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Subjects
Films by Subject
East Asia
90 film(s) found
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Rebiya Kadeer is a human rights activist twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is the impassioned though graying exiled leader who continues to lobby for the Uyghurs, a Muslim people whose ancestral home was annexed by the Chinese in 1949. more »
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Once a year, about one hundred companies seeking dominant positions in China’s booming economy, compete in an auction for television advertising time. This film reveals China’s hectic embrace of market economics presenting a close look at the TV ad auction and the companies bidding . more »
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This is a multi-award winning documentary about Japan's World War II biological weapons facility as seen from two points of view. The first half gives the perspective of the Chinese and describes the horrors, while the second half, using the same footage, gives the Japanese revisionist perspective. more »
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Today, many ambitious young women in China feel they have to westernize their appearance through plastic surgery in order to get ahead. more »
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This documentary examines the painful legacy of Korean sex slaves under World War II Japanese colonial rule. It honors a few brave survivors who came forward to break the silence. more »
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Bird Flu Wars
The international scientific community has been monitoring the bird flu virus since 1997 when seven people died in Hong Kong. This films outlines some of the proposals suggested at the WHO to prevent a pandemic. more »
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This film takes us to a remote part of Yunan province in China where the Lisu people have lived for generations in a village carved out of a steep mountain gorge, cheerily battling the elements to go about their daily tasks. more »
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Recent demographic studies show that the aging of the Japanese is occurring at a much faster rate than anticipated. By the year 2025 there will be only two working people for every retired person, and within the next fifty years, one out of every three Japanese will be over 65. The particular Japanese response to this phenomenon is to stay in the workforce long after the normal retirement age. more »
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An intimate portrayal of Tibetan resistance to China, it contrasts the moderate approach of the Dalai Lama with that of young rebels who are more confrontational. more »
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In Japan, the old system of arranged marriages is giving way to the "love match," with dramatic social consequences. more »
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Three children-refugees escape from their native Tibet across the Himalayas in search of a better education in India. Leaving their families behind and risking their lives, they find life in India not as easy they expected. more »
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This is a view of China in transition through the eyes of six members of the intelligentsia. They are addressing the issue of freedom of expression and censorship. more »
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The filmmaker was born in Shanghai to a privileged family that lived an enviable life style. When the Communists came to power the family fled. This beguiling film records her first visit back to the land of her birth and the relatives she left behind. more »
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In 1992, Deng Xiaoping's slogan "It is glorious to get rich" unleashed one of the biggest revolutions in thousand-year-old China. He overthrew the classless society and the equal division of the means of production and from then on, China stuck to a socialism with "Chinese characteristics." Which meant that many Chinese families have built successful companies, embracing all the lessons of capitalism. more »
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When a massive earthquake struck China's Sichuan province in May, 2008, China's government presented a new face to the world, allowing increased media coverage. But as the months passed, this newly transparent China melted away into one of secrecy. more »
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Two hundred million farmers have left their roots and migrated to the cities in search for a better life. The film focuses on one young man and his travails in participating in the new economy. more »
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In 1980, the Communist Government of China instituted a policy of one child per family as a means of curtailing population growth. Now, the success or failure of this highly controversial social experiment can be assessed. This report travels from middle class Beijing to poor farms in the countryside to see the effect of the policy. more »
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Despite China's economic success, there has been no progress in civil rights. Workers can be sent away for "reeducation" if they complain about working conditions. People charged with crimes do not get adequate legal representation. more »
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This companion film to Contemporary Chinese Art: Artists working in China focuses on the ground-breaking Chinese art being exhibited in the US that has excited Western curators and collectors alike more »
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There has been an astounding flowering of innovative, energetic and challenging contemporary art in China. The film travels to artists studios, galleries and museums where this art is evolving and displayed, and the artists explain their techniques and philosophies. Art experts bring historical context to the new movement.
