Narrated in Mandarin Chinese, subtitled in English.
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China: Land of God (Shenzhou)
Narrated in Mandarin Chinese, subtitled in English.
Watch on Google Video:
Radical Films - Inside Red China (1957)
The first film by an American in China following the Communist victory in 1949. In 1957, after serving in the US Army at NATO Supreme Headquarters in Paris, Robert Carl Cohen was working for the Doctorate in Social Psychology at the Sorbonne when, defying the US State Department's "travel ban," he traveled across Siberia to film throughout China for NBC-TV. His reports were televised on the "Huntley News" & the "Today Show."
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Watch on Youtube:
PBS - Frontline/World - Hong Kong: Chasing the Virus (2003)
Official WebsiteThe SARS epidemic may be an early test of the ability of medical science to respond to a swiftly spreading, globalized infectious malady. Frontline/World follows one distinguished researcher to Hong Kong, and China, as he scrambles to help his colleagues around the world grapple with SARS.
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PBS - Frontline - The Tank Man (2006)
Official WebsiteThe spring of 1989 saw the largest pro-democracy demonstration in the history of China's communist regime. The following timeline tracks how the protests began in April among university students in Beijing, spread across the nation, and ended on June 4 with a final deadly assault by an estimated force of 300,000 soldiers from People's Liberation Army (PLA). Throughout these weeks, China's top leaders were deeply divided over how to handle the unrest, with one faction advocating peaceful negotiation and another demanding a crackdown. Excerpts from their statements, drawn from The Tiananmen Papers, reveal these internal divisions.
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Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
Official WebsiteTen years in the making, this award-winning feature-length documentary was filmed during nine journeys throughout Tibet, India and Nepal. Cry of the Snow Lion brings audiences to the long-forbidden "rooftop of the world" with an unprecedented richness of imagery... from rarely-seen rituals in remote monasteries, to horse races with Khamba warriors; from brothels and slums in the holy city of Lhasa, to magnificent Himalayan peaks still traveled by nomadic yak caravans. The dark secrets of Tibet's recent past are powerfully chronicled through personal stories and interviews, and a collection of undercover and archival images never before assembled in one film. A definitive exploration of a legendary subject, Cry of the Snow Lion is an epic story of courage and compassion.
CBC - The Blue Buddha: Lost Secrets of Tibetan Medicine
Official WebsiteTwelve hundred years ago the people of Tibet developed a comprehensive medical system. They understood how the mind affects the body. They knew subtle ways of changing the body's chemistry with medicines made from plants and minerals. They blessed their medicines in lengthy rituals. And they encoded this knowledge in a series of elaborate paintings called thangkas.
Blue Buddha: Lost Secrets of Tibetan Medicine traces the odyssey of traditional Tibetan medicine from it's roots in ancient Tibet, to a worldwide interest in it's traditional medical wisdom. We meet several leading physicians in India, as the program introduces us to the basic concepts of this ancient system of healing. We also trace the fate of the 77 thangkas that comprise the Atlas of Tibetan Medicine, the great mnemonic device that encodes the entire system of healing. From the snows of Siberia and the Himalayas to the vital culture of Tibet in exile, in Dharamsala, India, this is a stunning high-definition look at where Tibetan medicine has come from.
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The Yogis of Tibet (2003)
This documentary film follows the lives and practices of Yogis in Tibet, people who have spent their lives in rigorous and secret training in order to gain the ability to exert control over their bodies and minds. Living exceptionally isolated lives, Yogis have been relatively unstudied by outsiders in the past.CBC Archives - Revolution and Evolution in Modern China
Official Website
(streaming audio & video)
"When the sleeping dragon awakes," Napoleon once said of China, "he will shake the world." In the 20th century, multiple upheavals shook the Asian giant. The rule of emperors gave way to civil war and the Communist revolution, closing China to the world. The doors slowly opened in the 1970s with new diplomatic ties and economic reforms. The crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 barely checked China's growth, and today the world's most populous nation is on its way to superpower status. CBC Archives presents China as CBC journalists have seen it over the decades.
