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China

ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS

By WANG Qiong

In ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS, 22-year-old Wang Qiong boldly explores how her family's troubled relationships intersect with the ongoing consequences of China's one-child policy.

Having given birth to two girls, Qiong's mother was desperate for a boy. Pregnant with Jin, her third daughter, she had a late-term abortion - but baby Jin survived. Jin's parents abandoned her in the town and later in the woods, where she survived for a week, in the desperate hope another family could take her in. Jin's paternal grandmother exhorted her son-in-law, Jin's uncle, to bring her home and raise her on his farm. Years later, as a teenager, Jin returned to live with her birth family.

Not surprisingly, Jin's relationships - with her parents, her sisters, her husband, and her own young son - are troubled. She is never at ease, never sure what she wants, never quite at home. Speaking to Qiong, Jin refers to their parents as "your parents" and to her siblings as "your family." ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS observes the life of the family at a critical time: Jin and her husband launch a new business after going bankrupt; Li, the eldest daughter, is pregnant and will likely have an abortion if she learns she's carrying another girl; and Sifan, the son Jin's parents finally had, is failing at school while feeling guilty about Jin's troubled dynamic with her birth family.

Qiong set out to make ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS as a way to investigate family trauma. Her intimate, powerful interviews with her parents and siblings, and her steadfast eye for detail and telling moments, elevate the film from family history to a meditation on the brutal ramifications of the one-child policy at its peak.

DVD (Mandarin With English Subtitles, Color) / 2021 / 175 minutes

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INSIDE THE RED BRICK WALL

In 2019, the world was captivated by pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Demonstrators, many with colorful umbrellas, faced teargas and rubber bullets for calling to an end to increasing Chinese control of Hong Kong.

INSIDE THE RED BRICK WALL takes us into the heart of one of these protests: the two-week occupation and siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Filmed by an anonymous collective, the film captures the cat-and-mouse game played by protesters and police in the early days of the siege, followed by days filled with boredom and desperation, as the demonstrators attempt to escape without being arrested and brutalized.

Wearing gas masks and construction hardhats or bike helmets, their faces blurred by the filmmakers, protesters deal with fatigue, dwindling supplies, and arguments over strategy. Some medics and journalists decide to walk out. Others make a break for it and are chased down and beaten by police. Those left behind face a dilemma. Should they fight their way out? Wait for support from protesters outside? Or leave surreptitiously through sewers? Matters are complicated when a group claiming to be high-school principals turns up, encouraging those under 18 to surrender and promising them safe passage. Just whose interests do they represent?

INSIDE THE RED BRICK WALL is remarkable as a document of the siege and the government's response-but also for its stunning visuals including protesters in gas masks asleep on concrete steps, smashed plate-glass windows and graffiti reading "Liberty or Death" behind them; clothes and hardhats arranged on the ground to spell out "SOS"; and a young woman leaning, exhausted, against a wall of tiles recognizing university donors. Made without commentary, INSIDE THE RED BRICK WALL captures the urgency and chaos of the protests.

DVD (Mandarin, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2020 / 88 minutes

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OUTCRY AND WHISPER

By WEN Hai and ZENG Jinyan
Animation directed by Trish McAdam

A performance artist approaches a dais with a quiet formality, then proceeds to slowly and deliberately slice a series of cuts into her face with a razor. A doctoral student/filmmaker, under house arrest and constant surveillance, walks up to a vehicle following her and holds up a sign saying, "Shame to insult a woman." Female factory workers describe being arrested and harassed when they stand up for their rights.

Shot over eight years, OUTCRY AND WHISPER is a highly personal and sometimes uncomfortably intimate documentary chronicling women's oppression and resistance in mainland China and Hong Kong. One remarkable and tumultuous sequence is shot in the midst of Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations.

Co-director ZENG Jinyan-the filmmaker who confronts those tailing her-records striking acts of resistance while also sharing excerpts from her own video diary, in which she talks about her enforced separation from her activist husband and the sexual harassment she faces. Female workers-often from rural provinces, who have come to big cities to work-share their stories of being placed under surveillance for organizing, and being arrested by police working in concert with factory owners.

