Talking Unknown, Ending Unknown: Li Hongqi And His Cinema World

LIVE OF ROTTEN LIFE(zh)

On August 21, 1942, while the Japanese "Expeditionary Team" immediately retreated with ground troops, they scattered anthrax on fields, grasses, and crops in urban residential areas along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi traffic. People along the route mostly depend on farming for their livelihoods, so at the same time, many people crippled and died with rotten feet. According to incomplete statistics, there are only more than 160 suspected germ warfare survivors in Quzhou, Zhejiang. This film focuses on these surviving elderly people. When 70 years have passed since the war and a new chapter of history opened, what kind of lives are the old people who are victims? What kind of mental state are you in? Will the wounds left over from the war heal? What is the attitude towards war?

The Road(zh)

A highway is waiting to go through a quiet village in Hunan, a province in central China where Mao was from. Due to the high cost of construction, construction companies and migrant workers who live on road work rush to here like the tide. In the following four years, they root in this strange place for interests, paying sweat and blood, even their lives. With their arrival, local village and peasants are forced to change their lives. Many hidden interest lines and hidden rules about road construction of the nation are unveiled, together with the shocking truth and emerging secrets.

Disappearance(zh)

Yu Tian (played by Hu Tian) is a senior this year. He hasn't returned home for a few years while studying in a big city. The estrangement between him and his mother (Lin Jiehua) is somehow getting bigger and bigger. He is immersed in his artistic dreams and is not practical, but his mother, who has always been conservative, does not understand. His friends remained the same, still the same young people in the small town. Friends booed that he would be the most promising one among them, but he himself was convinced. He told his sister (played by Sun Nan) that he would go to the big city to make a fortune.

The Other Side(zh)

After 30 years of cold war, Taiwan and China finally opened cross-strait trade and tourism in 1980. However, through decades of political and educational vilification of their counterparts by the KMT and CCP, and despite close economic and cultural ties, what lies beneath the diplomatic relations is a disconnect and mistrust that cannot be denied. KE is a failed business in Taiwan who hopes to start over as a 'Taiwanese Expat' in Shenzheng, China with a Taiwanese company. Lili, a laborer from China, meets her Taiwanese husband online and moves to Taiwan in hopes of a better life. Both KE and Lili cross the straits in hope of achieving what they cannot find in their homeland. But how much do they really know about that country across the straits?

Heidi in China(en)

In 1946, Heidi is entrusted to a Swiss family by her father. He will never come back for her. Today, François Yang questions his mother about her past. What follows is a journey to China, a quest to reconstruct memory. Through contact with her brothers and sister, Heidi measures the extent of the drama experienced by her family that remained in China, persecuted by the Communist Party.

Children at a Village School(zh)

Lost in the Mountain(zh)

The film is director Gao Zipeng’s first fiction film which takes three years to complete. It premieres on March 27, 2001 in UCCA and stars the poet A Jian, Xiao Zhao and the writer Gou Zi. The film is based on a true crime of disappearance. It creates an atmosphere of what Ma Zhiyuan, a celebrated poet and playwright of Yuan Dynasty, portrays in his famous poem “Autumn Thoughts”: Over old trees wreathed with rotten vines fly evening crows/ Under a small bridge near a cottage a stream flows/ On ancient road in the west wind a lean horse goes/ Westward declines the sun/ Far, far from home is the heartbroken one.

First Vote(en)

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.

News Feed on My...(ko)

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.

Singing on the Construction Site(zh)

Don't forget to have poetry when making a living. This is romance. Even if you live in a sheepfold, you have a holy smile like a baby. This is romance. Listening to folk songs from the workers' hometown at the construction site in Shenzhen is touching. Once the song stops, you become eager for it. This singing series is also called "Sharing Hometown" and “Lingering Songs". You see, the eyes of the singing workers are shining, because we are all close to the Buddha.

Gold Underground(zh)

Yulin, once the poorest region of Northwest China, has rapidly become "China's Kuwait" for the mining industry launched in recent years. People rush into the coal mine and other coal-related businesses, hoping to get rich overnight. They are possessed by anxiety and restlessness. However, it seems they have no other choices…

JIA YI(zh)

The documentary, “JIAYI”, adopts a particular position from where it objectively and non-discriminatingly uncovers a real world of these left-behind kids in rural area in China, which overthrows the social stereotyping towards this special group existing in the remote and underdeveloped regions.

Before the Flood(zh)

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.

Outside(zh)

Wang Wo’s experimental documentary takes the direct cinema approach to the realm of avantgardism, immersing the viewer in a non-narrative, highly sensory experience of urban China in its visual and aural splendor.

The Rocking Sky(zh)

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.

Children in the Morning Light(zh)

Falling From the Sky(zh)

The little-known Hunan Suining County is an ordinary but full of magical places. As the theoretical point of the rocket wreckage launched by the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, it has greeted the rocket wreckage from the sky dozens of times in the past 20 years since 1990. This mysterious and dangerous “out-of-town visitor” broke the poor and peaceful life of the 160,000 locals in the jurisdiction. 2008 is China's "Olympic Year" and "Aerospace Year." The people of Suining, like the people of the whole country, are looking forward to the Olympics to pay attention to the Olympics and are proud of the growing strength of the comprehensive national strength including aerospace strength. They also have to bear the fate of falling from the sky.

Bazaar Jumpers(zh)

Two Uigur brothers and a friend are in love with parkour, a kind of extreme sport. Regardless of opposition from their worried mothers, the boys train themselves to be the best in an upcoming parkour event in Beijing while managing to iron out additional difficulties. They lose the game, but eventually they learn much more about their true selves.

Along the Railway(zh)

This important, patient documentary follows a year in the life of the sidings dwellers who eke out a living, begging, foraging, stealing and sleeping rough near the Baoji railway station in Shaanxi.

Doctor Ma's Country Clinic(zh)

"Huangyangchuan, Gansu province, China. It's an arid mountain area with poor roads. Ma Bingcheng is well-respected local doctor, so many patients (most of them farmers) come to see him every day. In his small clinic, people chat with each other about their lives, local conditions, or the people they know. The clinic seems to open up like a microcosm, the information and experiences of different people intertwine, revealing the conditions of typical Chinese farmers, and the typical fates of both young and old--"