Brings viewers into a small Chinese city and inspires familiarity with the rhythms of everyday existence, with people's dreams, shortcomings and illusions in a way that is universal.
Eve is a precocious nine year-old girl with a wild imagination growing up in a traditional Chinese immigrant family in Vancouver where Confucian doctrines, superstitious obsessions and divine visions abound. When Buddhism and Catholicism are thrown into the mix, life for Eve and her 11-year-old prim and authoritative sister , Karena, escalates into a fantasia of catastrophe, sainthood and cultural confusion. The journey of a young girl and her sister striving to grow up in world where childhood is lonely and the world is full of wonder.
Set in modern day Bejing, Waiting Alone is a coming-of-age story of Wen (Xia Yu), an antique shop owner and aspiring author who has just met the girl of his dreams. Waiting Alone shows us a China rarely seen in cinema, a China that is contemporary, hip and vibrant.
Two brothers must take the helm of their family's company, Armadillo, Inc., after their father steps down from his position as the company's director. Through trials and tribulations, the two slowly begin to learn the true meaning of family.
In spring 1938 in the mountains in the north of Chile a fiery UFO, later named "Chilean Sphere ", fell down. The investigation of this episode, made by a film crew, has led to a sensational discovery. It appeared that before the Second World War (in the thirties) in the USSR a secret space program had been developed. The Soviet scientists and military authorities managed to launch the first spacecraft 23 years prior to Jury Gagarin's flight! "The First on the Moon" tells about everyday life, heroic deeds and tragedy of the first group of the Soviet cosmonauts. It is the first Russian film shot in a very rare genre 'mockumentary' or 'documentary fiction'.
The Wongs struggle to cope with life, love, and family dysfunction in the suburbs of New York.
The Middle Eastern oil industry is the backdrop of this tense drama, which weaves together numerous story lines. Bennett Holiday is an American lawyer in charge of facilitating a dubious merger of oil companies, while Bryan Woodman, a Switzerland-based energy analyst, experiences both personal tragedy and opportunity during a visit with Arabian royalty. Meanwhile, veteran CIA agent Bob Barnes uncovers an assassination plot with unsettling origins.
Be With Me is a tapestry of stories woven around the themes of love, hope and destiny. The characters lead separate lives but are bound by one common desire - to be with their loved one. The protagonists in the movie are fictitious bar one - Theresa Chan, a courageous deaf and blind woman whose life story inspired Be With Me.
The year is 2030. Six months passed since the Laughing Man Incident was solved. About 3 million refugees are living in Japan, invited to fill the labor shortage. However, the emergent presence of the invited-refugees intensified their confrontation with the "Individualists", who called for national isolation, which then led to the increased incidences of terrorist attacks. Under these circumstances, a terrorist group called the Individual Eleven carries out a suicide attack. But there was a greater scheme behind their action. When Section 9 learns this, they attempt to nail down the mastermind of the incident. Meanwhile, Kuze, a surviving member of the Individual Eleven, becomes a charismatic leader of the invited-refugees and intensifies the confrontation against the government. And Motoko starts feeling a strange sense of fate connecting her with Kuze...
The Sun (Russian: СóлнÑе, Solntse) is a 2005 Russian biographical film depicting Japanese Emperor ShÅwa (Hirohito) during the final days of World War II. The film is the third drama in director Aleksandr Sokurov's trilogy, which included Taurus about the Soviet Union's Vladimir Lenin and Moloch about Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler.
The film discusses the traits and originators of some of metal's many subgenres, including the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, power metal, Nu metal, glam metal, thrash metal, black metal, and death metal. Dunn uses a family-tree-type flowchart to document some of the most popular metal subgenres. The film also explores various aspects of heavy metal culture.
A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.
George Clooneyâs fact-based drama about the famous radio journalist Edward R Murrow's stand against Senator McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.
Constantine tells the story of John Constantine, a man who has literally been to Hell and back. When he teams up with a policewoman to solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles.
Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980's.
