China in the 1920’s. After her father’s death, 19 year old Songlian is forced to marry the much older lord of a powerful family. With three wives already, each living in a separate house within the great castle, there is fierce competition for his attention and the privileges that are gained. This competition gets out of hand…
Hsiao Hai (Wa Chung Ting) works as a servant for wealthy businessman Tin Hai Lu (Fei Lung). Constantly bullied and abused in the marketplace, Hsiao finds himself taken under the personal tutelage of his boss, a skilled master of Chicken style kung-fu. Master Lu hopes that his young employee may one day provide backup muscle for his ongoing business struggles with a rival tong. Meanwhile, gawky split-toothed Hsiao continues to spend much of his free … Read more
Winner of the Golden Rooster for Best Film in 1992. Set in 1948, the second strategic campaign in central China between CCP army and the Nationalist Party army.
A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband’s nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband’s heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. Filmed in glowing technicolour, this tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.
Winner of the Silver Bear in Berlin in 1990, Xie Fei’s film is a politically daring tale of urban alienation and despair. A former prisoner, played by the great Chinese actor Jiang Wen, arrives back in his native Beijing to find that he has no family or prospects or friends, just his underworld contacts trying to drag him back into a life of crime… Taking the classic crime thriller ‘hook’ – ex-con struggling to go … Read more
True story of Norman Bethune, a medical doctor who fought for justice in China during Mao’s rise to power.
The film follows a peasant couple, Zhao Deshan and his wife Xiuzhi, living in rural Yunnan province near Zhaotong in southern China. Their lives are thrown into upheaval when the local mayor “rewards” them with two foreign sheep donated by a former villager, now an official in Beijing. The couple is then tasked with breeding the sheep for their wool and to bring prosperity to their small community. Much to their chagrin, the sheep do … Read more
The story of a couple (Niki Chow and Eason Chan) who break up one morning and proceed to find their love tested in unexpected and violent ways.
Set in modern day Bejing, Waiting Alone is a coming-of-age story of Wen (Xia Yu), an antique shop owner and aspiring author who has just met the girl of his dreams. Waiting Alone shows us a China rarely seen in cinema, a China that is contemporary, hip and vibrant.
For no apparent reason, a mute young woman assaults a youth who delivers water on his bicycle, injuring him and ruining his bike. Surprisingly, she asks him to feed her fish while she is in custody. Her tiny apartment, he discovers, is a shrine to his favorite escape, the movies.
“The World” is a theme park on the outskirts of Beijing, sixteen kilometers from the Chinese capital, designed around scaled representations of the world’s famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.The site is seen here not from the visitors’ point of view but through the eyes of a few of its staff, lonely people, communicating poorly, a bit disillusioned with life, glittering for the tourists but dull and restricted … Read more
In Shanghai, China in the 1940s, a wannabe gangster aspires to join the notorious “Axe Gang” while residents of a housing complex exhibit extraordinary powers in defending their turf.
Two grifters, Wang Bo and Wang Li, a couple who’ve been arguing, board a train in rural China. He wants to fleece a peasant, nicknamed Dumbo for his naiveté, who’s carrying 60,000 yuan and trusts everyone. She wants to protect the hick kid, an act of expiation brought on by prayer and a visit to a temple. Also on board are one of more sets of thieves, including a calculating boss and his femme fatale. … Read more
Zhang Ziyi plays the youngest of three generations of women who leads lives in Shanghai. Joan Chen plays the great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. The film recounts this family, the mistakes they make, and a cycle that the granddaughter breaks out of.
In 9th century China, a corrupt government wages war against a rebel army called the Flying Daggers. A romantic warrior breaks a beautiful rebel out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem. At its height, the Tang Dynasty was one of the most enlightened empires in Chinese history. But in 859AD, the Dynasty is in decline.
Rookie policeman Tai Lin yearned to be an artist before he failed an examination and followed in his father’s footsteps. One day he interrupts an apparent suicide attempt by a woman standing on the edge of a bridge.
Filmmaker Ning Ying returns to her favorite theme – the gradual decay of traditional Chinese values and culture at the dawn of the 21st century – in this low-key drama. Desi (Yu Lei) is a cab driver who has recently broken up with his wife. Lonely, Desi is searching for a new love, and as he drifts through Beijing in search of fares and a girlfriend, he sees a city that is increasingly bending to … Read more
An actor becomes increasingly introverted and psychotic and his entire family attempts to intervene. Jia, an actor and former drug addict, battled his addiction to marijuana and heroin for five years from 1992 to 1997.
A Soviet Russian lady officer, a Chinese peasant and a Japanese schoolgirl must walk their way out of a forest toward the end of World War II, despite their mutual distrust of one another.
A young Shaolin follower reunites with his discouraged brothers to form a soccer team using their martial art skills to their advantage.
King Sky (Ekin Cheng), the sole disciple of the Kun Lun Sect, falls in love with his master Dawn (Cecilia Cheung). Dawn is killed when Insomnia destroys the Kin Lun Mountain. King Sky waits for two hundred years and meets Enigma (Cecilia Cheung), who is the reincarnation of Dawn, and in love with her again. However, Insomnia’s Blood Clouds is ready to destroy Zu…
Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman’s daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life.
Gao Ju (Xia Yu) and Zhang Yang (Pu Shu) were best of friends, but they fall in love with Huanzi (Zhou Xun). Huanzi loves both of them and thus they formed an unbalanced trinity. A simple promise not to meet ever again after college ended up in disaster when Gao cannot resist wooing Huanzi again
Chen Mo, a young man fresh from the countryside who’s scrambling to make a living selling flowers on the streets of Beijing, meets Mei Ting, a masseuse-hairdresser who, having repulsed the aggressive advances of her boss, has no place to live.
One man defeated three assassins who sought to murder the most powerful warlord in pre-unified China.
In a mansion decimated during World War II, a frustrated, bored housewife, Yuwen, is torn between caring for her ailing husband and her longing for a former sweetheart, a doctor who has come to treat her husband.
China’s submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1979
Story of a real family in Beijing. The father’s drinking problem starts it all. The mother struggles to keep the family together till she cannot take it any more.
Taking Tiger Mountain was the very first model film produced during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Set during the civil war in 1946, it follows a detachment of the People’s Liberation Army in Mandchuria as they are fighting a group of bandits hiding in the mountains. Based on a novel from the 50s, Taking Tiger Mountain was first a revolutionary opera before being made into film by director Xie Tieli.