Zeng and Wen previously collaborated on WE THE WORKERS, a verite documentary about the struggles of largely male union activists organizing workers in China. With OUTCRY AND WHISPER, their focus on women broadens the scope beyond labor. From factory workers gathering to demand collective bargaining to women gathering for a feminist film group, they highlight the common struggles women face, and their inventive and powerful means of fighting back.

DVD (Mandarin, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2020 / 100 minutes

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TAKING BACK THE LEGISLATURE

TAKING BACK THE LEGISLATURE unspools over the course of a single day - one that marked a critical moment in the 2019 Hong Kong protests against the new extradition law.

On July 1, Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversary of the territory's handover from the UK to China. But this time, the ceremonies were overshadowed by the deaths of three protesters. What had begun as demonstrations against a new extradition law swelled into a broader pro-democracy movement.

Made by an anonymous collective, TAKING BACK THE LEGISLATURE documents the movement from the inside, filming from within the heart of the demonstrations, as the mostly young protesters decide to storm and then occupy the assembly. Pro-democracy legislators try to dissuade them, arguing they are needlessly putting themselves in danger. Eventually, after battering at the building's glass for hours, the demonstrators enter and take over the legislative chamber.

TAKING BACK THE LEGISLATURE is an important historical document, offering insights into the dynamics of the occupation. Demonstrators vote on key decisions, and argue the merits of remaining in the building after many decide to leave. (At a certain point one of them notes they are outnumbered by journalists.) In one remarkable moment, a woman with a megaphone buys time for protesters to escape - facing down riot police and telling them to slow their heart-rates, calm down, and not allow themselves to be ruled by emotion. Moments later, at midnight, chaos erupts as the riot police fire tear gas, chasing down and beating the young people - an escalation that would help usher in the months of protest that followed.

DVD (Mandarin With English Subtitles, Color) / 2020 / 46 minutes

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CONFUCIAN DREAM

Director: Mijie Li

Filmmaker Mijie Li's first feature (she co-produced Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert's American Factory), Confucian Dream is an observational documentary about a Chinese woman's embrace of the ancient philosophy of Confucianism and how it affects her family.

Chaoyan, a young wife and mother, believes the ancient teachings of Confucianism will restore balance, respect and morality to her home. She involves her four-year-old son in the rigorous routine of chanting daily mantras. Little Chen may not yet understand the recitations' meanings, but mom is confident she's planting a seed for the future.

Chaoyan's husband finds the daily practice excessive, and indeed many Chinese people today criticize it as feudalistic, conservative, and counter-revolutionary. While Confucianism's primary purpose is to instill peace and harmony, the opposite occurs between Chaoyan and her husband as their beliefs clash and their arguments escalate, bringing forth a gripping portrait of marital and parental crisis.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles) / 2019 / 82 minutes

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LOST COURSE

By Jill Li

Embedding herself in the village of Wukan, southern China for several years starting in 2011, first time documentarian Jill Li witnessed an unprecedented experiment in local democracy. Corrupt officials had illegally sold villagers' land, but the villagers decided to fight back.

The documentary is divided into two halves: the first, "Protests", depicts the grassroots activities of Wukan residents as they work to reverse the land sales and gain a substantial measure of control over their local territory. We see how the villagers themselves learn to organize elections, form alliances, and win support. Part two, "After Protests", confronts the collapse of idealism as the newly elected village government finds itself mired in the same kind of corrupt dealings they had originally condemned.

Li reveals the complexities of their triumphs and setbacks from the inside. Her astonishingly intimate, sympathetic and fair-minded access to the events' major players reveals Chinese local politics with three-dimensional passion and energy.

DVD (Mandarin, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2019 / 180 minutes

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DEAD SOULS

By Wang Bing

In Gansu Province, northwest China, lie the remains of countless prisoners abandoned in the Gobi Desert sixty years ago. Designated as "ultra-rightists" in the Communist Party's Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, they starved to death in the Jiabiangou and Mingshui reeducation camps. The film invites us to meet the survivors of the camps to find out firsthand who these persons were, the hardships they were forced to endure and what became their destiny.