The chief spokesperson and lobbyist Nick Naylor is the Vice-President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. He is talented in speaking and spins argument to defend the cigarette industry in the most difficult situations. His best friends are Polly Bailey that works in the Moderation Council in alcohol business, and Bobby Jay Bliss of the gun business own advisory group SAFETY. They frequently meet each other in a bar and they self-entitle the Mod Squad a.k.a. Merchants of Death, disputing which industry has killed more people. Nick's greatest enemy is Vermont's Senator Ortolan Finistirre, who defends in the Senate the use a skull and crossed bones in the cigarette packs. Nick's son Joey Naylor lives with his mother, and has the chance to know his father in a business trip. When the ambitious reporter Heather Holloway betrays Nick disclosing confidences he had in bed with her, his life turns upside-down. But Nick is good in what he does for the mortgage.
In small town Tennessee, a ne'er-do-well man (Knoxville) wrestling for control over his fading golf club is reunited with his estranged daughter, a 14-year-old musical prodigy.
Young wizard Harry Potter starts his fourth year at Hogwarts, competes in the treacherous Tri-Wizard Tournament and faces the evil Lord Voldemort. Friends Ron and Hermione help Harry manage the pressure ⦠but Voldemort lurks, awaiting his chance to destroy Harry and all that he stands for.
Thirteen-year-old Ernest Chin lives and works at a sleazy hourly-rate motel on a strip of desolate suburban bi-way. Misunderstood by his family and blindly careening into puberty, Ernest befriends Sam Kim, a self-destructive yet charismatic Korean man who has checked in. Sam teaches the fatherless boy all the rites of manhood.
Winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2005 Hamptons International Film Festival, Sweet Land is a poignant and lyrical celebration of land, love, and the American immigrant experience. Based on Will Weaverâs short story A Gravestone Made of Wheat and shot on location in Southern Minnesota.
Keld is in a rut. His wife of 25 years has left him. For sustenance, he eats his way through the menu at the local Chinese takeaway. The owner talks him into a marriage of convenience with his sister from China and the unplanned-for happens. A delicate romance blossoms between these two damaged, fragile individuals, but a secret gives their relationship a fateful twist. A subtle and touching story of life's diversity.
Three stories are told, respectively set in Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai. The first two stories are about a Japanese person and a Taiwanese person. The last one is set in Shanghai with a story about a Japanese man and a Chinese woman. Some of the characters can speak Japanese and some of them Mandarin. Each story encompasses an experience of a foreigner, either from Japan ,Taiwan or China, with a native of the opposite country.
âThe Worldâ is a theme park on the outskirts of Beijing, sixteen kilometers from the Chinese capital, designed around scaled representations of the worldâs famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.The site is seen here not from the visitorsâ point of view but through the eyes of a few of its staff, lonely people, communicating poorly, a bit disillusioned with life, glittering for the tourists but dull and restricted as far as they are concerned.
Lincoln Six-Echo is a resident of a seemingly Utopian but contained facility in the year 2019. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to the "The Island" - reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything about his existence is a lie. He and all of the other inhabitants of the facility are actually human clones. Lincoln makes a daring escape with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta. Relentlessly pursued by the forces of the sinister institute that once housed them, Lincoln and Jordan engage in a race for their lives to literally meet their makers.
After the assassination of Tokyo's Governor by Yakuza members, the CIA bureau chief (William Atherton) for Tokyo puts out a call to an agent (Steven Seagal) that had been raised in Japan and trained by ex-Yakuza. Using his former ties, he quickly determines that a war is brewing between old-guard Yakuza members and a young, crazed leader (Takao Osawa) with ties to the Chinese Tong.
Sunflower is the story of the Zhang family in Beijing father, mother and son across three decades, centering on the tensions and misunderstandings between father and son. Nine-year-old Xiangyang is having the time of his life, free of adult supervision until the day he meets the father he can hardly remember. Having spent years away, he returns with strong ideas about his son learning to draw. But Xiangyang chafes under his father's constant rules and soon stages his own revolution against the lessons enforced.
The film centers on a Spanish tapas bar and the love lives of the loosely interconnected people in the neighborhood surrounding the bar. The pairs of lovers include a middle aged woman and a young man; an elderly, drug dealing woman and her terminally ill husband in poor health; the tapas bar owner and his estranged wife; and two Chinese immigrants.
Alone for the first time and away from her family in rural Philippines, Rosa Dimaano arrives in the cosmopolitan city state of Singapore to work as a maid. Her employers Mr and Mrs Teo runs a Chinese Teochew dialect opera troupe takes well to their new domestic help. So do their mentally disabled son, Ah Soon. In Chinese superstition, the seventh month of the lunar calendar is regarded as the month when the gates of hell open for forsaken spirits to walk the earth for 30 days. Unknown to Rosa, she arrives on the eve and her hell is about to begin.