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(streaming audio & video)
"When the sleeping dragon awakes," Napoleon once said of China, "he will shake the world." In the 20th century, multiple upheavals shook the Asian giant. The rule of emperors gave way to civil war and the Communist revolution, closing China to the world. The doors slowly opened in the 1970s with new diplomatic ties and economic reforms. The crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 barely checked China's growth, and today the world's most populous nation is on its way to superpower status. CBC Archives presents China as CBC journalists have seen it over the decades.
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History Channel - Declassified: Tiananmen Square (2005)
It started out as China's answer to Woodstock, but it ended like Kent State. Here, using unseen footage and declassified diplomatic sources, we present a previously shrouded story of the battles and deaths of hundreds of young Chinese students in June 1989 -- martyrs for democracy at Tiananmen Square--and the imprisonment of many others. Watch the birth and death of a movement, and learn how the demonstrators changed China forever.
History Channel - Declassified: Chairman Mao (2006)
Mao was the 20th Century's answer to Napoleon: a brilliant tactician, a political and economic theorist, and a statesman who ruled a billion people for three decades. In death, he has become divine, worshiped as a god in a godless country. Considering who and what he ruled, Mao, with his Little Red Book, might just be the single most powerful human being who ever lived. We mine formerly guarded vaults and archives to reveal untold stories in a relentless search for the truth behind the legend.PBS - Frontline - China in the Red (2003)
Official WebsiteFilmed over the course of three turbulent years, "China in the Red" is a two-hour documentary that tells the stories of 10 Chinese individuals -- factory workers, rural villagers, and a millionaire entrepreneur -- caught up in China's dramatic, ongoing effort to modernize its economy. Through their intimate personal stories, camera work capturing the unique feel of their cities and homes, and with a soundtrack that includes Chinese rock music reflecting the rawness and energy of a nation in great flux, "China in the Red" offers a view of China that is rarely seen in the West.
"People in the West tend to view China as an impenetrable, alien culture, but we have far more in common than most people think," says producer/director Sue Williams in a behind-the-film interview. "We wanted to show this and the huge changes taking place in China by filming ordinary Chinese citizens over a period of years. And almost everyone we asked agreed to open their homes and their lives and share their stories."
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PBS - Rough Cut - China: The New Wave (2007)
Official WebsiteI first heard about China's independent film movement in 2000, when the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis held a special screening of Jia Zhangke's film Platform. I had spent a semester studying in Beijing a few years earlier and was itching to go back to China any way I could. So I bought a ticket and settled into a seat at the back of the theater, hoping to ease my wanderlust with a cinematic journey.
It took a few scenes before my American eyes, accustomed to the fast pace of MTV-style editing, adjusted to the rhythm of Jia's filmmaking. Each take lasted a minute or more, with the camera holding steady while events and conversations unfolded. It felt more like a documentary than a feature film.
But soon I was wrapped up in Jia's story of the Peasant Culture Group from Fenyang, a troupe of musicians and dancers traveling from village to village in the central Chinese province of Shanxi. The film follows the troupe through the 1980s, a decade of great change in China as economic reforms loosened the government's grip on society and allowed capitalistic influences to slowly spread across the country.
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PBS - Frontline/World - China: Silenced (2005)
Official WebsiteFrontline/World reporter Serene Fang visits a remote Chinese province, Xinjiang, to investigate growing tensions between the government and the Muslim people known as the Uighurs. Her clandestine interview with a Uighur man turns into a reporter's nightmare when Chinese authorities arrest Fang and her source, confiscate her videotape, interrogate her for 24 hours, and take the Uighur man away to an unknown fate. In her story, Fang reveals the name of the man in an effort to bring attention to his plight.
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PBS - Frontline/World - Shanghai Nights (2004)
Official WebsiteThe neon lights of modern-day Shanghai are so bright that you can wear sunglasses even in the darkest hour of night: The city, the largest and wealthiest in China, has changed enormously in recent years. Frontline/World reporter Nguyen Qui Duc, a native of Vietnam, is no stranger to the changing face of communism. And he has come to Shanghai because he has heard that young people, especially artists, are no longer accepting the old rules. He wants to see how far they've been able to push the limits.