DVD (Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2018 / 495 minutes

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SPARK

Directed by Hu Jie

SPARK opens by the side of a road in Lanzhou City, northwestern China, as trucks rumble through a blasted hillside. An elderly man walks along the dusty road and pauses to point to a nearby spot-the former execution grounds. "They executed many," the man says. "Then fewer and fewer."

Two of those executed were contributors to Spark, a short-lived magazine from Gansu Province whose young, intellectual contributors bravely shone a light on the horrific realities of life during the Great Leap Forward. More than 35 million people died of famine between 1959 and 1961, in large part because of Communist Party policies. To this day, the Party has never fully acknowledged the scope of the disaster.

In SPARK, filmmaker Hu Jie-who has been described as "China's most important unofficial historian-filmmaker - tracks down the surviving men and women of Spark, including founder Gu Yan, allowing them to tell their stories.

Weaving together their interviews, the film is in an oral history of the magazine and the tumultuous period that from which it arose. The interviews are striking in their clarity and their emotional immediacy 60 years later. The son of Du Yinghua, a local Communist Party county committee secretary executed for his sympathy for the Spark writers, breaks down in tears after laying out copies of his father's books. Tan Chanxue seems completely at ease-even smiling-as she recalls being herded, bound, through throngs of schoolchildren brought to witness and cheer the Spark members' public outdoor trial. Remarkably, Hu even gets the Tianshui City leader at the time, Tao Yanlie, to admit that authorities prevented people from leaving town, while 100,000 residents died of hunger. Their deaths, he says, were "recorded but useless. We had to report it, but so what?" At one point, Hu suspects he is being followed. During an interview, the phone rings. The interview subject replies, then refuses to continue the conversation.

The writers who contributed to Spark were not all driven by the same motives. Xiang Chengian, who describes thousands of bodies lining the railway tracks between station and city, thought Party officials must be unaware of the extent of the disaster and would intervene if they knew. In contrast, Zhang Chunyuan wondered how the Communist Party could have become so corrupt in so few years, and said it was clearly fascistic. And Lin Zhao, one of several women contributors, couched her critiques more obliquely, in the form of poetry. All were branded as rightists and faced persecution during the Anti-Rightist Movement of the late 1950s, and both Lin and Zhang were sentenced to hefty prison terms, subsequently changed to death sentences.

A brave and powerful document, SPARK is a testament to the threat to power that comes from people willing to speak out about what they see-and an invaluable contribution to understanding the period of the Great Leap Forward.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color) / 2018 / 114 minutes

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IN THE INTENSE NOW

By Joao Moreira Salles

Made following the discovery of amateur footage shot in China in 1966 during the first and most radical stage of the Cultural Revolution, IN THE INTENSE NOW speaks to the fleeting nature of moments of great intensity. Scenes of China are set alongside archival images of the events of 1968 in France, Czechoslovakia, and, to a lesser extent, Brazil. In keeping with the tradition of the film-essay, they serve to investigate how the people who took part in those events continued onward after passions had cooled. The footage, all of it archival, not only reveals the state of mind of those filmed-joy, enchantment, fear, disappointment, dismay-but also sheds light on the relationship between a document and its political context. What can one say of Paris, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, or Beijing by looking at the images of the period? Why did each of these cities produce a specific sort of record?

Narrated in first person, the film reflects on that which is revealed by four sets of images: footage of the French students' uprising in May of 1968; the images captured by amateurs during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of the same year, when forces led by the Soviet Union put an end to the Prague Spring; shots of the funerals of students, workers, and police officers killed during the events of 1968 in the cities of Paris, Lyon, Prague, and Rio de Janeiro; and the scenes that a tourist-the director's mother-filmed in China in 1966, the year of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

DVD (Color, Black and White) / 2017 / 127 minutes

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MAINELAND

By Miao Wang

Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.