The true story of a man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the production of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, despite knowing very little about his work and looking nothing like him.
On October 26, 1979, President Park Chung-hee, who had ruled South Korea since 1961, was assassinated by his director of intelligence. The film depicts the events of that nightâ¦
Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. Through a series of obstacles and relationships, he is brought unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son.
After putting together another Broadway flop, down-on-his-luck producer Max Bialystock teams up with timid accountant Leo Bloom in a get-rich-quick scheme to put on the world's worst show.
"A Chinese Tale" is a comedy that chronicles a chance encounter between Robert (Ricardo Darin) and a Chinese named Jun (Huang Sheng Huang) who wanders lost through the city of Buenos Aires in search of his uncle, the only living relative who has . Robert meets in June at the time that the latter is thrown into the streets from inside a taxi after being assaulted by the driver and his henchmen. From then began a forced and strange coexistence between the two, because Roberto does not speak Chinese and Jun a word of Spanish.
Franco Elica is a film director casting a remake of a pious melodrama in Rome. He's melancholy, heading south for a break. On a beach, he meets a man who films weddings and is roped into helping film the wedding of the daughter of a severe and imperious prince. The wedding is one of convenience - the prince needs money, the groom is a mama's boy. Elica is attracted to the bride, Boda, and tries to convince her not to marry. No matter how outrageous his behavior, the prince keeps Elica on as the wedding director. As the wedding approaches, what's real blurs with Elica's imagination. Is he mad?
Peter Falk is a blue collar man trying to deal with his wife's mental instability. He fights to keep a semblance of normality in the face of her bizarre behavior, but when her actions affect their children, he has her committed
Truck driver travelling along the Transamazonic Road, a huge highway in Brazil that crosses the Amazon forest, meets a prostitute and slowly becomes aware of the problems in that region.
Asian Hawk (Jackie Chan) leads a mercenary team to recover several lost artifacts from the Old Summer Palace, the bronze heads of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals which were sacked by the French and British armies from the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860. Assisted by a Chinese student and a Parisian lady, Hawk stops at nothing to accomplish the mission.
Set in Miami, a dancer arrives from Caracas determined to make her name as a film director.
Michael, a wimpy young executive, is about to get pulverized by a jealous boyfriend in a bar when a handsome, mysterious stranger steps in--and then disappears. Later that night, while jogging, Michael runs into the stranger on a pier. He introduces himself as Alex, and the two go out to an under- ground club. Alex wheedles his way into Michael's life and turns it upside down...
A cold day in January 2006. The police make a horrible discovery in the Swedish town of Hudiksvall: In one night, 18 people have been brutally murdered in the small town. The police suspect a madman is behind the bestial act. But when judge Birgitta Roslin hears the news, she instantly knows that her grandparents August and Britta Andrén are among the victims. And even more: Almost everybody killed somehow relates to her. She realizes that the police are following a wrong track and starts to investigate on her own. Her search leads Brigitta to China where she finds out about the cruel scheming of the leading elite.
Over the past twenty-five years, director Michael Haneke has established himself as a towering figure in modern cinema whose rigorous focus on the craft of filmmaking has produced works of profound artistry. This career-spanning documentary gives unprecedented access and covers the body of Hanekeâs work, offering insight into his creative process through on-set footage and interviews with the man himself and collaborators including Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert and Juliette Binoche.
The Eldritch Influence looks at the world of literary outsider H.P. Lovecraft who posthumously infected a large number of artists, writers, mystics, and fanatics with his wonderfully bleak worldview. Using passionate interviews and colorful commentary the film presents a picture of Lovecraftâs life and thought through those heâs touched and inspired. Featuring extensive interviews with Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi, authors Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Brian Lumley, and filmmaker Stuart Gordon.
Lei Ming, a noble young martial arts student who doesn't know the meaning of giving up. He faces a treacherous, blood-thirsty Japanese karate expert, which leads to many memorable battles as well as several unforgettable training sequences.
