China

  • Chusheng Cai & Junli Zheng – Yi jiang chun shui xiang dong liu AKA The Spring River Flows East (1947)

    Chusheng Cai1941-1950ChinaClassicsDramaJunli Zheng

    Synopsis:
    An idealistic schoolteacher leaves his wife and family behind in 1930s Shanghai to join the Red Cross in the fight against the Japanese invasion. After he is captured, he escapes to Chongqing, where he marries a high-society hostess and establishes a new bourgeois life for himself. Meanwhile, his family lives a life of poverty in a squatter’s camp in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Director Zheng and veteran filmmaker Cai (who focused mainly on the screenplay for fear of reprimand from the ruling Kuomintang Government) successfully intercut between the parallel narratives, which reflect the contradictory social conditions of prerevolutionary China and bring an epic scale to the life of the Chinese everyman. Considered the country’s equivalent of Gone with the Wind, this sweeping melodrama gave rise to a “romantic family epic” craze in 1940s China.Read More »

  • Xiaoshuai Wang – Chuang ru zhe AKA Red Amnesia (2014)

    Xiaoshuai Wang2011-2020ChinaDramaThriller

    Deng is a stubborn retired widow who spends her days caring about her two grown up sons and her elderly mother, despite her family efforts to stop her. But her daily routine starts derailing when she keeps receiving anonymous calls…Read More »

  • Mengqiao Li – Bipolar (2021)

    2021-2030ChinaDramaMengqiao Li

    IMDB synopsis:
    Based on the myth of Orpheus: in Lhasa, a young woman encounters a lobster that will change her life.

    Quote:
    A journey that takes the myth of Orpheus as a starting point and that accompanies the protagonist on a pilgrimage that is physical, but also psychological. In her journey she meets different characters who represent a dysfunctional society. The memories and hallucinations seem real, and reality seems like a hallucination. As a viewer, the journey however has not led me anywhere.Read More »

  • Jin Xie – Wutai jiemei AKA Two Stage Sisters (1964)

    Jin Xie1961-1970ArthouseChinaChinese cinema under MaoDrama

    Chronicles the fortunes of two actresses in pre-revolutionary China, who are separated by money and politics.Read More »

  • Hao Ning – Wu ren qu AKA No Man’s Land (2013)

    2011-2020AsianChinaCrimeHao Ning

    Being shelved for four years over censorship issues sounds like a death knell for any film, and yet in the case of Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land, it may actually have been a considerable boon : indeed, the four-years delay meant that the film came out after the comedy Lost In Thailand, which starred two of the leads of No Man’s Land (Xu Zheng and Huang Bo), and thus became positioned as their follow-up to what is still the all-time highest-grossing Chinese film in China. It did however lose its potential status as China’s very first modern-day set western – with Gao Qunshu’s Wind Blast having been released in the meantime – though in truth it is closer to a film noir than a western, with moody voice-over and a cynical outlook on human nature. It tells of an arrogant big city lawyer (Xu Zheng) who travels to the far west of China to plead the case of a falcon trafficker (Togbye), then tries to rush back to the city to close a book deal on that very case.Read More »

  • Derek Tsang – Shao nian de ni AKA Better Days (2019)

    2011-2020ChinaCrimeDerek TsangDrama

    Quote:
    When it is time for the Chinese gaokao, a two-day national college entrance exam, the entire country comes to a standstill. For nearly ten million high school students, this exam not only determines where and if they get to study but the fates of their entire families as well. Like so many others, Nian has been single-mindedly preparing for the exam, cutting everything else out of her life. When she becomes the target of relentless bullying, fate brings her together with small-time criminal Bei and the two form a strong friendship. Before they can completely retreat into a world of their own, the two are dragged in the middle of a murder case of a teenage girl where they are the prime suspects. In this dramatic thriller, Derek Kwok-Cheung Tsang paints a bleak picture of an oppressive society, in the guise of a gripping fairy-tale love story, exposing the dark world of bullying and societal pressures of achievement facing today’s youth.Read More »

  • Sang Hu – Tai tai wan sui AKA Long Live the Wife (1947)

    1941-1950AsianChinaDramaSang Hu

    Plot
    A man who becomes wealthy starts to have an affair and though his wife knows of it, she says nothing. Soon, the affair starts to have consequences and his business falls apart while the man’s sister starts to have a relationship with the brother of his wife.Read More »

  • Shaohong Li – Sishi puhuo AKA Family Portrait (1992)

    Shaohong Li1991-2000ChinaDrama

    After laying bare backward village mentalities in Bloody Morning, Li Shaohong turns her attention to China’s urban middle class. Cao is a photographer, married to an opera singer and with an infant son, caught in the usual professional morass of political compromise. His life starts to fall apart when he learns that his ex-wife also bore him a son some months after their divorce – and when the boy turns up looking for his father. Nothing wildly dramatic, just believable people in believable situations. If the ending seems a touch forced, this is nevertheless a sign that ‘Fifth Generation’ cinema is changing and coming to terms with up-to-date realities.Read More »

  • Jianqi Huo – Na shan na ren na gou AKA Postmen in the Mountains (1999) (HD)

    1991-2000ChinaDramaJianqi Huo

    A father, a retiring mailman, walks his son over his job in the mountainous regions of Hunan province.Read More »

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