Filmed over three years in China and the U.S., MAINELAND is a multi-layered coming-of-age tale that follows two affluent and cosmopolitan teenagers as they settle into a boarding school in blue-collar rural Maine. Part of the enormous wave of "parachute students" from China enrolling in U.S. private schools, bubbly, fun-loving Stella and introspective Harry come seeking a Western-style education, escape from the dreaded Chinese college entrance exam, and the promise of a Hollywood-style U.S. high school experience. In one sleepy Maine town, worlds collide as students fresh from China learn to navigate the muddy waters of this microcosmic global village.

Through lyrical cinematography that transports us from China to the U.S., MAINELAND captures a new crop of future Chinese elites as they try to find their place between the collectivist society they come from and the individualist culture they come to embrace. As Stella and Harry's fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, they ruminate on their experiences of alienation, culture clash, and personal identity, sharing new understandings and poignant discourses on home and country.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 90 minutes

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OBSERVER, THE

Directed by Rita Andreetti
By Rita Andreetti, Matteo Bosi

In August 2014, the 11th Beijing Independant Film Festival was shut down after repeated threats from local authorities. The government wouldn't tolerate the screening of some 'sensitive' works, particularly a historical documentary called "Spark". The news shook filmmakers and public opinion alike and filmmaker Rita Andreetti couldn't help but begin on a search for the man whose work had pushed the government to the edge of tolerance.

The Observer is the portrait of the extraordinary and undetected work of Chinese dissedent artist, Hu Jie. Despite making huge contributions to historical research by uncovering essential testimonies from China's past, his body of work hasn't been recognized the way it deserves.

Carefully ducking away from the spotlight, he has managed to make more than 30 documentaries throughout his career. The content of his work is vital to understanding Chinese society and the preservation of the memory of its past; he is the first artist to dare talk about the Great Famine, the labor camps (Lao Gai) and the Cultural Revolution in an uncompromised way. For that, he is commonly considered the first historical documentary maker of China, despite his blacklisted status.

Rita Andreetti, director and young Italian film critic, allows viewers to discover Hu Jie's humanity and social commitment as she searches herself for Chinese identity. Inspired by the tenacity and the inner strength of Hu Jie himself, the documentary shows how his prolific activity has recently turned into a more intimate pictorial production. Although under increasing pressure, Hu Jie continues today, with different means, to tirelessly fight for the truth.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color) / 2017 / 78 minutes

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WE THE WORKERS

By Wen Hai, Zeng Jinyan

Shot over a six-year period (2009-2015) in the industrial heartland of south China, a major hub in the global supply chain, WE THE WORKERS follows labor activists as they find common ground with workers, helping them negotiate with local officials and factory owners over wages and working conditions. Threats, attacks, detention and boredom become part of their daily lives as they struggle to strengthen worker solidarity in the face of threats and pressures from the police and their employers. In the process, we see in their words and actions the emergence of a nascent working class consciousness and labor movement in China.

DVD (English, Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 174 minutes

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WIDOWED WITCH, THE

By Cai Chengjie

Winner of the top prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival, director Cai Chengjie's debut feature is, like its titular protagonist, defiantly low-fi, unexpectedly powerful and fiercely unpredictable.

Deemed cursed by the local villagers, three-time widow Er Hao (played by Tian Tian) has her hands full with a rogue fireworks explosion, a tagalong teenager, and a veritable army of crazed local men who can't keep their hands off her. Turned away when she seeks shelter from her neighbors and forced to take up residence in a cold camper van, Er Hao's future looks as bleak as the stark, snowy countryside.

But a series of fluke changes in fortune causes Er Hao to embrace the mystical identity her villagers have assigned to her. As a sort of modern shaman, she steers superstitions into small subversions, helping others who once shunned her and proving that to survive as a woman is a kind of magic.

