
Lonnie, a crop duster pilot, must lead a mismatched group of survivors to escape the deadly zombie horde after an experimental chemical, intended to control the invasive kudzu vine, transforms the citizens of Charleston, MS into zombies.
Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.
What happens when 300 lesbians from around the world attend the largest United Nations conference? How did two busloads of lesbians headed to an underground nightclub help spark the birth of a lala (LBT) movement in China? At the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the first ever lesbian tent at an UN NGO Forum was created. Emerging from hidden shadows of shame and invisibility, Chinese lalas began a hard-fought path of deliverance from themselves, from family, and from an apprehensive environment. In doing so, they sought empowerment and change as they explored concepts and issues from self-affirmation to rights consciousness. The film powerfully moves forward to the present day and shows the drastic change in today’s young feminist lalas – their challenging of sexism and homophobia with daring public street actions on subways – a parallel action to their forerunners in 1995, with much vigor and defiance 20 years later.
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.
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.
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.
I just watch the news of war in a distant country on my mobile. My fingers go back day by day to the day the war broke out and pose to see comments posted on the Facebook News Feed that I follow. Outside, I have friends who participated in anti-war rallies.
In this talk, Li Hongqi reviewed his transition from fine art to cinema, and his aesthetic and philosophical exploration from his early 'So Much Rice' to recent 'The The'. Dir. Li Hongqi also shared his strong anxiety of his existence(born with melancholia), his thought on cinema art (actually, I don't think there's any movie worth making), his epistemology, his religious view, his consideration on contemporary cinema, and what he learned about living in seclusion.
A small rural township called Red White was seriously devastated by the May 12th Earthquake in China 2008. A 62-year-old Taoist survived even though his temple was largely torn by the disaster. This documentary tells the story of how the Taoist practices the widely believed Chinese traditional religion and the local people’s daily life during the township’s post-quake reconstruction.
China marks the beginning of the extensive Asian theme in Ottinger’s filmography and is her first travelogue. Her observant eye is interested in anything from Sichuan opera and the Beijing Film Studio to the production of candy and sounds of bicycle bells.
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.
"Mazu" or "The Sea God" has been the most important religious belief of ordinary people in my hometown for four hundred years. Along the coast of China and even in the Nanyang region, there is at least one temple dedicated to Mazu in various seaside cities-this geographical and historical distribution coincides with the contemporary economic or industrial area of Chinese society. It is frustrating that rapid economic development has led to global warming. The factories located on the coast of southern China from all over the world will eventually cause flooding and inundate these temples dedicated to Mazu. This is indeed a very ironic discovery for our civilization, "We", not only Chinese or all human beings, now or in the past, how can we Chinese avoid this upcoming tragedy?
A documentary chronicling the coming of age of a young chinese man.
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.
The true story of punks, queers, & criminals on a ride with two men who accidentally changed music along the way.
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".
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.
The film explores the hidden face of poverty in one of the world's most affluent and capitalistic cities. Directed by CHEUNG King Wai (KJ: Music and Life), the film follows five Hong Kong families of different backgrounds that receive government subsidies. How do the poor get by in a glossy city that flaunts conspicuous consumption and hides poverty in cavernous public housing estates? All's Right With The World shares the different stories of these low-income families, their daily living conditions, and their ways of celebrating Chinese New Year.
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.
17 riders with avarage age 81 decide to follow the dream of their youth and start their journey to ride around Taiwan island.