This documentary on the life and work of Academy award-winning director Elia Kazan highlights his colorful life on Broadway and in film, which is exemplified by such classic movies as East of Eden,A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and Gentleman's Agreement. Kazan's life outside the movie set is equally noteworthy, and this film utilizes various interviews to illustrate his controversial appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s. Elia Kazan is one of America's most respected directors, and this video provides a unique glimpse into the life of a man who has left a lasting mark on the worlds of both cinema and theatre. ~ Dan Macintosh, Rovi
"Influence" is a story about the key events of the Wielkopolska Uprising - a dramatic arrival of Ignacy Jan Paderewski in PoznaÅ, and the people who prepared the uprising, fought in it and won. "Influence" uses the characteristics of action and thriller movies. Refers to the cinema era - German expressionism, and the atmosphere of the era - the pervasive sense of the end of old world and the birth of the new one, fear of change and at the same time striving for it.
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailorâs beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.
Herbert Blount aspires to replace the real director of a movie and make it his own by capturing the lead actress and inflicting much horror upon her in his version.
A portrait of Keith Richards that takes us on a journey to discover the genesis of his sound as a songwriter, guitarist and performer.
When Harry Levine, an aging, unsuccessful Greenwich Village writer is fired from his job as restaurant doorman, he calls on friend and mentor Jake, ostensibly to collect a long-standing debt. Harry solicits his opinion on his latest manuscript, a work of semi-fiction based on their longtime friendship. Although he initially denies having read it, Jake later attacks it on aesthetic grounds, and deep-seated feelings of betrayal and jealousy surface and lead to a traumatic confrontation.
A television actor drinks too much and gets blackballed from the industry, and then he decides to break back in by directing his own movie. Eventually, he gets sober, and then falls off the wagon and goes crazy and turns his film into a musical.
A hard-drinking family man has been successful in his business despite his alcoholism. His daughter, a professional, struggles to meet her father's high expectations while she becomes addicted to prescription drugs; his son, who works for him and who serves as both his whipping boy and his drinking buddy, is becoming an alcoholic like his dad. Then the father's drinking finally takes its toll on his health, and he demands that his son bring him liquor in the hospital as his son's life, and his daughter's, fall apart at home.
A proud strip club owner is forced to come to terms with himself as a man, when his gambling addiction gets him in hot water with the mob, who offer him only one alternative.
'Terror of Frankenstein' is an exercise in extreme meta-fictional tragicomedy. Presented as the commentary track of a rushed reissue of a forgotten (but 100% genuine) Frankenstein film's DVD (because of unspecified 'recent events'), this project transforms the film into an entirely new, very human horror story. Featuring Clu Gulager as the director of the 1977 original who is happily exploiting the unmentioned tragedy linked to the film, the recording session unravels a mystery as he clashes with the screenwriter (Zack Brown) and, ultimately, its star (Leon Vitali from Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and Barry Lyndon, playing himself.) 'Terror of Frankenstein' is Mystery Science Theater 3000 by way of Sartre, an icy satire of the monsters onscreen, behind the camera, and in the audience.
A successful psychiatrist (Cassavetes) has his world turned upside-down by the appearance of a mystery woman (Whirry) who cannot recall her own past...
Hollywood Chinese is a captivating look at cinema history through the lens of the Chinese American experience. Directed by triple Sundance award-winning filmmaker, Arthur Dong, this documentary is a voyage through a century of cinematic delights, intrigues and treasures. It weaves together a wondrous portrait of actors, directors, writers, and movie icons who have defined American feature films, from the silent era to the current new wave of Asian American cinema. At once entertaining and enlightening, Hollywood Chinese reveals long-untold stories behind the Asian faces that have graced the silver screen, and weaves a rich and complicated tapestry, one marked by unforgettable performances and groundbreaking films, but also by a tangled history of race and representation.
A drama of Alexandra Ivanovna - a director of a foster home.
Maxime and Gerard are a couple of white-collar criminals condemned to 5 years in prison. Sandrine Athan, an honest and principled young police officer, is assigned the banal task of escorting them to the nearest prison in Melun. Things get complicated when killers try to knock them off. Meanwhile, they must contend with strikes which have paralyzed the country and make travelling a nightmare. Added to this mess are the prisoners' many botch escape attempts. All these complications turn a simple transfer into a hellish adventure.
The film is based around the interactions of a homosexual triad group with a police officer as well as opposing yakuza organizations. When the younger brother to a renegade police officer becomes the lawyer to the triad group, an argument between the two leads to the downfall of the organization.
