Jinchuan Duan

This documentary is named after the well known novel (and later propaganda film) of the same title, which offered a telling of an historic event in 1946 in Northeastern China, when the CCP initiated Land Reform as a means of attracting peasants to join-up with the PLA and help seize state power. Decades later, residents who are still alive and can recall those days offer their personal memories of the class struggle that erupted in Yuanbao Village. Meanwhile, in today's Yuanbao, the local cultural bureau is setting up the Museum of Land Reform as a memorial and a space for education.

Interesting Times: The Secret of My Success is a 2002 Chinese documentary film by director Duan Jinchuan about China's contemporary politics of democracy and the realities of the one child policy. The director shows how this policy is being implemented in Fanshen, a rural village in Northeast China. The film is part of the series, called Interesting Times, which shows different aspects of modern life in China. The other films in the series are: The War of Love (dir. Duan Jinhuan and Jiang Yue), Xiao's Long March (dir. Wu Gong AKA Kang Jianning), and This Happy Life (dir. Jiang Yue). The documentary aired on TV in a shortened version with English narration (59 min.), but a longer version (71 min.) screened at some international festivals.

A film by Chinese documentary filmmaker Jinchuan Duan.

A documentary film by Duan Jinchuan.

Documentary film by Duan Jinchuan

Documentary which follows the lives of a group of Tibetan herdsmen living on the Phala Grasslands in the northwest Tibetan plateau. This film follows the decision of a Tibetan nomad living far from any town who has invested money in a truck that doesn’t work.

No.16, Barkhor Street is an old courtyard in the heart of Lhasa and the site of the office of the Barkhor Neighborhood Committee. This masterful cinema verité documentary, the landmark work in the history of independent documentaries about Tibet, provides is a photographic study of rich insight into the basic workings of government in Tibet as it that follows the local Party Secretary, Deputy Director, Director for Women’s Affairs, and Community Policeman, among others, as they implement official policies and manage neighborhood affairs.

The film documents a day in the life of Tiananmen Square in 1994, a mere five years after the crushing of a student-led democracy movement in 1989.

Qingpu is a famous sacred mountain in Tibet, where countless monks have practiced for thousands of years. In 1989, Wen Pulin and Duan Jinchuan followed several monks up the mountain and took video of them. After three years, they revisited the same people and got a little closer to understanding their lives. As an in-depth dialogue with down-to-earth, rural people in Tibet, the film strives to understand Buddhism both as a philosophy, but also as a personal choice of lifestyle, as a transcendence of the chaos of life.

Early documentary short film by director Duan Jinchuan. It is considered by the filmmaker to be lost.

Early short documentary film by Duan Jinchuan. It is considered by the filmmaker to be lost.