THE WIDOWED WITCH fearlessly addresses the power of religion in China which, according to the dictates of Communism, is effectively banned. It also conveys the cruelty that can come with village life, and counters the Western narrative of China as a superpower by showing a place where the rule of law is all but nonexistent. Not only is there no recourse or safety net, even the rape that Er Hao suffers goes unpunished. Abused and shunned, Er Hao gains power over the men who have wronged her-but can she find a place in a misogynist, patriarchal and deeply lonely social structure?

With a stunning array of visual styles and a genre-exploding approach to storytelling, THE WIDOWED WITCH is a simultaneously idealistic and despairing film-a bleak view wrapped in a fabulist aesthetic, and one that encompasses both magic realism and crushing social satire.

DVD (Mandarin with English Subtitles, Color, Black and White) / 2017 / 118 minutes

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BEEKEEPER AND HIS SON, THE

By Diedie Wang

The widening gap between generations in China today is at the heart of this deeply resonant documentary about a son, recently returned from the city, trying to modernize his aging father's beekeeping business.

After drifting aimlessly as a migrant worker, Maofu returns to his family bee farm in rural Northern China. Still in his early twenties and eager to provide support for his parents, Maofu brings with him big ideas for the family business; new thoughts on marketing and branding to increase honey sales.

His father, Lao Yu, however, maintains a deep commitment to the traditions of beekeeping which he's practiced for more than five decades. Now in his declining years, Lao Yu also sees first-hand how environmental pollution is depleting his bee colonies. He's struggling with his own self-worth, as well as mixed emotions of whether his son should even stay in this traditional line of work.

As father and son try to collaborate, their vastly different approaches, both to business and to life, run headlong into one other. It's a clash between tradition and modernization; one that is playing out in millions of families across the country.

DVD / 2016 / 85 minutes

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BITTER MONEY

By Wang Bing

BITTER MONEY documents China's rapid economic and social transformation by following the rural workers who leave their Yunnan hometown to move to the city of Huzhou, one of the busiest cities of eastern China (with the highest number of part-time workers), to labor in its textile factories. But what they find are few opportunities and poor living conditions that push people, even couples, into violent and oppressive relations. The camera follows Xiao Min, Ling Ling, and Lao Yeh closely, capturing the emotions of their daily hard work and disappointments upon receiving their wages. The film deals directly with the effects of 21st-century capitalism, as filmmaker Wang Bing acts as witness to the lives of people forced to adapt to a new economic landscape.

DVD (Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 152 minutes

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COMPLICIT

Directed by Heather White, Lynn Zhang

Benzene-poisoned, Foxconn factory worker takes his fight against the global smartphone industry from his hospital bed in China to the international stage.

Yi YeTing is struggling with occupational leukemia and trying to obtain compensation from his employer. Wanting to help others, he begins working for a non-profit that assists workers with occupational illness and injuries.

He discovers there are dozens of workers in his local area who were poisoned while making smartphones. Through research in the community, he discovers a leukemia cluster in the neighborhood surrounding Apple's main supplier Foxconn. Yi's research leads him to several workers and their families trying to survive while burdened with their health care costs. Powerful forces are unleashed as he confronts local factories, putting his own safety at risk.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 89 minutes

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INSIDE THE CHINESE CLOSET

By Sophia Luvara

In a nondescript lounge somewhere in Shanghai, men and women giggle, eyeing prospective partners, visibly nervous about making the first move. This isn't your average matchmaking event-it's a "fake-marriage fair," where gay men and women meet to make matrimonial deals with members of the opposite sex in order to satisfy social and familial expectations of heterosexual unions. Inside the Chinese Closet is the intricate tale of Andy and Cherry looking for love and happiness in vibrant Shanghai. They are both homosexual but their families demand a (heterosexual) marriage and a baby from them. Because being single and childless would mean an unacceptable loss of face for their rural families, particularly in the remote countryside where they live. Will Andy and Cherry deny their happiness and sexual orientation to satisfy their parents' wishes? The stories of Andy and Cherry mirror the legal and cultural progress that is happening in China against the backdrop of a nation coming to terms with new moral values.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 70 minutes

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INSIDE THESE WALLS

By Juliet Lammers And Lorraine Price

What happens when a loved one is imprisoned overseas?