When four young actors come to Hollywood to appear in a horror film, they get the surprise of their lives when the horror becomes more than a movie.
This story of espionage and counter-espionage is based on the novel by Ian Adams. Suspicious circumstances surrounded the mysterious death of a Canadian diplomat. At the height of The Cold War in October 1964, John Watkins, Canada's former ambassador to Moscow and a close friend of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, is kidnapped and held in a hotel for questioning by the RCMP at the urging of the CIA. Several days into the interrogation he died. The official obituary claimed that he suffered a heart attack in the company of friends during a farewell supper celebrating his illustrious career.
Searching for love abroad, two very different Chinese women, a dancer and a doctor, follow their dreams and journey west to Canada. They quickly learn that the paths of heart are rocky as the men in their lives reveal dark, unsettling secrets which change the lives of everyone forever. Intimately and honestly exploring for the first time the sexuality of Chinese women living in a foreign culture, this award-winning study of love and relationship makes for a unforgettable treat.
Documentary about Vera Chytilova.
Wang Shuangli is Deputy Director of the local Cultural Centre, and hopes to be appointed Director. However Old Ma is brought in from the country and installed as Director. This starts a long train of events with Wang's cronies using the bureaucracy to try to oust the new director. At home, Wang has problems because his father wants Wang to have a son to carry on the family name. However, because of the one-child policy, Wang cannot have any more children unless his young daughter is certified infirm.
A Crime is a Thriller from French director Manuel Pradal and is a French-American co-production about a risky three person relationship.
Young adults become fascinated by the events of the three missing filmmakers in Maryland, so they decide to go into the same woods and find out what really happened.
It is the year after World War 3 and the film follows the odyssey of a girl and her mother as they explore a devastated Brazil.
An efficient gang enters a Manhattan bank, locks the doors, and takes hostages. They work deliberately, without haste. Detective Frazier is assigned to negotiate, but his mind is occupied with the corruption charges he is facing. With an army of police surrounding the bank, the thief, the cop, and the plutocrat's fixer enter high-stakes negotiations. Why are the robbers asking for a plane, if they are so competent and they know they won't get one? Why aren't they in more of a hurry?
It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. In small-town, hard-scrabble New Hampshire, foul-mouthed all-talk slacker John "Rugged" Rudgate fancies himself a criminal. When a local plumber stares him down at a pub, Rugged vows revenge, pouring brake fluid in the man's water supply. When the man dies from unrelated causes, Rugged and his side-kick, the even dimmer Jeff, try to cover up what they think i
Though Kevin has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher, there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey, Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him â as well as everyone around him â as the walls between his compartments shatter apart.
A man becomes the superintendent of a large New York City apartment building where people mysteriously go missing.
In Center Stage: On Pointe, Jonathan Reeves (Gallagher) is tasked with infusing more contemporary styles and modernism into the American Ballet Academy, and enlists his his top choreographers Charlie (Radetsky), Cooper (Stiefel) and Tommy (Wormald) to recruit dancers to compete at a camp where the winners will be selected to join the Academy. Bella Parker (Muñoz), who has always lived in the shadow of her hugely successful sister Kate, finally gets her chance to step into the limelight as one of the dancers recruited for the camp. Chloe Lukasiak plays Gwen, a talented dance prodigy who competes at the camp. - Denise Petski
One Tree Three Lives, an intimate film on the novelist Hualing Nieh Engle, who has been a major influence on generations of writers in the Chinese Diaspora, and beyond. The director has known the author and her family since the Seventies. The film reveals a woman of unusual charisma, integrity and determination, and a person in continual exile. She is the author of 24 books. She also co-founded the International Writing Program in Iowa, USA, with her now deceased husband, the poet Paul Engle. One Tree Three Lives is also their love story.
One suspects writer-director Carol Lai may have harboured some Black Swan ambitions with a tale that also centers around a stage practitioner who embarks on an unwitting destructive journey when playing a role to die for. The Second Woman, whose Chinese title Romance Riddle may hold better clues as to how this film developed, being more of a guessing game that threw constant clues rather than a overly romantic film about twins falling in love with a man who decided it's perfectly OK to string both women along, until he discovers that this spells double trouble.