For a guide, Duc turns to one of China's most celebrated young writers, Mian Mian, who has offered to take him inside her world, the youth underground of Shanghai. Government censors call Mian Mian "a poster child for spiritual pollution," but inside the city's nightclubs, she's a pop diva, queen of the clubs. She's notorious for writing openly about sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- still touchy subjects in China. The government banned her novel, Candy, which only made the "bad girl of Shanghai" more famous and her novel a clandestine best-seller.
Watch Online:PBS - Independent Lens - China Blue (2007)
Official WebsiteThey live crowded together in factory dormitories where water has to be carried upstairs in buckets. Their meals and rent are deducted from their wages, which amount to less than a dollar a day. Most of the jeans they make in the factory are purchased by retailers in the U.S. and other countries. China Blue takes viewers inside a blue jeans factory in southern China, where teenage workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions. Providing perspectives from both the top and bottom levels of the factory’s hierarchy, the film looks at complex issues of globalization from the human level.
The film which was made without permission from the Chinese authorities, offers an alarming report on the economic pressures applied by Western companies and the resulting human consequences, as the real profits are made - and kept - in first-world countries. The unexpected ending makes the connection between the exploited workers and U.S. consumers even clearer.
PBS - Online Newshour - China on the Rise (2005)
Official Website(streaming video)
Newshour correspondent Paul Solman traveled to China in the summer of 2005 to produce a seven-part series on the Asian nation's rise as a global economic contender and America's anxiety that China will overtake the United States as a superpower in the 21st century.
- China's Growing Economy - China's powerful central government has created one of the most freewheeling economies in the world, set to overtake the United States in the next few decades.
- The Chinese Consumer - Paul Solman reports on Chinese consumers, from the mass market shoppers to those seeking high-end goods.
- The Cult of Mao Zedong - Nearly three decades after his death, the "Great Helmsman" is still nearly omnipresent in China.
- Misinvestment in China - This report looks at how misinvestment in China and government control of the banks and businesses affect the economy.
- Interview with Cheng Siwei - Paul Solman interviews Communist official Cheng Siwei, known as the "father of venture capital" in China.
- Piracy Explored - Paul Solman reports on piracy and the lack of safeguards for intellectual property in China.
- Bumps in the Road? - Paul Solman explores whether China can continue to grow at its incredible pace without political reform.
PBS - Wide Angle - The People's Court (2007)
Official WebsitePoised to surpass the United States as the largest economy in the world, yet facing mounting domestic and international pressure for a fair and transparent framework of laws, China is racing to reshape the rules of society. In the past quarter century, the country has opened nearly 400 law schools, trained hundreds of thousands of judges and lawyers, and launched education campaigns to encourage people to bring their grievances to court rather than taking to the streets. But the transformation is incomplete and the judiciary far from independent. Senior judges are appointed by, take orders from, and receive their paychecks from the one-party state. Hundreds of Chinese lawyers have been jailed in recent years while citizens are taking to the streets in record numbers to protest land seizures, corruption, pollution, or unpaid wages. And China executes more prisoners each year than the rest of the world combined.
WIDE ANGLE gained exclusive access to film in Chinese courts - a first for a Western documentary. Profiling itinerant judges, law students, a human rights lawyer, and ordinary citizens, The People's Court examines China in flux, revealing the lengths to which Chinese people must go to obtain justice and raising crucial questions about their emerging system of law.
Download/Watch Online (in 4 parts):
China: A Century of Revolution
Definitive, insightful and unforgettable -- China: A Century Of Revolution is an astonishingly candid view of a once-secret nation. This powerful program takes a remarkable first-hand look at China's tumultuous history, examining its social, political and cultural upheaval through eyewitness accounts, rare archival film footage and insightful commentary.Part One: China in Revolution
China In Revolution begins in 1911 with the fall of the last emperor and continues through 1949, highlighting four decades of civil war, foreign invasion and the ascension of rival leaders Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. Rarely seen photos and film footage - among the earliest ever recorded in China - reveal fascinating details of a long-censored history, Hear the facts and meet the people who experienced modern China's most violent era.
Part Two: The Mao Years
From the beginning of his rule in 1949 to his death in 1976, Mao Zedong and his colleagues attempted to forge a "new China" from a country mired in poverty and devastated by decades of war. Yet the Mao years would bring the new Peopl's Republic of China little stability. Rare interviews with Communist Party members and ordinary citizens involved with history's largest political experiment, reveal the turbulence, famine, violent campaigns and purges which destroyed the lives of more than one hundred million people.
