Red Guards were a student movement supported by Mao Zedong in 1966-67 during the Cultural Revolution. A group of students at Qinghua University who issued 2 big-character posters in May-June 1966 called themselves Red Guards. The students criticised the university administration of elitism and bourgeois tendencies. In August 1966 Mao Zedong expressed support for the Red Guards. This gave the student movement political legitimacy and it spread outside Beijing. The Red Guards started to attack the Four Olds and marched across China to eradicate old ideas, old cultures, old customs and old habits. Ultimately the struggle between different Red Guard factions led to a chaotic civil-war-like situation. During 1967-68 the Peoples Liberation Army got the movement under control and restored social order. Beginning late 1968 members of the Red Guard movement were sent to the countryside to undergo re-education. We met and filmed them in August 1971.
Red Guards were a student movement supported by Mao Zedong in 1966-67 during the Cultural Revolution. A group of students at Qinghua University who issued 2 big-character posters in May-June 1966 called themselves Red Guards. The students criticised the university administration of elitism and bourgeois tendencies. In August 1966 Mao Zedong expressed support for the Red Guards. This gave the student movement political legitimacy and it spread outside Beijing. The Red Guards started to attack the Four Olds and marched across China to eradicate old ideas, old cultures, old customs and old habits. Ultimately the struggle between different Red Guard factions led to a chaotic civil-war-like situation. During 1967-68 the Peoples Liberation Army got the movement under control and restored social order. Beginning late 1968 members of the Red Guard movement were sent to the countryside to undergo re-education. We met and filmed them in August 1971.
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China is the only civilization that continues to hold sway throughout its entire territory as defined by its ancient borders. This three-part series retraces almost 2,000 years of Chinese ancient history – a period that holds vital clues to understanding how this powerful nation was built. Many people forget that during the heyday of the Christian era, China was already a highly developed country. In this fascinating program we will focus on the heart of one of the most mysterious countries in the world. Witness the evolution of civilization and visit the places where the dignitaries are buried, also visit the mausoleum of China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang Di.
As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.
Crocodile in the Yangtze follows China's first Internet entrepreneur and former English teacher, Jack Ma, as he battles US giant eBay on the way to building China's first global Internet company, Alibaba Group. An independent memoir written, directed and produced by an American who worked in Ma's company for eight years, Crocodile in the Yangtze captures the emotional ups and downs of life in a Chinese Internet startup at a time when the Internet brought China face-to-face with the West. Crocodile in the Yangtze draws on 200 hours of archival footage filmed by over 35 sources between 1995 and 2009. The film presents a strikingly candid portrait of Ma and his company, told from the point of view of an “American fly on a Chinese wall” who witnessed the successes and the mistakes Alibaba encountered as it grew from a small apartment into a global company employing 16,000 staff.
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.
The war units of the Hun Emperor Mete Han and the Chinese Emperor Gao-Zu, the father of the turan tactic used by the Turks for centuries, come face to face in the Battle of Baideng. The war genius Mete Han was going to surround the Chinese with an unexpected war tactic and inflict a heavy defeat on them.
Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen's plans to create an epic work depicting his homeland's tumultuous recent history.
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.
This documentary recounts the experiences of people on the ground in the earliest days of the novel coronavirus and the way two countries dealt with its initial spread, from the first days of the outbreak in Wuhan to its rampage across the United States.
In China more people are on death row than the rest of the world combined. The children of the convicts are often left alone, stigmatized and living in the streets. Grandma Zhang, as the kids call her, is a former prison guard who has founded an orphanage in Nanzhao.
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.
Peasants that were targeted as counter-revolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution in China share their stories in this documentary by Xu Xing.
A portrait of the mythical band Bembeya Jazz, which contributed to the heyday of Sekou Touré’s cultural revolution in Guinea. Created in 1961 in the heart of the rainforest, Bembeya Jazz rapidly became modern Africa’s greatest orchestra. 50 years later, immerse yourself in the history of a legend that livers on!
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.
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.
Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.
On June 5, 1989, one day after Chinese troops expelled thousands of demonstrators from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, a solitary, unarmed protester stood his ground before a column of tanks advancing down the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured by Western photographers watching nearby, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the fight for freedom around the world. FRONTLINE investigates the mystery of the tank man — his identity, his fate, and his significance for the Chinese leadership.
Faced with climate change, many countries have embarked on the energy transition. Since the COP21 in 2015, which set demanding targets for reducing greenhouse gases, green energies have been on the rise. The electric car has thus become the mascot of this revolution. But manufacturers remain discreet about the carbon footprint of their cars marked "zero emission". Because not only do they consume electricity that is not always clean, but they also consume rare metals such as cobalt or lithium, the extraction of which causes havoc on the other side of the world. In China, for example, champion of rare metals, in Heilongjiang province, a carpet of toxic dust covers agricultural regions.