Director │ Angel SU
YANG, a.k.a "Woody Daddy" wants to build a Tang Dynasty wooden house, which is a two-story building constructed without steel or nails, but only mortise and tenon joint. He has already taken eight years and spent 140 thousand US dollars to make this dream come true. His family seems indifferent and doubtful of YANG's dream, but ultimately begins to understand and support his work. Can YANG harness the ancient technique to complete his home?
Director │ Lora Yan CHEN
My Classmates: the New Wave of Chinese Cinema is my insider's view of these filmmakers' formative experiences during China's Tumultuous Cultural Revolution, our life at the Beijing Film Academy from 1978 to 1982, and their film careers from 1982 to the present. Today they are the backbone of Chinese Cinema.
Before 1978, most of my classmates were peasants, workers, and soldiers. They were shaped by the Cultural Revolution, then they revolutionized Chinese cinema with their films: Yellow Earth, Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell My Concubine and Hero. While I was in America they became world famous.
Their work molded modern China's international image, and the face China sees when it looks in the mirror. Who are these artists and what do their lives reveal about the world's emerging superpower? The film through this group of filmmakers' lives reveals 30 years of China's social, political, and economic change.
Director │ HAN Yi
A blind man, CAO Shengkang, sets out to travel and "see" the world. Being discriminated since he was little, he finally finds happiness and self confidence when traveling. He has promised himself he's going to travel 3 to 6 countries each year. But this dream is against the wish of the family, who needs him to make money to pay for his daughter's basic living and education, his younger brother's tuition, and the family debt. Their village home starts sinking this year due to the illegal mining in the area. They have to move. Will CAO ignore the fanatical needs of the family? Or will he have to give up his dream?
Director │ WANG Zhe
Early 2012, in the JIANG Family Village in Kaihwa County, Zhejiang Province, China, nine elder members decided to refurbish the "JIANG's Family Hall." They hired an experienced carpenter, WANG, from another village, who would teach them on how to build a hall. The ten elders soon started cutting sturdy wood in the mountains and bring them down to the village to use them a beam.
All of the ten elderly are grandpas. Their grandchildren's parents have all gone to the cities for work; only before Chinese New Year would they return home. Construction work has not been consistent, as seasonal chores still need to be done in fields. But, as soon as they are finished with fieldwork, the elderly continue refurbishing the hall.
Director │ WU Shwu-mey
Producer │ Felice C.P. WANG
This film documents eleven-year-old Chen-chen who left his home in Zhengzhou, China to study in an experimental junior high school, which adopts the inclusive model, in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Chen-chen is a student with learning disabilities and behavioural problems. In this documentary, we see not only how Chen-chen makes progress in a new school but also how differently the students are treated in different cultural environments. Told from Chen-chen's point of view, the film reveals his life and learning progress in Taiwan, and from there we begin to understand the interaction, integration, and conflicts amongst "different" children.
Director, Producer │ Jane Hui WANG
Producer │ZHANG Jun
Continuing the story where other documentaries left off, after the people have been relocated and have had to re-build their lives, Last Harvest follows the remarkable journey of an elderly Chinese farming couple as they relocate in order to accommodate the government's mammoth and highly controversial South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project, the largest of its kind in the world. The Last Harvest offers an intimate and direct experience of the collisions between traditional culture and urbanization/ modernization, between individuals and society, shared by millions in China and around the world.
Director │ HUANG Hui-zhen
This is a story about my mother. While she was born into a traditional agricultural society, she is not traditional at all. She is a lesbian and a Taoist priest that leads "Din Tao" parades at funerals. She enjoys smoking, playing poker cards, and collecting pictures of scantily dressed women printed on betel nut boxes.
When I was seven years old, I found out that my mother is attracted to women. Now my seven-year-old niece has also asked, "Auntie, is grandma a boy or a girl?"
My answer is so long that I decided to make a documentary for my niece.
Note: According to folk religion (mostly based on Taoism) in Taiwan, people turn into ghosts when they die. The deceased good people will be taken to the Pure Land of the Buddha Amitabha in the West, while villains will be condemned to hell and tried. The "Kan Ong" singing-dance parade, a kind of "small play" in traditional Chinese Opera, is performed at funerals. At funerals, "red-head priests" would use religious instruments to evoke the gods, who would then lead the deceased through the inferno to the Pure Land.
Director │ XIE Xiu-yuan
Around ten-years-old Granny GU cut a piece of her own flesh to help cure her mom. Now at the age of 102, she lives at the senior center. Her only daughter lives far away in Suzhou. With rarely any visitors, Granny GU is sad when she sees other grannies' enjoying visits with their relatives.
When she was younger, Granny GU saved the lives of the Chinese from Japanese invaders and gangsters, and later became a social worker in the community office. In order to attractattention, Granny GU likes to defend for justice in the senior center. Granny CHEN is her sidekick, while Granny CAO, 103, as her opponenthas become her nemesis...
