This is the second-last film made by Shanghai Animation Film Studio before the death of Mao Zedong, made in the dying weeks of the Cultural Revolution. Unusually for the studio, it was neither a production using puppets, nor traditional cel animation, but using the much rarer technique of paper-cutting.Read More »
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The Soong family was a political dynasty in China that reached the highest levels of power. This film follows the lives of the three Soong daughters, who were educated in America and returned to China. Ai-ling (the oldest) married a wealthy and powerful businessman. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of modern China. Mei-ling (the youngest) married Chiang Kai-shek, China’s leader during World War II. The sisters captured the world’s fascination for their brilliant marriages and their strong influence on their nation.Read More »
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A man is murdered on a bus for trying to stop a pickpocket; no one lifts a finger to help him. He returns as a ghost and questions the empathy of the onlookers.
There are three spaces in this film. One of them is reality–like the incident on the bus. Another is the space of history, stretching back centuries to the matriarchal society of Banpo Village, outside Xi’an. You see the Mother, playing the drum. And there’s also the space of the imaginary–what the characters are thinking. In fact, it’s the space of the human soul.Read More »
Storyline
Li Baicheng is a charismatic fortune teller who services a clientele of prostitutes and marginalized figures whose jobs, like his, are commonplace but technically illegal in China. He practices his ancient craft in a village near Beijing while taking care of his deaf and dumb wife Pearl, who he rescued from her family’s mistreatment. Winter brings a police crackdown on both fortune tellers and prostitutes, forcing Li and Pearl into temporary exile in his hometown, where he revisits old family demons. His humble story is told with chapter headings similar to Qing Dynasty popular fiction. Written by AnonymousRead More »
Synopsis:
Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.Read More »
In an early, minor role, Jackie Chan plays the villainous Hua-Wa Bin–one of two men in the world who is proficient with a top-secret weapon. Believing that his wife has poisoned him, he hires his adversary, rogue warrior “Killer Meteor” Mei Hsi-Ho (Wang Wu) to kill his wife and find the antidote to the poison. Unfortunately, Hua-Wa’s wife is being guarded by a gang of the world’s greatest fighters who are armed with a weapon that can turn people into pulverized puddles of goo! Hua-Wa must then leap into battle on his own to save his life…This action-packed martial arts saga is based on the serial by Gu Long.Read More »
An old teahouse in Beijing serves as the stage for a drama that unfolds over several tumultuous decades of modern Chinese history, from the waning days of the Qing dynasty to the eve of the People’s Republic.Read More »
Hu Te et al. escape the burning Shaolin temple after the Qing soldiers destroyed it in Shaolin Temple. The group of 5 decide to develop secret codes to identify fellow patriots, enlist those patriots and eventually meet up again to escape to the south away from the Qings, and also identify the traitor who sold out Shaolin temple. Ma Fu Yi, joins the Qing top fighters to eliminate the rebels but is exposed by Ma Chao-Tsing who gets captured by Ma Fu Yi. Hu meets up with a group of Shaolin men secretly posing as bandits to rescue Ma as their leader is killed in the process, thus the bandits join the rest of the Shaolin patriots.Read More »
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The rise and fall of a family in Shanghai. Once wealthy and capitalist, the family unraveled during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Their home, once a French concession mansion, was converted into a multi-family dwelling. Years later, the matriarch of the family announces that she is dying. When her four grown children return, it becomes the first time the family has been under one roof in decades.Read More »