In 2002, Wang Bingzhang, founder of the Overseas Chinese Democracy Movement, was in Vietnam meeting with other activists when he was kidnapped, beaten, blindfolded and brought into China where he was imprisoned. He has spent the last fourteen years in solitary confinement.

Although he was mostly absent as a husband and father before his imprisonment, his family feels a deep sense of duty and responsibility towards him. The family fights tirelessly for his release by speaking on his behalf, staging protests, and keeping his story relevant in Western media.

From prison, Dr. Wang sends monthly letters to his family, often over fifty pages long with intricate illustrations. These letters range in tone from fiercely accusatory to humble and remorseful. His son reflects that his father has probably spoken more words to him through these letters than he has in person. And his ex-wife observes, "In a weird way, he's more of a father now than he ever was."

The story of a political dissident and a family struggling to secure his freedom, Inside These Walls weaves a complex tale of political intrigue, familial responsibility and personal sacrifice.

DVD / 2016 / 44 minutes

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MRS. B., A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN

By Jero Yun

"There are five kinds of families that buy us," says Mrs. B over dinner and drinks with fellow North Korean exiles living in China. "The first type, either the father or the mother is missing and the son can't get married. Then there are the very poor families, like my husband's. In the third type, the man is handicapped... mentally handicapped too. They're all poor. We're sold to families like that."

Mrs. B (we don't learn her real name) is something of an expert when it comes to the trafficking of North Koreans. In 2003, at age 37, she left her husband and two sons behind in North Korea, crossed the icy Tumen River into China, and was sold into marriage. When we meet her a decade later, she's running a robust trafficking business from her home on a small farm in northern China. While her husband fixes equipment and brings in the harvest, she's on her cellphone negotiating with people smugglers, bringing in karaoke girls, and advising newly smuggled clients on how to avoid detection and deportation.

MRS. B, A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN is a closely observed verite portrait of a world-weary woman who finds herself between countries, between worlds, and between families. Unable to bring her North Korean family to China, Mrs. B eventually arranges to get them into South Korea (where her husband was originally held under suspicion of espionage). Now, she plans to return to Seoul herself, seek refugee status, see her Korean husband and sons again, and then send for her Chinese husband and his octogenarian parents.

Director Jero Yun runs considerable risks, jammed into the back of a car with Mrs B as she welcomes a newly smuggled young mother into the country, and joining her and a group of women as they travel all the way across China to Thailand - by bus and car, and on a long night-time trek through fields with a crying baby - seeking a better life.

By focusing so tightly on one person, Yun offers a powerful look at the mundane realities of life for both trafficker and trafficked, overturning cliched notions about a necessarily mysterious trade.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 71 minutes

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OF SHADOWS

By Yi Cui

Includes two short films, LATE SUMMER and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS.

OF SHADOWS is set in the unique landscape of China's Loess Plateau, where the shadow play, as an enigmatic art form, has entertained people and deities for centuries. The film follows a lively and resilient group of shadow play performers as they navigate between the rural staging of ancient plays and the urban spectacle of national cultural heritage.

The film starts when the local performers in a small county called Huanxian are gathered to rehearse for the region's shadow theatre festival. The performance of modern cultural preservation is contemplated, as the folk artists move towards a grand stage. Meanwhile, the filmmaker follows the same group of performers into mountain villages where the shadow play theatre serves local life. A poetic picture of the folk artists unfolds as their everyday life and performance meander through light and shadow.

By juxtaposing the rural and the urban, the grassroots and the official, the state and the local, the light and the shadow, the film paints a haunting portrait of a revered folk tradition transforming against the backdrop of a country in constant transition.

As the last part of Yi Cui's trilogy Ying, which explores the theme of cultural decay and revival, OF SHADOWS goes beyond the melancholy over the decline of traditional culture and searches for the resilience and vitality in the grassroots and the folklore. This poetic ethnography continues the filmmaker's pursuit for the rhythmic flow in cinematic medium - meanings are conveyed not only through narrative threads but also through the musicality.

