Sparkling Red Star

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.

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.

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.

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.

大有作为(zh)

A Chinese documentary about rural workers and their education by educated youth sent to the countryside from cities.

Songs of the Youth 1969(zh)

It is the year of 2010, Xue Beijing, a 50-year-old director, is preparing to make a film about his youth and remarkable ages in late 60's.

Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder(en)

The poet and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is among the world's living monuments to arts and letters. For well over a half century, Ferlinghetti helped shape the currents of poetry and literature with his forceful engagement with society and an ideological position that often found him at odds with the political currents of his day. Ferlinghetti's quiet, behind the scenes demeanor and disarming mien may have assuaged, or even fooled, certain opponents, while in reality he was a literary mercenary, a rebel at the forefront of our own cultural revolution.

Something in the Air(fr)

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

Hibiscus Town(zh)

Based on a novel by the same name written by Gu Hua, a melodrama about the life and travails of a young woman who lives through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

In the Heat of the Sun(zh)

Beijing, 1970s. The Cultural Revolution has driven most adults to the provinces leaving 14-year-old Monkey and his pals have free reign over the city. They hang around, get up to no good, and discover that unsolvable mystery known as "girls."

Chine : Opérations secrètes(fr)

How Yukong Moved the Mountains(fr)

From 1972 until 1974, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, along with a Chinese film crew, documented the last days of the Cultural Revolution, marking the end of an era. The vast amount of footage they shot was edited into 14 films of varying lengths. Focusing on ordinary people spread over a wide geographic area—many of whom were living and working in collectives—the filmmakers recorded a unique moment in history, and also captured some of the more enduring aspects of Chinese culture.

Turning Point 1977(zh)

At the close of the Cultural Revolution, a group of young idealists battle for the right to return home and restart their lives after years of toil on a state run re-education farm in China.

Sunday in Peking(fr)

Director Chris Marker begins by recounting his childhood dream of visiting the city of Peking - a city he was once only able to admire in books. The viewer is taken on a journey through this city, as if experiencing it from the mind and through the eyes of Marker. His thoughts and observations about the traditions, history, and banalities of everyday life in Peking are woven together in elegant fashion.

The Three-Body Problem(zh)

Based on the novel of the same name by Cixin Liu, the first in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. Hundreds of physicists died mysteriously. A Chinese nanomaterials expert, Wang Miao, sees a mysterious countdown in his eyes. Soon he finds out that the "disastrous planet" under three suns in a game really exists. The three-body civilization there will reach the Earth in 400 years. A future catastrophe is coming for humanity...

Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour(en)

The history of the irreverent "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and the content battles it fought with its television network.

Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture(en)

In April 2013, a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire submitted a paper to the Annals of Mathematics. Within weeks word spread: a little-known mathematician, with no permanent job, working in complete isolation, had made an important breakthrough toward solving the Twin Prime Conjecture. Yitang Zhang's techniques for bounding the gaps between primes soon led to rapid progress by the Polymath Group, and a further innovation by James Maynard.

Gandhi, de l'homme à l'icône(fr)

BALSHA(en)

An experimental film about a mysterious "white tiger" that was spotted in the snow covered forests of Russia.

To Live(zh)

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work.