Ai Weiwei is known for many things â great architecture, subversive in-your-face art, and political activism. He has also called for greater transparency on the part of the Chinese state. Director Alison Klayman chronicles the complexities of Aiâs life for three years, beginning with his rise to public prominence via blog and Twitter after he questioned the deaths of more than 5,000 students in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The record continues through his widely publicized arrest in Beijing in April of 2011. As Ai prepares various works of art for major international exhibitions, his activism heats up, and his run-ins with Chinaâs authorities become more and more frequent.
Veteran Russian writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov's film about the impact of modern civilization on an idyllic part of Mongolia won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film. A farmer (Bayyartu) and his wife, who live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia, have three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver (Vladimir Gostyukhin) who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled at the lack of civilization, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the backwards countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.
Actress-turned-director and first-time producer Xu Jinglei presents her third feature film, titled Dreams May Come. Like her widely acclaimed directorial piece Letter From An Unknown Woman, Dreams May Come also stars Xu as the female lead. Written by top Chinese novelist Wang Shuo, witty dialogues between a TV actress and a TV director occupy over 90% of the filmâs running time. The actress is tired of good-girl roles in TV dramas and wants to quit, but the director persuades her not to.
Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games - betrayals, recriminations, provocations - as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom. Was the only Asian film selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in 2006. In September of 2006, director Lou Ye was barred from making movies for five years because the film incorporated footage of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and wasn't screened for Chinese officials. The Chinese government also demanded that all copies of the film be confiscated
Havoc in Heaven, also known as Uproar in Heaven, is a Chinese animated feature film directed by Wan Laiming and produced by all four of the Wan brothers. The film was created at the height of the Chinese animation industry in the 1960s, and received numerous awards. It earned the brothers domestic and international recognition. The stylized animation and drums and percussion accompaniment used in this film are heavily influenced by Beijing Opera traditions.
Yuda, a Chinese immigrant, and his adopted son Kirin, who he saved being eaten by a tiger in the jungle, stand at the head of a massive pirated goods operation that brings in both money and influence. But their empire is crumbling, as corrupt politicians and rival gangs seek to end their power in the city. Yuda is soon got arrested and his dedicated son tries his best to save not just the family business, but his father's reputation.
In San Francisco, an immigrant Chinese widow welcomes the new year with some unhappiness: she's 62 now, she wants to make a trip to China to pay last respects to her ancestors, a fortune teller has told her this is the year she'll die, and a daughter, Geraldine, remains unmarried. Geraldine does have a boyfriend, but she's not sure she's ready for marriage, and, anyway, he lives in Los Angeles and Geraldine doesn't want to leave her mother alone in her declining years. Mrs. Tan's cheerful brother-in-law tries to help out. Is there any solution that will enable Mrs. Tan to hold onto her culturally-influenced and deep-seated hopes, yet keep those hopes from suffocating Geraldine?
Chen Zhen, a Chinese engineering student in Kyoto, who braves the insults and abuse of his Japanse fellow students for his local love Mitsuko Yamada, daughter of the director, returns in 1937 to his native Shangai, under Japanse protectorate -in fact military occupation- after reading about the death of his kung-fu master Hou Ting-An in a fight against the Japanese champion Ryuichi Akutagawa.
The legendary first feature from CHINA BEHIND director Cecile Tang is a stylized period melodrama about a widow (Lisa Lu Yan) who upholds feudal virtue by suppressing her love for a cavalry captain (Roy Chiao) in favor of her daughter. One of the first modern Chinese films to achieve international acclaim.
Tony Leung Chiu Wai heads to prison in Chinese Midnight Express, a harrowing prison drama from director Billy Tang. The setting is 1960s Hong Kong, and righteous reporter On (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) publishes an article exposing corruption in the police force. Unfortunately, he's framed for drug distribution and confesses to the charges when the corrupt cops (led by Ben Ng) threaten his family. Forced to undergo the rigorous hazing rites of all new inmates, On struggles to regain hope and rise above his situation. Meanwhile, On's loyal girlfriend (Pinky Cheung) is terrorized by the cops who put him away, and On faces new challenges, and even finds new allies, while stuck in prison.
Shaw Brothers superdirector Li Han-Hsiang was particularly masterful in two genres: erotica and classic Chinese tales. He combined these two loves in this two-part examination of lust. The first story features an elderly jeweler's adventures with his unsatisfied wife, a handsome neighbor, and the neighborhood bordello. The second is a more modern tale of sex, lies, and videotape.
