Chen Shengli, 40, is a dapper ex-con with a spine of steel, who used to hang out with some very bad people. But he’s determined to reform. He returns to the old theatre he owns, where he discovers that a kindergarten now ensconced there can’t pay the rent. The local cops suggest he should run it himself. Which he undertakes to do, with the assistance of Sun Xiaomei, a gorgeous, tough-as-nails nurse who moonlights as a dancer in a seedy local ballroom, which is where they first met. Kindergarten seems to soften Shengli (who still harbours a scarily violent streak), and something like a romance with Xiaomei kindles. But those shady former associates have long-held grudges and won’t let Shengli go…
In that cold northern city, the young and reckless Haibo (played by Huang Haibo) and the beautiful and elegant Xiaoqing (played by Tan Zhuo) met on campus. Just like those silly boys who are desperate for love, Hai Bo clumsily but persistently pursues love with the help of his friends. He stood on the roof and made a loud confession, and his friends saw that the Christmas tree invited Xiaoqing to dance. Youth is beautiful but fleeting. When they finally come together, they gradually find that the romance of the past is slowly disappearing, and the cold reality makes each other appreciate the hardships and bitterness of life. Hai Bo recalled the dream wolf and impulse in his youth again and again and unconsciously split into a self who ran rampant in the underworld and dared to think and act, and a self who succumbed to reality and made compromises. Under Xiaoqing's cold gaze, the two Haibo started to fight for the long-awaited good life.
A Westerner finds refuge with a group of women in a church during Japan's rape of Nanking in 1937. Posing as a priest, he attempts to lead the women to safety.
In the fictional Shama Town in Northwest China, legend has it that that robbers buried many hidden treasures among the town. Tang Gaopeng, the town leader, then decides to promote Shama Town as a bandit-themed tourist destination. Tang Gaopeng's plan doesn't go to well with the town attracting nearly zero tourists, but a group of international thieves do show up intent on finding the buried treasures ...
Often cited as China’s first independent feature film, this low-budget drama, filmed largely in the director’s Beijing apartment, depicts the life of a single mother (a topic considered taboo at the time) caring for her mentally challenged son. Shot with a documentary aesthetic that includes interviews with families of mentally challenged persons, the film helped kick-start the Sixth Generation of filmmakers (including Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke) and their ethos of employing documentary realism to depict the true conditions of contemporary China.
