Sparkling Red Star

People's Limbo in RMB City(en)

Cao Fei explores a virtual metropolis within the online platform Second Life. The work blends real and fictional elements of Chinese identity and urbanism to comment on capitalism and development in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Marxist iconography intersects with modern corporate structures, creating a dystopian yet whimsical reflection on 21st-century economic realities.

Le ruban(fr)

China, in the early sixties: an angry mob is persecuting a rich landowner. Mei, a young worker, who is part of the crowd. Suddenly she recognizes the victim who she secretly loves. Frightened of revealing her feelings, Mei doesn't know what to do.

The Grain Coupon(zh)

During the period of Culture Revolution in 1960s and 1970s in China, a disable old man wanted to use his handicraft, a snuff bottle with inside painting, for the exchange of “Grain Coupon” from a soldier. The soldier promised to give more coupons if the old man can forge a precious stamp. The old man had to do it, however, he failed and fell out with the soldier. At the end, the old man got grain in another way.

The Spring of Huang Jueping(zh)

An artist looks back on his younger years at the Chongqing Art Academy in the turbulent 1990s. The selection and demands used to be killing. He was close friends with two boys and a girl. They fought with local youngsters and tried to give each other pep talks. Parallels with the childhood years of his parents, during the Cultural Revolution, also show violence and gun battles. Semi-autobiographical, with motion capture.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(zh)

During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor's beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.

Rock Family Trees(en)

More than two decades after it left our screens, BBC Two’s iconic and much-loved music documentary series, Rock Family Trees, is back for a one-off special. The iconic music documentary series returns to examine the real story behind the birth of Britpop and how a handful of like-minded musicians, struggling to find an authentic voice, would pave the way for a revolution in British music. It is an intricately connected story of three of the biggest bands of the 1990s – Suede, Elastica and Blur – and how, for a brief moment in the middle of that decade, they changed British music forever, kickstarting a movement that still reverberates to this day.

Pavilion of Women(en)

With World War II looming, a prominent family in China must confront the contrasting ideas of traditionalism, communism and Western thinking, while dealing with the most important ideal of all: love and its meaning in society.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing(en)

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Wrath of Silence(zh)

Northern China, 2004. When miner Zhang Baomin returns to his home, a small and isolated mining village, his wife tells him that their son has mysteriously disappeared while shepherding his small flock.

Sight(en)

Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.

Blood Alley(en)

An American Merchant Marine captain, rescued from a Chinese Communist jail by local villagers, is "shanghaied" into transporting the entire village to Hong Kong on an ancient paddle steamer.

Chine : Opérations secrètes(fr)

Traitors(zh)

1975 on the south west border of China

The Bamboo Saucer(en)

A flying saucer hidden in a Red Chinese peasant village is sought by teams from the United States and U.S.S.R. On finding it, they band together to explore the saucer and take a trip into space.

Viva Cuba(es)

The friendship between two children is threatened by their parents’ differences. Malú is from a family that was upper-class before the Revolution and remains well-to-do through remittances from relatives overseas, and her single mother (Larisa Vega Alamar) does not want her to play with Jorgito, as she thinks his background coarse and commonplace. Jorgito’s mother (Luisa María Jiménez Rodríguez),

Farewell My Concubine(zh)

Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.

Revolution of Our Times(cn)

Throughout Hong Kong’s history, Hongkongers have fought for freedom and democracy but have yet to succeed. In 2019, a controversial extradition bill was introduced that would allow Hongkongers to be tried in mainland China. This decision spurred massive protests, riots, and resistance against heavy-handed Chinese rule over the City-State. Award-winning director Kiwi Chow documents the events to tell the story of the movement, with both a macro view of its historical context and footage and interviews from protestors on the front lines.

The Best of Youth(it)

After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.

Chen Mo and Meiting(zh)

The touching encounter of two drifting beings - Meiting, a hairdresser, and Chen Mo, a street vendor, in Beijing. A strange relationship on the background of survival and anonymous urbanization, a chronicle on the survival of feelings.

Peking Opera Blues(cn)

In 1913 Beijing, three fierce women—disguised rebel Tsao Wan, jewel-seeking Sheung Hung, and opera heiress Pat Neil—embark on a daring quest filled with intrigue and betrayal, challenging societal norms amidst political turmoil and the vibrant world of Peking Opera.