DVD (Mandarin With English Subtitles, Color) / 2016 / 79 minutes

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PATHS OF THE SOUL

By Zhang Yang

An astonishing journey of redemption, faith, and devotion. Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yang (Shower, Getting Home) blurs the border between documentary and fiction to follow a group of Tibetan villagers who leave their families and homes in the small village of Nyima to make a Buddhist "bowing pilgrimage"-laying their bodies flat on the ground after every few steps-along the 1,200 mile road to Lhasa, the holy capital of Tibet. Though united in their remarkable devotion, each of the travelers embarks on this near impossible journey for very personal reasons. One traveler needs to expunge bad family karma, a butcher wants to cleanse animal bloodstains from his soul, another nearing his life's end, hopes that the prostrations will break the chain of cause and effect determined by his life's actions.

Stunningly photographed over the course of an entire year, with non-professional actors and no script, PATHS OF THE SOUL is a mesmerizing study of faith that will inspire viewers to reflect on their own journey through life.

DVD (Region 1, Color) / 2016 / 117 minutes

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TA'ANG

By Wang Bing

Director Wang Bing brings his careful eye to the mountainous border-region of northeastern Myanmar in Ta'ang, a powerful and revealing observational documentary that follows members of the Ta'ang minority as they flee to China to escape an ongoing and escalating civil war. In a pair of refugee camps, those displaced by the war attempt to create reasonably safe living conditions, while others go deeper into China where they may find work in sugarcane fields or try their luck in urban areas. Meanwhile, those still in Myanmar must journey across the mountains, belongings and livestock in tow, as the sounds of gunfire and artillery echo around them.

Ta'ang captures the constant insecurity, instability and disorientation that come with life as a refugee, the complexities of the choices the Ta'ang face, and the emotional toll they take.

DVD (Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 147 minutes

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BEHEMOTH

By Zhao Liang

Beginning with a mining explosion in Mongolia and ending in a ghost city west of Beijing, political documentarian Zhao Liang's extraordinary, visionary new film Behemoth details, in one breathtaking sequence after another, the social and environmental devastation behind an economic miracle that may yet prove illusory.

Drawing inspiration from The Divine Comedy, Zhao offers intoxicating and terrifying images of the ravages wrought by his country's coal and iron industries on both the land and its people. Beautiful grasslands covered in soot and dust. Mountains shredded in half. Herdsmen and their families forced to leave their lands, to escape poisonous air. Miners descending deeper into pitch black mine shafts. Scorching ironworks that resemble hellish infernos. And in hospitals, ill-equipped to handle the deluge, workers suffering critical illnesses.

Building upon his previous acclaimed exposes (2009's Petition, 2007's Crime and Punishment), Zhao combines muck-racking journalistic techniques with stunning visuals to capture an unfolding nightmare. It's a film replete with haunting imagery. But none more so than Zhao's tour through a barren metropolis, a gleaming, newly constructed city, intended as a workers' paradise, that now stands empty, desolate of life; waiting, perhaps, for that economic miracle.

DVD / 2015 / 90 minutes

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HONG KONG TRILOGY

By Christopher Doyle

Renowned cinematographer and artist Christopher Doyle celebrates Hong Kong and its people with his feature documentary debut, Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous, a vibrant work divided into three parts that focuses on the city's residents in their childhood, youth, and old age.

In Doyle's special form of cinematic narrative, real people improvise fictive scenes inspired by their own stories, which we hear in voiceover. The film's many endearing characters are all portrayed with rare grace: kids interrogating themselves on the topic of world religion, young rappers and artists giving voice to their discontent in underground music bars, and senior citizens going on speed-dating tours of the city.

The film's free-flowing form is much like that of a jazz music piece in which improvisation is as important as a carefully studied score. Many of its images depict a Hong Kong that has never before been represented on film; Doyle shows the slow side of the city, the one inhabited by people who value ideals over finances. Of particular note is his inclusion of the Umbrella Movement and the recent pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong, which blocked traffic, arrested the city's frenzied pace, and forced people to stop and ponder the real meaning of freedom.