Accompanying film: Chinese Contemporary Art Comes to America more »
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A pair of small feet -- three-inch golden lilies -- were once the male-designated yardstick for feminine beauty in China. A young girl's feet were broken and bound inwards along the instep, a process that caused excruciating pain. Systematically bound, day after day, the stunted feet began to take on the coveted look of that profoundly sensuous image, the lotus bulb. more »
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In Beijing stands the only hospital in China devoted to giving the terminally ill a death with dignity. more »
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The Korean film industry, which once struggled to attract domestic audiences, has been successfully exporting its movies and expanding its influence throughout Asia, Europe and North America in the past decade. Korean cinema is enjoying a revival of interest internationally because of the broader cultural phenomenon of hallyu ("Korean Wave"). But contemporary Korean cinema's roots run deep and hallyu is only the latest chapter in a rich history. more »
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An extraordinary portrait of a Chinese ballet dancer who underwent one of the first sex change operations in China to become a woman. She is now the toast of the Chinese theater, despite having challenged very traditional institutions. more »
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An undercover report from China reveals the suffering of people who have been exposed to radioactivity from nuclear testing. more »
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The extraordinary life of Pearl Buck (1892-1973), the child of missionaries who was raised in China and developed a deep affection for the Chinese people. She became one of the most popular American writers of the 20th Century, especially for her best-selling novel, The Good Earth. Archival footage and interviews provide unique insight into China in the first half of the 20th century more »
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This spectacular film brings to light the priceless treasures of China's imperial art collection, relating them to the political climate of their time. It also describes how the collection survived both war and revolution in the 1930-40's. more »
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This film tells the harrowing story of the Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1941 to 1945. England's decision to give up Malaya for the defense of Europe in World War II was ultimately the end of the British Empire. more »
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This is a colorful, ironic look at Chinese society as it is being transformed by burgeoning capitalism. Untold wealth has accrued to those who once followed Mao's dictates. more »
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Skillfully compiled from still photographs smuggled out of China, eye witness accounts and news sound tracks, this short film recreates this tragic event in Chinese history. more »
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Filmmaker Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin) goes on a Kafkaesque journey to reclaim her family house. more »
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"The film captures the spirit and resilience of a group of Korean women who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. Now in their sixties and seventies, they live together in a shared community where they heal from the shame of having been "comfort women." more »
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The Chinese Communist revolution promised women equality after thousands of years of subservience to men. This film takes us to remote villages and urban factories to show how women are still oppressed. more »
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An intrepid woman who reported on events in China during the turbulent 30's and gained the friendship of Mao's inner circle. more »
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When Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the frontier between the former British territory and Shenzhen, the prosperous special economic zone, theoretically disappeared. However, in actuality the border is still closed and integration is slow to occur. more »
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This Nature of Things documentary takes a sobering look at how the explosive growth in the world population affects our planet's resources. more »
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A monument to the suffering of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese during World War II. Includes the newly discovered film footage of the massacre shot by John McGee, an American missionary who was living in Nanjing. more »
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This documentary gives us a rare opportunity to meet young artists and intellectuals in Beijing and hear how they steer a course between survival and artistic expression. more »
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China's students are marching in formation and chanting miliary slogans. But behind the closed dormitory doors at Nanjing University, they act surprisingly similar to Western students. A frank look at the generation torn between communism and capitalism. more »
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North Korea is known as the hermit kingdom because it has been cut off from the rest of the world. Cruelly colonized by Japan early in the 20th century, and split from the south after World War II by cold war politics, it has suffered repressive governments and frequent famines. more »
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These spontaneous, close-up portraits of individuals coping with affairs of daily life in China - finding a mate, running a business, negotiating local politics - put a human face on a nation of over a billion people that is in rapid transition. Please note the varying lengths. more »
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These spontaneous, close-up portraits of individuals coping with affairs of daily life in China - finding a mate, running a business, negotiating local politics - put a human face on a nation of over a billion people that is in rapid transition. Please note the varying lengths. more »
