Romance in Factory

Before the Flood is a study of the final weeks of a dying city, as thousand-year-old Fengjie on the Yangtze River is reduced to rubble and its inhabitants uprooted to make way for the new Three Gorges Dam that will flood the entire valley.

Six-year old Lin resides in an isolated fishing village with her brother and their widowed mother. When the family gets an opportunity to start a new life, Lin has a startling revelation. A melancholic tale inspired by real events.

Filmed over three years on China’s railways, The Iron Ministry traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, and language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. The Iron Ministry immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.

Director Xu Linyu presents four short films: Mother, Father, Daughter and Son, in which the characters are bound together by the same family, but one of the greatest feelings between the relationships is the sense of alienation. During the filming process, Xu Linyu tries to sort out everyone's dilemma and re-understand the family relationship.

This is an image of a family. Through the memories of many people, it traces the growth, migration and different life experiences of several generations of the author's family. It shows the destiny of ordinary people and their inner scenery in social transformation. Each generation has its own joy and pain, and life still continues in hope, hardship and helplessness. The various imprints of survival that remain in the film are the hard riverbed of individual life and a period of micro-history washed out by time

This is a documentary about faith, narrating the stories of a dozen or so Christians in the city of Tongchuan, in Shaanxi Province. Through the lives and beliefs of four generations of preachers, the film reflects on the profound influence of 50 years of social change on the local church. Whether recounting personal setbacks encountered on the serving path or people’s weaknesses, growth, or disputes within the church community, the film becomes a neutral and faithful portrayal of a group of preachers, of the history of the church community and of the status-quo of belief in this faithless era.

The short film recorded a group of children living status in a brick factory.Their parents work here to earn money.Because of the language barrier, living habits and economic conditions, they didn't go to school. But they are living in a wonderful time and they have extraordinary ability to survive......

Lu Bin, a taciturn young man who has recently been released from a juvenile detention centre, is assigned to learn cooking at a culinary school. On his third day under the instruction of the head chef Ms. Li, a sum of money disappears from the school office. The teachers at the school turn their suspicion to Lu Bin. While Ms. Li is a strict teacher to Lu Bin, she also sympathizes with him. If Lu Bin is identified as a thief, he will be expelled from the school. Two teachers decide to investigate further, and Ms. Li is forced to face her suspicion of Lu Bin, along with another unexpected secret.

Due to his history of theft in the past, Lin Kuan is falsely accused of stealing from his high school classmate. To prove his innocence, Lin enlists his friend Xiao Bing to make a plan that will clear his name. However, heir seemingly perfect plan takes a turn that pushes Lin to a dangerous edge.

Fishermen couple Ah Shing and Mei-wah, having lived from boat to shore, stayed together for most of their lives. After their son grew up, they have different visions towards the rest of their days. Ah Shing insists on fishing amid the decline of the local fishing industry. Mei-wah works as a factory worker and wishes for a more stable life. Even when there are subtle and profound changes in their relationships due to the different views, their affections for each other never stopped and they still support each other. This story is based on the real-life experience of the director's parents, and they play their own character in the film.

After witnessing the sudden death of a student in a classroom, a cowardly young teacher will face a whole classroom of students who have not yet died suddenly, as well as his own indistinguishable past, in which he exhibits his "name view" in preaching and self-doubt, and a class will pass.

This video work is a fictional online Feng Shui guideline. A Feng Shui master on-screen in connecting to a person's brain to observe the image fragments in it and, based on that, try to give advice. It turns out to become a dispute between the two. Composed with images from real places like modern residences, high-speed train stations, national enterprises in mid of change, and mining factories, the video gives a dizzying visual effect. The artist narrates the words mixed with humorous, personal, and authoritarian languages. The work concerns the complex relationship between medium, feelings and narratives, and how a personal destiny can be narrated in relation to specific spatial-physicality.

This investigative documentary gives a comprehensive record of the development of China's "August 3 Crackdown on Mafia" campaign. Li Xiaoming, the main character of the film, escapes from the incident and goes through many ups and downs. The film explores that period from a personal point of view, slowly revealing the untold story of that period.

The player of Jia Zhangke's early film "Xiao Wu" and the famous independent film activist Wang Hongwei talked about Chinese independent films at the IFF Independent Film Forum.

Unusually popular religions and extreme secular beliefs, unconstrained power and no authoritarian society, people work hard on the land and live thrifty but do not believe in the meaning of life at all. This is Longwang Village, an empty old farming society, the most essential reality of an ordinary western village. The film does not have a perpetual plot. The images are presented with the changing of the four seasons. There is no great joy or great sadness. Everything is recorded, and no results are produced. Strictly speaking, this is actually just a rural video file, a running account of ordinary western villages without all rhetoric.

Only a few days before the Spring Festival of 2008, several truck drivers set off from Nantong, Jiangsu Province, to Guizhou province to deliver goods. But what they didn't expect was that they ran into a big snowstorm not long after their departure. What would these drivers do after they got caught up in a snowstorm and coudn't do nothing about it but wait? How would they react to this unexpected halt? And what would happen to this convoy?

An individual's life experience is always a reflection and epitome of the times. Through the environment, literature, oral narration, calligraphy and painting works, this film faithfully records the upbringing background, family circumstances and life of the painter Chen Jiyong. His life experience and mind-watching are an ordinary case of countless intellectuals who have disappeared in the dust of time. At the same time, he has become a sample of images and life statues about this period of history.

Several boys who are about to graduate live in the 2006 dormitory. All-day long eating, chatting, playing cards, and playing with mobile phones, to kill their youth, just to get a high school diploma. Finally, I graduated from high school, but where is the future? Go to work or continue to join a college? Facing such students, it is difficult for teachers to show enthusiasm for teaching. Only Teacher Hou carefully wiped the bulletin board , as always. The original site of Duancun Middle School in Pingyao County was an ancient temple in the Ming Dynasty. In the summer of 2011, more than 150 students from the school merged with two other high schools and moved into the new school in the city. Grass grows on the playground, and the gatekeeper Laomi and his family continue to live in the teaching building.

In order to face his 30th birthday, the author of the film began to implement a long-planned plan for the Dragon Boat Festival, bringing a dog, a computer, some vegetables and eggs to the dilapidated yard on the north side of the mountain in Pingyao County, where he will live alone for more than a dozen. Day and night, organize and pack the first half of my life, recall and think, talk with the self in the device, and smoke, silence, think or sing with the middle-aged neurotic who comes to ask for cigarettes every day.

China marks the beginning of the extensive Asian theme in Ottinger’s filmography and is her first travelogue. Her observant eye is interested in anything from Sichuan opera and the Beijing Film Studio to the production of candy and sounds of bicycle bells.