The questions raised by the Umbrella Movement - questions about how we can live together and what a society should be - permeate all three sections of this collaboratively made triptych. Hong Kong Trilogy is an artwork in sync with the pulse of the city, truly a film "of the people, by the people, for the people."

Doyle's illustrious career as a cinematographer includes films by Wong Kar-Wai (In The Mood for Love, Fallen Angels, Chungking Express), Jim Jarmusch (The Limits of Control), Gus Van Sant (Paranoid Park), and Zhang Yimou (Hero), among many others.

DVD / 2015 / 85 minutes

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KAILI BLUES

By Bi Gan

A stunning debut from Chinese director Bi Gan, Kaili Blues is an audacious, mesmerizing work that announces the arrival of a major new filmmaker.

In a small clinic in the rain-drenched city of Kaili, two preoccupied doctors live ghost-like lives. One of them, Chen, decides to fulfill a family wish and sets off on a train journey to search for his brother's abandoned child, only to find himself in a dreamlike world where past, present, and future-as well as fantasy and reality-become one.

This remarkable visual achievement, which feels as singular and alien as the films of the great Apichatpong Weerasethakul, was shot in the mining village Kaili, the director's birthplace, and incorporates poetry he has been writing since he was a teenager.

DVD / 2015 / 113 minutes

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THARLO

By Pema Tseden

"Renowned Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden returns with his profoundly moving new feature (adapted from his own novella) about a Tibetan shepherd named Tharlo. Visiting a Tibetan town in Qinghai province to obtain a proper ID card from the local police station, Tharlo surprises Police Chief Dorje by reciting from memory a lengthy excerpt from one of Chairman Mao's essays. But things develop in a romantic rather than a political direction. To prepare for his ID photo, Tharlo needs his hair washed, and so meets Yangtso, a beautiful local hairdresser. Their courtship is both exquisitely awkward and enthrallingly suspenseful. Tharlo is smitten, but town-dweller Yangtso's ideas of fun are not quite Tharlo's, and he spends an uncomfortable evening with her at a local karaoke joint.

"This is a passionate love story with darker undercurrents, where basic pastoral imperatives such as protecting his sheep from hungry wolves run against Tharlo's discovery of the contemporary pleasures of smoking, drinking, singing and sex.

DVD (Black and White, Tibetan with English Subtitles) / 2015 / 123 minutes

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BEIJING TAXI

By Miao Wang

BEIJING TAXI is a timely, uncensored and richly cinematic portrait of China's ancient capital as it undergoes a profound transformation. The film takes an intimate and compelling look at the lives of three cab drivers as they confront modern issues and changing values against the backdrop of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Through their daily struggles infused with humor and quiet determination, BEIJING TAXI reveals the complexity and contradictions of China's shifting paradigm.

BEIJING TAXI is a feature-length documentary that vividly portrays the ancient capital of China undergoing a profound transformation. The intimate lives of three taxi drivers are seen through a humanistic lens as they navigate a quickly morphing city, confronting modern issues and changing values. The three protagonists radiate a warm sense of humanity despite the struggles that each faces in adapting to new realities of life in the modern city. With stunning imagery of Beijing and a contemporary score rich in atmosphere, BEIJING TAXI communicates a visceral sense of the common citizens' persistent attempts to grasp the elusive. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games serve as the backdrop for BEIJING TAXI's story, a coming out party for a rising nation and a metaphor for Chinese society and its struggles to reconcile enormous contradictions while adjusting to a new capitalist system that can seem foreign to some in the Communist-ruled and educated society. Candid and perceptive in its filming approach and highly cinematic and moody in style, BEIJING TAXI takes us on a lyrical journey through fragments of a society riding the bumpy roads to modernization. Though its destination unknown, the drivers continue to forge ahead.

DVD (Region 1, Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2010 / 78 minutes

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