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We Are Here

May 2016 •Chinese

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.

Twenty Two

August 2017 •Chinese

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.

All There Will Be

November 2020 •Chinese

The Blind Storytellers

October 2014 •Chinese

Li Shouwang is the leader of a blind storytellers team, learned storytelling at the age of 19. His childernare living hard in other cities. Li's money amost goes to his children's pocket every year. But with urbanisation, the storytellers have lost almost all their audience. As the conflict between the storytelling team and the village team intensified, his son, who was far away from home, became the only spiritual sustains... When he was excited that his son would be taking his family home for Chinese New Year, what's await is a sigh.

Trashy Treasure

January 2010 •Chinese

The term "garbage" is relative, but most people's definition of garbage is absolute and rigid, and the definition of a person like "garbage man" is also relative. Compared to the ostrich that disappears when humans avoid garbage and not see psychological. With a lively and lovely tone, the film brings out the special views of how the two protagonists look at trash when they walk between the cities, and then connects the delicate relationship between their love for trash and their families.

Papa Rainbow

June 2016 •Chinese

In China, most families have difficulties facing their lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) children. They have to contend with common social beliefs that homosexuality is shameful, abnormal, a perverted condition caused by deviant family relationships. Many parents see their kids as their property, and fathers often assert their authority to ensure that no harm comes to the family reputation. The documentary 'Papa Rainbow' features six Chinese fathers who talk openly and freely about their experiences with their LGBT children. Speaking out against discrimination and stigma, they redefine what it means to protect a household. They fully embrace their kids for who they are, and become pioneer activists fighting for an equal and diverse society.

Miners, Groom, Pneumoconiosis

December 2019 •Chinese

The location of Hunan's southwestern Hunan, the local economy is not active, the people either go out to work or go up the mountain to mine. Due to the constant mining disasters, despite the government's efforts to rectify and regulate, many people still illegally mine. Miners often do not pay attention to the protection of mines. Many years later, many miners have pneumoconiosis. The film started shooting in 2010 until 2018, with a filming period of nearly ten years, until the death of Zhao Pingfeng, the protagonist of pneumoconiosis, leaving young children and mentally handicapped wife.

Water Margin

October 2016 •English

Part mournful meditation through documentary footage, part experimental narrative. This film looks at the life of the Chinese who have been displaced within their own society.

Wu Ding River

January 2007 •Chinese

In northern Shaanxi, those three-wheeled trucks who came to the city from rural areas came to be suffering. They talked hard and finally sent their children to distant universities. Four years have passed, the big children can't find a job, the future is uncertain, the smaller children have come to the age of the university. It seems to be in the instinct, a family is still like a hen hatch, waiting for the new hope to break out.

Fangshan Church

May 2005 •Chinese

A lively community of Christians inhabit Fangshan, a remote rural town in Jiangsu Province. At the start of the millennium, a church was built there with support of local inhabitants' relatives from Taiwan. On Sundays, up to 900 people gather to worship, while spending most of their days maintaining a modest living as farmers. Their faith governs how they handle family conflicts, illnesses and other difficulties. Still, they must contend with constraining forces in their community, from ancient folk religious practices to laws forbidding evangelism.

Torch Troupes

May 2006 •Chinese

In this vivid portrait of China's musical heritage, Sichuan Opera performers strive to keep a centuries-old artform alive. After thriving for 300 years, Sichuan Opera is an endangered art form. Having survived the Cultural Revolution, state-sponsored opera troupes now face extinction in the era of private enterprise. Opera master Li Baoting began his career at eight, but now performs pop songs with showgirls in cheap bars. His colleague Wang Bin performs in travelling tents, trying to resist the massive cultural changes threatening to wipe out this artform.

Mama Rainbow

November 2012 •Chinese

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.

Wheat Harvest

November 2008 •Chinese

A documentary film showing the life of Niu Hongmiao, a 20-year-old country girl who is now a prostitute in Beijing. Around the time of wheat harvesting, she goes back home to Dingxing County, Hebei Province to visit her parents.

First Vote

May 2020 •English

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.

Timber Gang

January 2006 •Chinese

Yu Guangyi's stunning debut explores a grueling winter amongst loggers in Northeast China as they employ traditional practices through one last, fateful expedition. For generations, the lumberjacks of Heilongjiang, China have made their living harvesting timber amidst a barren, wintry landscape. These woodcutters confront the elements, living in makeshift cabins surrounded by snow and ice. Hand tools, sleds and horses are the only technology they employ to drag massive trees down the perilous slopes of Black Bear Valley. At constant risk of injury and death, they attempt to appease the mountain gods with ancient rituals and sacrifices. Despite their heroic efforts to subsist, the deforestation caused by their decades-long customs may lead to their ultimate demise.

The Road

November 2015 •Chinese

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.

All's Right With The World

January 2007 •Chinese

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.

Dialogue Between Blue & Green

July 2012 •Chinese

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?

Yumen

February 2013 •Chinese

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.

Bright Sun Mansion

January 2015 •Chinese

Legendary Peking Opera master, Yuling Fang, emigrates to New York where he works in a nail salon. Realizing there is no one to inherit his legendary skills, he decides to mount an amateur production in order to keep alive the vanishing world he loves.