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These spontaneous, close-up portraits of individuals coping with affairs of daily life in China - finding a mate, running a business, negotiating local politics - put a human face on a nation of over a billion people that is in rapid transition. Please note the varying lengths. more »
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These spontaneous, close-up portraits of individuals coping with affairs of daily life in China - finding a mate, running a business, negotiating local politics - put a human face on a nation of over a billion people that is in rapid transition. Please note the varying lengths. more »
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These spontaneous, close-up portraits of individuals coping with affairs of daily life in China - finding a mate, running a business, negotiating local politics - put a human face on a nation of over a billion people that is in rapid transition. Please note the varying lengths. more »
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The film examines why the powerful Japanese economy went into a slump and what the future will hold. more »
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More and more young Japanese women are rebelling against the societal norm. Instead, these women pursue careers and live with their parents, a trend that's having a dramatic impact on the economy and population. more »
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Almost every person charged with committing a serious crime in Japan is convicted and goes to jail. Jury trials simply do not exist and convictions are based on confessions. The filmmaker obtained rare access to Japan's jails, where a cruel, secret system allows the abuse, torture and death of inmates. more »
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This film documents a war where neither side was victorious, a struggle that came very close to thermonuclear war, and that still resonates in the geopolitical machinations between East and West more »
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This stunning film takes us to a rare matriarchal community in southwest China. The ancient Mosuo culture has survived both the time of the concubines and the Cultural Revolution. more »
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This film looks at the issues of urban gentrification and preservation in Beijing today, as the old neighborhoods are being demolished for 'development' more »
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At the end of the 1950’s, the Shanghai Art Studios were among the most important in the world. The came the Cultural Revolution and the director was imprisoned. more »
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As China changes at an awesome rate, becoming more industrialized, urban, and westernized, this film explores how this has impacted traditional relationships between men and women. more »
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This richly photographed film captures the courtship rituals of the Miao who live deep in the mountains of China, preserving the traditions of the past. Young men and women woo each other with soulful songs. more »
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Since the former Portuguese colony Macao was ceded to China in 1999, it has become China's "Empire of Gambling." It derives all its income from tourism, thanks to its sleek new casinos and shopping malls. Thousands are employed by the casinos, with 80% of the population indirectly making their living from them more »
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This irrepressible film follows the fortunes of two attractive thirty-year old Beijing fashion designers who are out to make their mark on the international fashion industry. more »
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The spiritual side of Japanese society is often overlooked. This fascinating report focuses on Genshin Fujinami, a corporate employee who became a monk and embarked on a search for meaning in his life. He completed a grueling running test, known as the "Kaihogyo," which is not simply running, but rather a pilgrimage around the sacred mountain, worshipping Buddha. more »
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This documentary, filmed in Ho Chi Minh City, chronicles the search of an awkward 38-year-old Singaporean for a young, beautiful Vietnamese bride, with the help of a marriage broker. more »
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Goat herders, who typify a traditional community, are successfully adapting to a global economy as they are freed from government restraints. more »
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Alain Desjacques, a well-known ethnomusicologist, takes us on a pilgrimage to find and record the best traditional musicians on the rugged, remote steppes of Mongolia. more »
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The legacy of the genocide in Nanjing echoes in the emotional life of a family today. more »
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To help their children excel in the Japanese school system, parents send them to an academic boot camp that forces them to study almost around the clock. more »
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Nothing of social or political import is broadcast on Chinese television which is a tool for promoting consumerism. more »
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This exclusive portrait is the first to portray North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, with interviews of North and South Korean politicians, as well as close relatives and former employees who have fled the regime. Jong-il's regime has made North Korea a nuclear rogue state threatening the security of the world. more »
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Escaping from famine, many North Koreans live a furtive existence in China. more »
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Our Nation is a stunning portrayal of how Korean youth are using punk rock to find a voice in a rapidly changing culture. more »
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Falun Gong is an ancient meditative practice that enjoyed a revival in China in the 1990’s. For years, however, the government has been brutally cracking down on practitioners. more »
