China in battle

As the Communist Party of China celebrates its 100th anniversary, this documentary looks back at the party’s history, from the 1920’s, to the Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution and the reforms by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Did the Great Famine cost more than 15 million lives? How does the Cultural Revolution continue to shape Chinese politics today? What was capitalism like after Mao’s death? Through rare and never-before-seen historical footage, expert interviews and eyewitness accounts of the Great Famine, Tiananmen incident, and the Cultural Revolution, get to know how one party has so profoundly shaped China.

Mao Zedong was not only a revolutionary leader and thinker, he was also a poet. In poems written in the classic calligraphic tradition he expresses his experiences and visions. In this film, 8 of Mao's poems are sung, recited and interpreted: 'Changsha' (1925), 'Jinggang Mountains' (1928), 'The Long March' (1935), 'Snow' (1936), 'The People's Liberation Army Captures Nanjing' (1949), 'Swimming' (1956), 'Reply to Comrade Guo Moruo' (1961) and 'Reascending Jinggang Mountains' (1965). Through these poems we get a picture of the Chinese revolution from its first beginning in 1921 until the Cultural Revolution. The poems of Mao Zedong have been published in more than 57 million copies

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work.

Ice and Snow Jin Dalai

Sink or Swim

Liu Hanwu, a soldier of the Anti-Union Alliance, needs to obtain a batch of international aid drugs. He needs all his wits and courage while fighting with the Japanese special military commanders.

Follows a soldier trying to gain recognition for comrades who died in 1948, at a turning point in the civil war between the communists and the nationalist forces of the Kuomintang.

Jue Sha

Bai Shan Hei Shui

Explosion Before Dawn

沙家店粮站

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

Red poppy

The Turning of Wheels

An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.

Set in the anti-Japanese war, a Japanese commander who killed a lot of Chinese receives an order to return to Japan. Scouts from the eighth route army must intercept the executioner before he leaves China.

A story of three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s Taiwan and Shanghai, centered around the 1949 sinking of Taiping.

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Driver Ko Wah (Lee Ching) refuses to transport ammunitions for the enemy, and is sent to jail after a scuffle with his traitorous boss. Although down and out, Ko takes in Siu-fung (Yung Siu-yi), an unwilling erotic dancer who has fled the war to Hong Kong. They may lead destitute lives, but their conscience remains intact. Director Cai Chusheng co-founded the National Salvation Association of Cinema. When Ko makes a uproar at the dance parlour and rips apart his friend's zombie costume, it represents Cai's criticism on the muddling-along attitude of Hong Kong society at the time. The characters' decision to return to the mainland to join the resistance effort also foretells Cai's decision to do the same in real-life.

A former spy in the Chinese Nationalist Party falls for an opium-dealing widow, as China is ravaged by war and revolution.