During the ten years of Chaos, the young lady from businessman Zhang's family takes care of the whole family and keeps everyone together.
As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experiences.
A young man recalls his childhood growing up in a poor alley in Beijing during the 1950s and 1960s.
The film gets under the skin of a very marginalized group: recent immigrants to Hong Kong from Mainland China. Belying the expectation that they will belong in a territory now returned to China's sovereignty, they find themselves lonely, frustrated, poor, and employable only in the most menial jobs, from elevator service staff to prostitution.
Biographical film based on the life of Luo Yusheng, the master of modern Chinese folk art, the master of drum music, and the founder of Luo Pai Jingyun drum section.
Beijing, 1902: an enterprising young portrait photographer named Liu Jinglun, keen on new technology, befriends a newly-arrived Englishman who's brought projector, camera, and Lumière-brothers' shorts to open the Shadow Magic theater. Liu's work with Wallace brings him conflict with tradition and his father's authority, complicated by his falling in love with Ling, daughter of Lord Tan, star of Beijing's traditional opera. Liu sees movies as his chance to become wealthy and worthy of Ling. When the Shadow Magic pair are invited to show the films to the Empress Dowager, things look good. But, is disaster in the script? And, can movies preserve tradition even as they bring change?
Six different episodes about different generations' relationships. Love can be sweet, sour, or spicy.
The wife of a prominent psychiatrist can't find her marriage certificate one day. This "jiehunzheng" is all important. Without it, the family officially has never existed, including the daughter. The couple go on a wild goose chase through the Chinese bureaucracy, meeting catch-22 all the way....they need a certificate to get a new one, etc. They even journey back to the People's Commune where they met, now the site of modern private enterprises where nobody even recalls the former occupants.
The daughter of a right-winger, schoolgirl Jing Qiu is sent to the countryside for reeducation, and tasked to help write a textbook. There she meets Lao San, a young soldier with a bright future ahead. Despite the class divide and parental disapproval, romance blooms against turbulent times.
First film directed by Lu Xuechang.
After Women’s Story, Peng returns to the most straightforward representation of women’s issues in Shanghai Women, a film about three rural women. As the first work in Peng’s Shanghai Trilogy, Shanghai Women describes the problem that women encounter trying to secure urban (residential) space through the story of women from three generations.
Shenzhen, China, the present day. Nineteen-year-old Wang Baihe is a migrant worker from a village in Shaanxi province. She has a baby son from a one-night stand with a man from Hong Kong and a small income from making Chinese decorative knots at home. Her dream is to open a noodle restaurant and “make lots of money and become a city person” but she finds it difficult to find regular employment because of her baby boy. Her story emerges through interviews with journalist Liu Nan, who is writing a book about her. When Baihe discovers her son has congenital heart disease, she tries desperate ways to raise the RMB80,000 (US$12,000) for the operation, helped by her friend and fellow migrant worker Hu Jinling.
Gong Li stars in this low-key drama about a single mother who will do anything to provide for her son. Sun Liying (Li) struggles to care for her hearing-impaired child Zheng Da (Gao Xin) after her taxi driver husband divorces her. After Zheng Da gets his hearing aid smashed in a fight with classmates, Sun Liying sets out to raise 5,000 yuan (a small fortune) to buy him a replacement. A friend helps her set up an unauthorized bookstall, which soon gets raided by the police. Later she splits her time delivering newspapers and cleaning house for a rich businessman. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival.
Zheng Jianong, a bulldozer driver, has been suffering from illness for years and his wife leaves him
An adaptation of Weng Meng's 1953 novel.
A married village worker teams up with an old girlfriend to try to dig a well for his water-starved village. The well collapses and they are trapped. Their enforced confinement leads to them exploring their feelings for each other and those around them.
A couple (Zhang Jingsheng & Lu Liping) robbed the money train for money, causing a canister truck carrying highly toxic drugs to leak gas and eventually burn through the ozone layer. At the same time, the boy (Zhang Ning) who was resting at home due to his illness suddenly found that he could understand the language of his good friend, Big White Cat. The big white cat told him that this serious accident, if not stopped in time, the living things on the earth will eventually perish. However, adults are so busy running for money that they do not believe what boys and animals say.
A husband is called back to emergency duty from his honeymoon and his bride investigates the sudden death of a couple also on their honeymoon.
An urban movie that integrates love, action, fantasy, suspense, and black humor. A traffic jam reveals the fate of a group of people: a drug dealer, Rashomon (Wu Zhenyu), Clockwork (Chen Zhipeng) and Yixiu (Wu Junyu).