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Since the economic reforms of the 1980s, runaway economic growth has turned China into a major creator of pollution. While the Chinese government ineffectually tries to grapple with its growing environmental problems, there is rising discontent among the masses. more »
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China's economic revolution is illustrated by the change undergone in Shenzen, a farming village that has become an industrial center. The lure of free enterprise is so strong that millions of Chinese want to work there and guards have been posted to control the flow of migrants. more »
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Tea played an important role in the British Empire's expansion as it sought to dominate trade throughout the world. A Scottish botanist successfully stole the secret of growing tea from China. more »
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The Samurai offers an enthralling and colorful odyssey into Japan's history in which Samurai culture became the core of Japanese values. The film colorfully illustrates the Samurai's martial traditions and the manifestations of its ties to the Zen principles of Respect, Purity and Composure. more »
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The effects of the one-child policy combined with a rapid revolution in China's values and lifestyles, have created increasingly selective middle-class Shanghai women. For working class men, finding a wife is a quest that requires money, time, and the strength to withstand countless disappointments. more »
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It is the first day of school in grade four of the Shanghai Experimental Primary School. The film follows the children through the semester as they learn, misbehave, flirt, play, and take exams under their teacher's watchful eye. more »
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What is it like to be an entrepreneur in today's China? This engrossing film provides an up-close view of the daily life of a tour operator in Shanghai determined to become wealthy. more »
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This remarkable film profiles a couple that craves personal freedom, but is faced with the unwanted constraints of parenthood. In a society where grandmothers are expected to care for babies, how much freedom is it reasonable for a mother to expect? more »
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This series on contemporary China is filmed from an insiders point of view and portrays daily life in one of the nation's busiest and most iconic cities. more »
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In a rural village of southwestern China a bevy of young girls yearn for an education. Their parents are poor and mostly illiterate; going to school costs money the families can ill afford. more »
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In the village of Longbaoshan, northwest of Beijing, inhabitants are trying to prevent their homes from being engulfed by ferocious sandstorms. more »
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This fascinating film depicts the Taigana, an unusual tribe of nomads living in the mountainous Hovsgol region of Mongolia, near the Siberian border. more »
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A real-life picture of an ordinary Chinese family devoured by a disease caused by official negligence and then being persecuted by the government in their struggle for help more »
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Japanese waste is turning into gold in the hands of Chinese dealers who extract valuable metal and plastic from mountains of scrap. But not all Japanese trash is welcome. more »
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In 1965, as the Vietnam War intensified and Hanoi faced the threat of massive US bombing, students and teachers from the National Conservatory of Music were forced to flee the city for the relative safety of a small village in the countryside. With the help of villagers, they built an entire campus underground, creating a maze of hidden tunnels, connecting an auditorium and classrooms. Here, as the war raged around them, they lived, studied and played music for five years. more »
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Visioning Tibet chronicles the passion of ophthalmologist Marc Lieberman, founder of the Tibet Vision Project, to end preventable blindness in Tibet . He educates Tibetan doctors to perform cataract surgery more »
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This film, shot mostly covertly, shows the irony of a regime where 20 million people live in poverty, some on the brink of starvation, while former dictator Kim II Sung builds extravagant monuments to reflect his power. more »
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Chinese author Jung Chang's grandmother was born into a still feudal society, and became a warlord's concubine. Her mother, became a high ranking Communist Party official. This film brings to life the memories Chang recorded in her best-selling autobiography, Wild Swans. more »
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A two-part documentary on the conditions of women in today's economically oriented Chinese society. It visits four diverse parts of China more »
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This BBC film takes us to the heart of rural China, where one woman about to have her third child is in trouble with the family planning officials, and another excitedly plans for her traditional wedding. more »
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This fascinating documentary filmed in Mosuo Province near the Tibetan border shares the story of a matriarchal society where there are no fathers, husbands, or marriages. more »
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This is a documentary that portrays the artistic endeavors and the personal journeys of two artists, Zhang Hongtu (b. 1943) and Zhang Jian-Jun (b. 1955), who are part of the Chinese contemporary art community of New York. more »
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An impoverished Chinese couple moves to Beijing from their home town in search of a better life. They invest what little they have in a shabby diner. The couple's problems at times reach almost comical proportions, but they carry on, through joy and worry, determined to succeed. more »
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