Ten-year-old HE Fangfei and her family are "eco-refugees" living in Minqin County. Minqin, once an oasis, is now one of the major sources of sandstorms in China. The deserts are encroaching on the towns and swallowing up farmland, schools and homes. The government advisers privately describe Minqin and the surrounding areas as "ecological disaster areas", and try to convince the villagers that the only option the Chinese people in this region have is to respect nature’s rules by allowing the sand to encroach and restore these regions to the original ecological system. The film examines this ongoing battle, now carried out by young villagers like HE, between human nature and Mother Nature.
In southwestern China, state athletic coaches scour the countryside to recruit poor, rural teenagers who demonstrate a natural ability to throw a good punch. Moved into boxing training centers, these boys and girls undergo a rigorous regimen that grooms them to be China’s next Olympic heroes but also prepares them for life outside the ring. As these young boxers develop, the allure of turning professional for personal gain and glory competes with the main philosophy behind their training – to represent their country. Interconnected with their story is that of their charismatic coach, Qi Moxiang, who – now in his late thirties and determined to win back lost honor – trains for a significant fight.
This is a story about a five-year battle waged between the farmers of two villages and the local government over land-use rights. This documentary illustrates the subtle changes being made to the rules of the game between officials and citizens, and provides deep human insight into the loss, despair and increasing awareness experienced by common farmers in the pursuit of land-use rights.
China's top drama academy stages the American musical "Fame," China's first official collaboration with Broadway, as the graduation showcase for its senior class. During the eight-month rehearsal, five students compete for roles, struggle with pressure from family and authority, and prepare to graduate into China's corrupt entertainment industry.
In a quiet forest, a sign warns of radiation hazard. “Is this the past or the future?” muses the masked figure who appears like a kind of ghost in nuclear disaster areas. At a time when nuclear power may be re-emerging as an alternative to fossil fuels, this calmly observed and compelling tour takes us to places that may serve as a warning.
This film tells a story about an unschooled 11-year-old girl Yi-Jie, she's a truly global child who learns the world through the United Nations of Wastes while working with her YI minority parents in this recycle workshop thousand miles away from their mountain village home town
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?
Old Jia gave up his city life and returned to the countryside with his wife. He abandoned chemical fertilizer to practice natural farming. His philosophy attracted a big group of admirers from the city, whereas local villagers disagreed on his approaches.
In the 1940s, as the fate of the Chinese people and the dignity of Chinese Buddhism fell into the nadir, a 14-year-old boy was ordained to be a Buddhist monk in Jiangsu Province, China. Since then he has embarked on a journey to pursue and spread the Dharma for nearly 70 years.
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.
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.
Sam, a 25-year-old young guy, is lost in the process of making his movie dream come true. Where is his future? Who should he believe? Sam doesn't have the answer. He decides to leave for Yunnan, trying to embrace the notion of pure nature, leaving all the frustration and difficulties behind. However, he still returns to Beijing for achieving his movie dream. During his journey, he has heard different opinions about what he should or should not do. Facing all the expectations and suggestions, Sam can't figure out his way, but wants to hide and to run away instead...
Thirty-four year-old Alun formed the first hip-hop dance group 'The Party' soon after totalitarian rule ended in Taiwan in the early 90s. The group eventually disbanded, but Alun's passion for hip-hop remained. He's about to compete in Juste Debout, a worldwide street dance competition to take place in Paris. Where will this journey take him? Eight high school students born in the 90s, and half the age of Alun, make up 'Undergradu-eight' Supported by a more open society that has come to embrace pop culture, what is the dream they're hoping to achieve through hip-hop?
Taiwan's democracy is the envy of Chinese people all over the world. At the same time, when this two-party system-'blue' and 'green'-get at each other's throats, it seems to cast a dark cloud over this beacon of advancing democratization. How does the young generation, many of them first time voters, feel about the political environment they've inherited? Will they allow for their political differences to drive a deeper wedge into the Taiwanese society? A year and a half before Taiwan's 2012 Presidential Election I gathered a group of young people from across the blue and green spectrum to participate in a political dialogue. Although they're from opposing parties, they were willing to talk politics. Through these deliberately arranged dialogues, what sparks will fly?
Where I Should Go explores one of the most pressing issues in contemporary China, the interaction between the rural and the urban, telling the intertwined stories of two families who move from the countryside to the city in order to try and get a proper education for their children.
XIONG,Jie-feng is naive but not easily-influenced. Different from other Chinese young people who prefer working in the cities, XIONG decided to go back to his hometown, Pingzhai Village in Yunnan Province, and started to plant the "Red Rice Seed," a kind of ancient species. The so-called organic agriculture has had an age-old tradition in China. The skills have been passed from generation to generation. This is the major reason why farmers connect to the land both historically and emotionally. The "Red Rice Seed" can only be planted in a traditional and organic way. If the plantation was to succeed, the problems resulted from scientific fertilizers and the overuse of chemicals since the 20th century can all be resolved.
In rural China, the job of enforcing the Communist Party's one-child policy falls on government bureaucrats tasked with imposing fines, birth control, and forced sterilizations. Xu Huijing documents this process in his native village of Ma, following the tenacious efforts of the local birth control chief during an increased sterilization quota period, revealing the absurd and tragic local consequences of high-level government policy. (Chicago International Film Festival)