Chinese Odyssey 2002, produced by Wong Kar-Wai, is writer-director Jeff Lau's energetic parody of Chinese kung fu epics. Chang Chen (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) plays the Emperor, who, desperate for the free-spirited life of a wanderer, tries to escape from the royal palace with his sister, the Princess (Faye Wong). He's caught and returned to his angry mother by the royal guards, but the Princess, disguised as a man, manages to escape. Meanwhile, King Bully (Tony Leung) has returned to his hometown, where he is widely despised for his bullying ways, to run a restaurant with his tomboy sister, Phoenix (Vicki Zhao). They have a very close relationship. In fact, King Bully mistakenly believes that he can read his sister's mind. When the Princess arrives in town, King Bully finds himself drawn to her, but, believing she's a man, decides that his attraction is some kind of empathy with Phoenix.
Director Martin Scorsese speaks candidly and passionately about one of his formative filmmaking influences: the late Elia Kazan. Utilizing precisely chosen clips from Kazan's signature films including "On the Waterfront," "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Gentleman's Agreement," "Baby Doll," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," "A Face in the Crowd," "America, America," and "The Last Tycoon," and interview footage of the director himself, co-directors Scorsese and Kent Jones recount the director's tumultuous journey from the Group Theatre to the Hollywood A-list to the thicket of the blacklist. But most of all, they make a powerful case for Kazan as a profoundly personal artist working in a famously impersonal industry.
Filmmaker Ning Ying returns to her favorite theme â the gradual decay of traditional Chinese values and culture at the dawn of the 21st century â in this low-key drama. Desi (Yu Lei) is a cab driver who has recently broken up with his wife. Lonely, Desi is searching for a new love, and as he drifts through Beijing in search of fares and a girlfriend, he sees a city that is increasingly bending to the influence of the West, with traditional pastimes and customs forced to make way for the onslaught of the free-market economy. Xia Ri Nuan Yangyang has been screened on the international film festival circuit in two different versions; the cut shown at the 2001 Rotterdam Film Festival ran 99 minutes, while the film was only 79 minutes when it appeared at the Berlin Film Festival that same year.
Broken Blossoms is an American silent film from director D. W. Griffith. This melodrama tells the love story of an abused English woman and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.
This film was directed by Gao Qunshu and is about the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after Japan's surrender in World War II. The movie presents the trial from the point of view of the Chinese judge Mei Ju-ao. The director and his crew spent more than a year doing research to finish the script, which is based on historical data. It cost 18 million yuan (2.25 million U.S. dollars). This film hired actors from 11 countries, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and other places, including actors such as Kenneth Tsang and Damian Lau. They recreated court scenes from the trial in Chinese, English and Japanese. It was shown in cinemas and around 100 universities across mainland China to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of Japan's invasion of China.
River Of Fury presents the self-discovery and awakening of a young man (Danny Lee), who has been exposed and fallen for the lucrative powers of wealth. Lily Ho played a role in sharp contrast with Lee, which has helplessly fallen prey to the irresistible temptations of wealth under the influence of her mother. Once again, Ho demonstrates her remarkable talent in Chinese opera following her Beijing-opera showcase in The Warlord (co-starring Michael Hui Kwun-man).
Emerging from the Chinese film renaissance of the 1990s (Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell My Concubine) this haunting folk tale set in rural China in the 1920s tells the story of a young woman forces to grieve the death of a man she was destined to marry. Combining astonishing visuals with intriguing plot turns, this moving drama is not to be missed. When the spirited Young Mistress (Wang Lan) is kidnapped on the way to her arranged wedding, the groom is killed in an explosion in an attempt to rescue her. The peasant charged with her care, Kui (Chang Shih) manages to free her but the groom's bitter mother forces the Young Mistress to honor her agreement by marrying a wooden statue of her son, and staying chaste. Director Jianxin Huang's fascinating exploration of forbidden love and rigid social hierarchy reveals a culture in turmoil, where tradition is taken to cruel extremes and young lovers may not survive.
In this filmed version of cult film director John Waters' popular one-man show, the Pink Flamingos and A Dirty Shame director takes the stage to discuss everything from his early influences, fondest career memories, and notorious struggles against the MPAA rating system. Part endearing memoir and part hilarious lecture, This Filthy World touches on everything from the insanity of contemporary pop culture to the director's unforgettable early collaborations with inimitable Pink Flamingos star Divine.
