Sparkling Red Star

An artist looks back on his younger years at the Chongqing Art Academy in the turbulent 1990s. The selection and demands used to be killing. He was close friends with two boys and a girl. They fought with local youngsters and tried to give each other pep talks. Parallels with the childhood years of his parents, during the Cultural Revolution, also show violence and gun battles. Semi-autobiographical, with motion capture.

Cao Fei explores a virtual metropolis within the online platform Second Life. The work blends real and fictional elements of Chinese identity and urbanism to comment on capitalism and development in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Marxist iconography intersects with modern corporate structures, creating a dystopian yet whimsical reflection on 21st-century economic realities.

China, in the early sixties: an angry mob is persecuting a rich landowner. Mei, a young worker, who is part of the crowd. Suddenly she recognizes the victim who she secretly loves. Frightened of revealing her feelings, Mei doesn't know what to do.

During the period of Culture Revolution in 1960s and 1970s in China, a disable old man wanted to use his handicraft, a snuff bottle with inside painting, for the exchange of “Grain Coupon” from a soldier. The soldier promised to give more coupons if the old man can forge a precious stamp. The old man had to do it, however, he failed and fell out with the soldier. At the end, the old man got grain in another way.

In an epic tale of theater, gender, love and class, two Beijing opera actors navigate political turmoil as their friendship evolves over decades.

A flying saucer hidden in a Red Chinese peasant village is sought by teams from the United States and U.S.S.R. On finding it, they band together to explore the saucer and take a trip into space.

The friendship between two children is threatened by their parents’ differences. Malú is from a family that was upper-class before the Revolution and remains well-to-do through remittances from relatives overseas, and her single mother (Larisa Vega Alamar) does not want her to play with Jorgito, as she thinks his background coarse and commonplace. Jorgito’s mother (Luisa María Jiménez Rodríguez),

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

Based on a novel by the same name written by Gu Hua, a melodrama about the life and travails of a young woman who lives through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

From 1972 until 1974, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, along with a Chinese film crew, documented the last days of the Cultural Revolution, marking the end of an era. The vast amount of footage they shot was edited into 14 films of varying lengths. Focusing on ordinary people spread over a wide geographic area—many of whom were living and working in collectives—the filmmakers recorded a unique moment in history, and also captured some of the more enduring aspects of Chinese culture.

Tiananmen: Forbidden Memory

Ma révolution culturelle

An account of the many tribulations that Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his subversive art and political activism, endured between 2008 and 2011, from his rise to world fame via the Internet to his highly publicized arrest due to his frequent and daring confrontations with the Chinese authorities.

Based on the novel of the same name by Cixin Liu, the first in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. Hundreds of physicists died mysteriously. A Chinese nanomaterials expert, Wang Miao, sees a mysterious countdown in his eyes. Soon he finds out that the "disastrous planet" under three suns in a game really exists. The three-body civilization there will reach the Earth in 400 years. A future catastrophe is coming for humanity...

Gandhi, de l'homme à l'icône

In 1985, WHAM! made history as the first Western pop act to perform in communist China. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s concerts in Beijing and Guangzhou were a cultural milestone – East meets West, music meets politics. Now, newly restored footage reveals the untold story of the iconic tour that helped launch WHAM! to global superstardom.

A Chinese documentary about rural workers and their education by educated youth sent to the countryside from cities.

The fascinating story of the cultural, social, spiritual, and musical revolution ignited by the coming of the Beatles. Tracing the impact that these four band members had, first in their native Britain and soon after worldwide, it reappraises the band and follows their path from young subversives to countercultural heroes. Featuring fresh, revealing interviews with key collaborators as well as a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, this is a bold new take on the most significant band in the history of music and their enduring impact on popular culture.

Spring 1976, 5-year-old Swallow is abandoned at a public boarding preschool in central Beijing. When the persimmons are ripe, Swallow masters how to cry, but doesn't forget how to fly.

Eva Sandberg was born in Breslau in 1911, the daughter of a Jewish doctor, and grew up in Bad Landeck, a town in Silesia in what is now Poland. As a child, she had a dream: one day, the Emperor of China would ask for her hand in marriage. After studying photography in Munich and spending time in Stockholm, she traveled to the mysterious Soviet Union in 1934, where she met the love of her life, Chinese writer Emi Siao. Eva followed her husband to China, but not without fear.