The Square

The film tells the story of how an ordinary police officer can fight with criminals, combat criminal offenses, protect people's lives and property, and maintain social stability.

Chinese short film directed by Zhang Yuan.

A rock musician looks for his girl-friend who left while pregnant, trying to decide whether to keep the baby.

After her mother's lecherous boyfriend reveals she's adopted, incorrigible flirt Dada skips town -- with hopelessly smitten boy-next-door Zhou in tow -- in search of her birth mother.

Collaborative film made in Denmark.

Often cited as China’s first independent feature film, this low-budget drama, filmed largely in the director’s Beijing apartment, depicts the life of a single mother (a topic considered taboo at the time) caring for her mentally challenged son. Shot with a documentary aesthetic that includes interviews with families of mentally challenged persons, the film helped kick-start the Sixth Generation of filmmakers (including Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke) and their ethos of employing documentary realism to depict the true conditions of contemporary China.

In February 1995, after many years of preparation, the modern dancer Venus finally underwent transgender surgery in Beijing. On the eve of becoming a woman, he gave an interview and talked about his determination, aspirations, and good life ideals. The operation was tortuous and painful. After the operation, my father went to the police station to change the gender on the Venus ID card. From then on, Miss Venus was born. In March 2000, Venus once again interviewed her about her many boyfriends in the five years after the operation, her happy life, and her special encounters and adventures. The film allows the audience to see a Miss Venus living in her dream.

Jiang Jie is famous throughout China: the “Chinese Joan of Arc,” in the words of director Zhang Yuan, a communist heroine executed by the Kuomintang in 1949, on the eve of the revolution. Zhang Yuan’s film, a passionately engaged tribute to the 1964 “revolutionary opera” based on Jiang Jie’s life, follows the original closely...The Revolutionary melodrama plot, not that different from Verdi’s 19th century versions, has of course a completely different resonance today. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) enshrined this kind of “revolutionary opera” — based on traditional Beijing opera, but with substantial stylistic and formal revisions — as the epitome of Maoist propaganda art. In the past ten years, Chinese and Western experts have begun to re-evaluate the art behind the propaganda, to find creativity, and even shocking beauty under the layers of kitsch and repellent politics the works have sometimes embodied. —Shelly Kraicer

A mysterious woman frequents tea shops and other places looking for the right man. A cup of green tea will show you the way to find your true love.

A film by Chinese documentary director Jinchuan Duan.

A documentary film by Duan Jinchuan.

The documentary interviews people from the village that are the setting of a popular socialist novel about China revolution and addresses issues of private memory and official propaganda.

A film by Chinese documentary filmmaker Jinchuan Duan.

A film by Chinese documentary director Jinchuan Duan.

Qingpu is a famous sacred mountain in Tibet, where countless monks have practiced for thousands of years. In 1989, Wen Pulin and Duan Jinchuan followed several monks up the mountain and took video of them. After three years, we revisited the same trail and got a little closer to understanding their lives. As an in-depth dialogue with down to earth rural people, the film seems to understand Buddhism as a philosophy, but also a personal choice of lifestyle, a transcendence of the chaotic life.

Documentary film by Duan Jinchuan

An early film from Duan Jinchuan about Tibet.

Early documentary short film by director Duan Jinchuan. It is considered by the filmmaker to be lost.

Early short documentary film by Duan Jinchuan. It is considered by the filmmaker to be lost.