Yuguo and His Mother (2011)

Xuan is a young man working in the film industry in Beijing. To make a documentary film that he wants to present at international festivals, he decides to take advantage of the holidays of the Day of the Dead to return to Chengdu, his hometown located at the other end of the country. The documentary he is about to make is about his relationship with his own lover. He leaves for Chengdu, accompanied by another man, Bo, the cameraman of the film. The two men take the train to Chengdu where Hong, Xuan's lover, is waiting for them. From the first moment of their arrival at the station, Xuan and Bo begin to turn with their camera, Xuan having already explained to Bo what he wanted to film and that Hong would always be "playing", Bo then trusting in Xuan. But Hong is more and more opposed to this camera and the presence of Bo.

Coming back to her broken family, pregnant writer Huang Xiaoyu and her French husband, Benjamin, finds herself trapped between her cult brainwashed mother, Li Jiumei, and her secretly homosexual father, Huang Tao.

Follow the lives of the elderly survivors who were forced into sex slavery as “Comfort Women” by the Japanese during World War II. At the time of filming, only 22 of these women were still alive to tell their story. Through their own personal histories and perspectives, they tell a tale that should never be forgotten to generations unaware of the brutalization that occurred.

A soon-to-be first-time voter, the filmmaker’s thought-provoking journey into the Rust Belt and South captures four Asian American voters’ ardent first time grassroots political participation ignited by the 2016 rise of “Chinese Americans for Trump.” FIRST VOTE is a character driven cinema verité style film chronicling the democratic participation of four Asian American voters from 2016 through the 2018 midterm elections.

Xingxi travels alone to Alor Setar, a town in Northern Malaysia. As a consequence of a blown tire, she experiences three variant adventures. She introduces herself to people using different identities with mysterious secrets. In return, what the journey brings her is thoroughly unexpected. In the first adventure, Brooke is a traveler; in the second adventure, Brooke is an anthropologist; in the third, Brooke is a divorcée. She is a disheartened woman who comes across a French writer named Pierre. The two lonely travelers become instant friends. Their age gap enables them to have their respective insights into life and death. Meanwhile, it is not until the enigmatic side of Alor Setar begins to unfold that Brooke tells Pierre the true reason why she has come. They seek to understand the interaction between love and life. As the story comes to an end, mother nature shows her beauty with the magical Blue Tears phenomenon on prominent display.

A policeman investigates an introverted signal-station manager suspected of raping a hotel clerk.

The relationship between two young men in Beijing becomes strained after one of them develops an unusual fetish.

A wistful but witty account of a trip to Beijing by filmmaker Viv Li, a Chinese art student who has been living abroad for ten years. Her stay with her family mercilessly exposes how uprooted she has become by her life abroad.

The Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou) staged the Chinese debut of "The Vagina Monologues" in December 2003. Since then, this feminist play, which came from the US and has been committed to the elimination of gender-based violence, has incited a vagina hurricane that blew all over mainland China.

Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.

Filmed over three years on China’s railways, The Iron Ministry traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, and language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. The Iron Ministry immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.

Hong Kong, at the height of the protests. A young woman visits her father, whom she has not seen for a while. Her plan is to have lunch with him before the Umbrella Movement reaches a critical juncture. Celebrated, committed filmmaker Ying Liang contributed with a beautiful moving short with an special angle asking: Where do we live, and what is citizenship?

In 1994, the oil-rich city of Karamay in Northwest China was the site of a horrible fire that killed nearly 300 schoolchildren. The students were performing for state officials and were told to stand by while the officials exited first. After the fire, the story was heavily censored in the Chinese state media. To this day, the families of Karamay have not been allowed to publicly mourn their children.

This short film shows a quest of two homosexual couples for understanding from the people in their surroundings, through meetings and exchanges on a square in the heart of Beijing.

A 17 year old boy from a village in the Sechuan province leaves for the big city looking for his father, who left 6 years before and has not been heard of since. The fact that his mother still receives money his father does nothing to tame his anger. He his not looking for a warm reunion, it is unconcealed revenge that drives him. Totally lost, he roams the big city with his basket of ducks on his back...

The "Great Sichuan Earthquake" took place at 14:28 on May 12, 2008. In the days after, ordinary people salvage destroyed pig farms in the mountains, collect cheap scrapped metals, or pillaging other victims' homes. Behind the media circus of official visits is an inconsolable grief of families searching for loved ones. As the Lunar New Year approaches, vagabonds and family tell of the ill-handling of rebuilding schemes and misuse relief funds. As they prepare for another visit from a high official, the refugees are swept out of the town and into tent cities. The promise to put a roof over their heads before winter seems impossible to keep.

In 1946, Heidi is entrusted to a Swiss family by her father. He will never come back for her. Today, François Yang questions his mother about her past. What follows is a journey to China, a quest to reconstruct memory. Through contact with her brothers and sister, Heidi measures the extent of the drama experienced by her family that remained in China, persecuted by the Communist Party.

The movie follows two unfortunate secret lovers who are constantly looking for a solution to their situation. Both of them are always arguing over their relationship. One day they went to a trip out of the city, into the outskirt. They hope they can solve their problems or at least escape them temporarily. They don’t have a solution, and they don’t understand why they are together. One thing that keeps them together is their love and care for each other. This is the second part of James Lee’s Love Trilogy which takes another look at unfaithfulness or rather faithlessness.

In this talk, Li Hongqi reviewed his transition from fine art to cinema, and his aesthetic and philosophical exploration from his early 'So Much Rice' to recent 'The The'. Dir. Li Hongqi also shared his strong anxiety of his existence(born with melancholia), his thought on cinema art (actually, I don't think there's any movie worth making), his epistemology, his religious view, his consideration on contemporary cinema, and what he learned about living in seclusion.

One overseas phone call, but one phrase was lost to the receiver of the call.