Director │Vincent DU
This is about an alternative upbringing in China. In a music school with its headquarters in Tianjin, China, three children, Yaohan, Qingjian and Deqi, and their families have dreams and aspirations for fame and gain by training themselves to become superstars.
Director │ Adiong LU
Producer │ CHANG Chen-ying
The Dream in the Mirror is about a bamboo shoot salter from a traditional market. She is also a "self-portrait artist" whose works were collected by the National Museum of Fine Art. Her name is LIU Yi-lan. Through her, you see a typical image of a "Taiwanese female from the old era." LIU lived in poverty, grew up without parents. She began working at a young age, got married when she was 18, raised children, and began self-discovery and self-improvement. However, this is not a story about inspirations. This is a mysterious journey told through LIU's self-portraits. Time and again, LIU stands in front of the mirror searching for meanings and definitions as she navigates between her soul and flesh. Her body is the battlefield.
Director │CHEN Jing-lian
Producer │LAU Kek-huat
A small and humble kitchen serves as a shelter for three repenting souls. Hao, Gui and Xia were once teen gangsters. They've stumbled down some dark paths filled with repeat imprisonments, forsaken families, and gang fights end in deaths. But now they are determined to change, to rehabilitate, and to embark on a new beginning in the small kitchen of a restaurant called "Blue Mark."
Faced with challenges and financial pressures, and without family support, can they withstand the temptations of the previous gangster lifestyle and give themselves a second lease on life?
Director │LAM Wai-tung
Photographer │ LEUNG Yau-cheong
The story of Mr. TENG's family unfolds with a visit by Miss HO, a caring social worker from Caritas of Hong Kong. It's a story about new migrants from Mainland China and their rooftop residency. As blue-collar laborers, Mr. TENG and his family contribute greatly to the infrastructure of Hong Kong with their hard work. However, like most Hong Kong people, Mr. TENG is unable to afford the skyrocketing high rent of private housing, Cheap and cramped rooftop housing becomes their only option. Recently, Mr. TENG and his wife finally received approval for public housing. However, other problems force them to live apart from their son, Bo, who also struggles with housing issues.
Director │ ZHAO Qing
Weifang remained single for more than a decade in order to wait for the love of her life Shufeng. Their marriage was circumstantial yet predestined. Eight years ago Weifeng was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. She doesn't remember anyone except Shufeng. Although she doesn't remember anything, she knows that Shufeng is the one she'll spend the rest of her life with. For these two no loss of memory can obliterate their love for each other.
But now, eighty-six-year-old Shufeng must face the realities of finding a home to take care of Weifang.
Director │ YANG Jian-jun
The Starfish Project is about the life of YUAN Quan, a life coach. Through rock climbing, parkour, martial art, street boxing, YUAN explores the meaning and philosophy of life. He organizes many public welfare activities including giving away candy, dressing up as Santa Claus, the "Wing Project" and "Starfish Project." YUAN helps a beggar, who dreams of becoming a writer, with monthly living expenses in order that the beggar can begin to be self sufficient, and to live with dignity. YUAN also wants to nurture the beggar to be a life coach.
Director │ ZENG Xi
Photographer │ ZHOU Yang
Three kilometers north of the National Stadium in Beijing is the "Waste City," populated by more than 30,000 migrants from Henan Province. Here, the poor search for sellable waste in garbage dumps, while the rich drive around in BMWs. With its own schools, hotels and people from different social classes, Waste City functions as a microcosm existing in isolation from the rest of China. Among Waste City's residents are 10-year-old WANG Qin and her sister, born and raised here, and the LIU family who collects and sells discarded wood for a living. The government announced that Waste City would be demolished in 2012, leaving the residents with no options. WANG Qin and her sister will have to go back to Henan for schooling, while LIU desperately looks for a new home.
Director, Producer │Hao WU
The film chronicles the staging of the musical Fame by the graduating class of China's top drama academy, in China's first official collaboration with Broadway. It focuses on two students of different personalities and family backgrounds, competing for the A-cast while preparing to enter China's murky world of showbiz. Confronting the unique challenges for Chinese youth today, the students must forge their own path to fame.
Director │ XU Hui-jing
Producer │ Warren CHIEN
ZHANG Haijia was given up at birth by his parents to another family due to the "one-child" policy. Even with all his efforts, as an adult, ZHANG was unable to achieve much in the big city. Additionally, his failied marriage from two years ago is the source of disappointment for both sets of his parents. Desperate for love, ZHANG intends to find love through work as a wedding host.
In his spare time, ZHANG writes poems, practices self- improvement, studies Buddhism, and seeks a world full of love and harmony. But the reality is he's unable to find a society that will embrace him.
Two years later a woman with child enters his life, she later becomes pregnant with ZHANG's child. Both of their parents disapprove of their marriage. And ZHANG's wedding host business seems to also be on the rocks. ZHANG just can't seem to get a break.
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