Hollywood Chinese is a captivating look at cinema history through the lens of the Chinese American experience. Directed by triple Sundance award-winning filmmaker, Arthur Dong, this documentary is a voyage through a century of cinematic delights, intrigues and treasures. It weaves together a wondrous portrait of actors, directors, writers, and movie icons who have defined American feature films, from the silent era to the current new wave of Asian American cinema. At once entertaining and enlightening, Hollywood Chinese reveals long-untold stories behind the Asian faces that have graced the silver screen, and weaves a rich and complicated tapestry, one marked by unforgettable performances and groundbreaking films, but also by a tangled history of race and representation.
Thereâs only one person who so accurately personifies movie magic in the history of film, and that man is special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen. Focusing on the man behind the landmark effects on films like Clash Of The Titans, One Million Years B.C., Jason And The Argonauts and many more, this in-depth film features interviews with the great man himself, and with an array of animators and directors influenced by his work including Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson, Nick Park, Terry Gilliam, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg. The film also features unseen footage of tests and experiments recently uncovered.
The Russian Czar Peter the Great commissions Jonathan Green, an English traveller, to map the Far East territories of the Russian Empire. Green sets off on yet another long journey, full of unbelievable adventures, which eventually leads him to China. On his way, the famous cartographer makes breath-taking discoveries, meets mysterious creatures, Chinese princesses, deadly masters of oriental martial arts, and even Lun Van, the King of Dragons, himself. What could be more perilous than looking into the eyes of Viy? Only meeting him again⦠What will prevail this time â the unflinching scepticism of the scientist or ancient black magic, which has already gained influence over the Far East Lands?
Prolific action director Woo proves his thespian mettle on screen as a destitute, desperate Chinese defector who, with his brother in tow, tries to find a foothold in the Hong Kong underworld.
Just as in her previous film, Oxhide, the Chinese director films herself and her parents in their rather claustrophobic apartment with documentary realism. She uses nine fixed camera positions, with which she turns clockwise around the kitchen table (so that the last shot has exactly the same perspective as the first). The shots, from 5 to 20 minutes long, were made from close by, so that the three family members largely remain off-screen. The resulting rigorously minimalist story passes in real time: Oxhide II is as long as it takes to clear a worktable, to prepare Chinese dumplings on it and to eat them. While the meal is being prepared, the three talk occasionally about the problems surrounding their bag shop, with the wife and daughter having a serious word with the father. However, as long as they talk about making dumplings, the family is united. âInternational Film Festival Rotterdam
From director Clint Eastwood comes the big-screen version of the Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys. The film tells the story of four young men from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who came together to form the iconic 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. The story of their trials and triumphs are accompanied by the songs that influenced a generation, including âSherry,â âBig Girls Donât Cry,â âWalk Like a Man,â âRag Doll,â and many more.
In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.
The film is based on a true story: the tragic life of China's first prima donna of the silver screen, Ruan Lingyu. This movie chronicles her rise to fame as a movie actress in Shanghai during the 1930s. Actress Maggie Cheung portrayed Ruan in this movie. Nicknamed the "Chinese Garbo," Ruan Lingyu began her acting career when she was 16 years old and committed suicide at age 24. The film alternates between present scenes (production talks between director Kwan, Cheung, and co-star Carina Lau, interviews of witnesses who knew Ruan), re-creation scenes with Cheung (as Ruan, acting inside this movie), and extracts from Ruan's original films including her final two films The Goddess and New Women.
On a late-summer Sunday in 2011, a female director gathers a team of filmmakers, writers, musicians, artists, critics, and friends in an apartment to recreate a scene from Michael Curtiz's Depression-era drama The Cabin in the Cotton. Over plates of pasta and glasses of red wine, a round robin of non-professional actors take turns performing the same scene, again and again, In different permutations. With a freedom Influenced by pre--Code Hollywood, cameras, phones, and laptops are scattered around & set at almost every possible angle, documenting the action both in front of and behind the camera as it unfolds, from rehearsals to equipment adjustments to the banter between takes. An intimate. playful, and spontaneous look Into the collaborative cinematic process emerges. a snapshot of the filmmaker's perennial struggle to capture fleeting moments before the day (and light) slip away.
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