Doctor Ma's Country Clinic

Pathway(zh)

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.

China. The Arts – The People(de)

China marks the beginning of the extensive Asian theme in Ottinger’s filmography and is her first travelogue. Her observant eye is interested in anything from Sichuan opera and the Beijing Film Studio to the production of candy and sounds of bicycle bells.

Twenty Two(zh)

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.

A Young Patriot(zh)

A documentary chronicling the coming of age of a young chinese man.

Demolition(zh)

"If the old doesn't go, the new never comes" recites a teenager hanging out near a demolition site in the center of Chengdu, the Sichuan capital in western China. In Demolition, filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki deconstructs the transforming cityscape by befriending the migrant laborers on the site and documenting the honest, often unobserved, human interactions, yielding a wonderfully patient and revealing portrait of work and life in the shadow of progress and economic development.

Songhua(zh)

In northeastern China the Songhua River flows west from the border of Russia to the city of Harbin, where four million people depend on it as a source of water. Songhua is a portrait of the varying people that gather where the river meets the city, and an ethnographic study of the intimate ways in which they play and work.

The Yellow Bank(zh)

A short documentary that captures the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, The Yellow Bank takes you on a contemplative boat ride across the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China. Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki, who lived and worked in Shanghai nine years earlier, uses the eclipse as a catalyst to explore the way weather, light, and sound affect the urban architectural environment during this extremely rare phenomenon.

Mama Rainbow(zh)

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.

Karamay(zh)

In 1994, the oil-rich city of Karamay in Northwest China was the site of a horrible fire that killed nearly 300 schoolchildren. The students were performing for state officials and were told to stand by while the officials exited first. After the fire, the story was heavily censored in the Chinese state media. To this day, the families of Karamay have not been allowed to publicly mourn their children.

Go Grandriders(zh)

17 riders with avarage age 81 decide to follow the dream of their youth and start their journey to ride around Taiwan island.

Yumen(zh)

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.

People's Park(zh)

One long tracking shot through a park in Chengdu.

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.

Exile Shanghai(de)

Six life stories of German, Austrian and Russian Jews which intersect in exile in Shanghai. Out of narratives, photographs, documents and new images of the biggest and most contradictory metropolis of the Far East an entity develops in which the historic exile takes and turns on a completely current power and appeal.

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.

The Shoe Shiner's Journey(zh)

The Fly(zh)

Some memories from a painter.

The Last Moose Of Ao Lu Gu Ya(zh)

Documentary about a tribe of indigenous people in northern China.

Guranay(zh)

This film is a realistic record of a sixty-year-old couple living in a remote village (Gurenay) in the Badain Jaran Desert of Alashan, Inner Mongolia plant thousands of mu of ammodendron and euphratica to fight against expanding deserts.

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 Unfinished History of Life(zh)

The filmmaker spent years in a Chinese village to record daily life’s every detail. He drank many a glass with the villagers and observed them for so long that he started to recognize their repeating patterns of behavior. That is why there is no end to this tale.

Mine(en)

Fifty years of marriage. Fifty years of love and happiness. Fifty years of lies. When Walter steps on a live land mine in a remote field in England, he finds himself at the mercy of his wife Diane, who has recently unearthed a deadly secret buried in their past. As the tension mounts and truths are unraveled, Walter and Diane's relationship speeds towards an explosive climax.

Edges(it)

Paolo is a 22-year-old boy and experiences a constant sense of inadequacy and ineptitude, due to his complex relationship with his mother, unaware of his homosexuality, and to the conflict he has with his hometown, Lanciano. Driven by a great desire for emancipation, he decides not to give up and to interview those who have remained in the province and continue to fight just like him.

¡Viva Madrid, que es mi pueblo!(es)

The bullfighter Marcial Lalanda financed and starred in this film about the rivalry between two bullfighters for the ill-fated love of the same woman. It features scenes of bullfights shot by Enrique Blanco using polychromatic film for the first time in Spain. Considered one of the greatest Spanish silent films.

Harmonies of Paris(fr)

Harmonies de Paris, restored by the Cinémathèque Française in the 1990s, was shot entirely on panchromatic film and was meant to be a documentary tour of Paris in thirteen thematic chapters. The subject is a tourist group arriving in the French capital by airplane, which explains the many shots of monuments and other canonical places.

A Woman Hunted(en)

Lainie Wheeler has two daughters, but her husband leaves them for a Thai monastery. She completely neglects her job in TV production but finds a new vocation in nursing terminal patients, even after the death of her friend in that home. She also finds a new lover, Matt Harper, who is also great with her kids, but still gets addicted to pills, causes a major accident, loses custody and needs long-term institutionalized therapy. After her release, a friend gets her another job in TV production, which makes her meet baseball star Harry Brewer. When he proves adulterous and gets too intimate, she ends up murdering him. Detective Webster investigates..

In Orbit(en)

The future, the space. Sonia is about to be transferred from her station to a newer one. Although everything seems to be going well, Sonia's mind is actually elsewhere, haunted by tragic events from the not too distant past.

Niñato(es)

Jobless and with no prospects, Niñato (Brat) lives with his parents and does hip-hop music. He lives the life of the outskirts, it's the Madrid of the chronic crisis. But he is 34 years old and has three children to bring up. Time goes by, the kids are growing up and Niñato carries on, making music and looking after the children, without worrying too much about his future. Oro, the smallest one, not too motivated at school, will demand more attention and drive Niñato to face his own conflicts.

The Dwarfs(en)

A young actor and an angst-ridden city worker fight over a girl watched over by a disturbed chum. The play is concerned with three young men, Len, Pete and Mark, and the scene of action shifts back and forth between Len's house and Mark's. Sometimes all three come together, sometimes only two, and often Len is on stage alone. There are conversations and soliloquies filled with the brilliant convolutions of thought, the sudden flashes of truth which distinguish Pinter's unique style, with the mood ranging from calm introspection to explosive outpouring. Much of what is said hints at deeper thoughts left unspoken, and the sense of horror and alienation which often emerges is a searing indictment of our life and times. We meet, we talk, we tear at each other, but our insularity is seldom penetrated. We are together but alone, as though life were a mirror which reflects only our own image.

School for Swingers(de)

A pseudo-documentary story about what happens behind dance school walls.

Creak(en)

The monster isn't in your closet...

Dear Murderer(en)

When a man discovers his wife is having an affair, he commits the perfect crime.

Dirty Money: Cartel Bank(en)

For decades, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels. Senator Elizabeth Warren, dogged journalists and prosecutors try to hold the bankers to account.

Lovaganza: la grande illusion(fr)

Chicory 'n' Coffee(sl)

The story turns on a small deception - since they were married, instead of the real thing, the wife has always made Chicory (a cheap substitute for Coffee) for her husband. He never catches on to the deception. For him, the slush tastes better than the best Coffee.