Part Three: Born Under the Red Flag
Born Under The Red Flag begins with Mao's death in 1976, continues with the new leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and concludes with the struggle of China's paradoxical goals of economic prosperity and absolute Communist Party control. In the short span of 15 years, China transformed itself into a never-before-seen hybrid of communism and capitalism. And although it has become the third largest economy in the world, the price has been high. Rare interviews and film footage highlight the Democracy Wall Movement, the establishment of Special Economic Zones and the dramatic student protests in Tiananmen Square.
NTDTV - Digging In - Western Companies Behind China's Internet Firewall (2006)
In April 2004, Shi Tao was attending an internal meeting at work. His upper management verbally informed everyone of a publication just received from the Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was, essentially, a directive on how they should go about reporting the upcoming fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Shi Tao made notes in the meeting and then sent an email - through his Yahoo account - to a friend at a web-magazine called Democracy Newsletter. His intent? He simply wanted to warn overseas democratic movement activists not to go back to China around that time to prevent their arrests.
Seven days later Shi Tao himself was arrested. April 27, 2005, Shi Tao was sentenced to ten years in prison for "illegally leaking state secrets abroad." Unfortunately, this was a typical sentence in a typical case. Like many intellectuals who had been given criminal sentences because of what they said, Shi Tao, 37 years old, may have, more or less been mentally prepared for this outcome. However, little could this journalist have imagined that one of the hands that had thrown him into prison was a company that he had relied on for years in his efforts to create political change - the US headquartered technology company, Yahoo!
So what exactly were the circumstances surrounding his arrest? And just what part do companies like Yahoo play in China's efforts in maintaining a tight control over their dictatorship?
Download (in 2 parts):NTDTV - Zooming In - Organ Harvesting (2006)
We will hear testimonies from individuals who have recently stepped forward to describe the workings of a secret operation in China - organ harvesting. Two informants have stepped forward and revealed that the Sujiatun Extermination Camp has been harvesting internal organs from living Falun Gong practitioners and then disposing their bodies in a crematorium.
Download (in 3 parts):
Download (in 3 parts):
TG-4 - Chongqing: The Largest City in the World
Chongqing, a city of almost 20 million, is expected to grow by another 20 million in the next 10 years. Mr. Wu is the Deputy Mayor of Chongqing. His goal is to house the 30 million inhabitants of his city. Mr. Wu is in charge of developing the world's largest building site, a boom city which absorbs 200,000 migrant workers each year. Chongqing's challenge, like for the rest of China, is to develop every sector simultaneously: real estate, education, research, advertising, fashion, culture, healthcare, new technologies, as well as the struggle against pollution and social inequalities.
Watch on Youtube (in 5 parts):
Watch on Youtube (in 5 parts):
Channel 4 - Unreported World - Chongqing: Invisible City (2007)
Official Website
Little known outside China, Chongqing is the world's fastest growing city. The government is spending billions building its infrastructure. But, as this edition of Unreported World reveals, China's economic boom comes at the expense of tens of millions of workers and dispossessed farmers.
Forty kilometres outside Chongqing, Reporter Ramita Navai and Director Nick Sturdee begin their journey amongst the cranes, new buildings and construction work that stretch for as far as the eye can see. Over the last seven years, the Government has spent a staggering 114 billion pounds on roads, bridges and dams to turn an area two thirds the size of England into a vast transport and manufacturing hub at the centre of the country.
Chongqing is being built on the back of migrant labor. More than fifty per cent of the city's population are migrants and half a million new laborers are drawn to it every year. But, as Unreported World highlights, these migrants are forced to endure years of cramped living conditions with no employment rights at all.
Little known outside China, Chongqing is the world's fastest growing city. The government is spending billions building its infrastructure. But, as this edition of Unreported World reveals, China's economic boom comes at the expense of tens of millions of workers and dispossessed farmers.
Forty kilometres outside Chongqing, Reporter Ramita Navai and Director Nick Sturdee begin their journey amongst the cranes, new buildings and construction work that stretch for as far as the eye can see. Over the last seven years, the Government has spent a staggering 114 billion pounds on roads, bridges and dams to turn an area two thirds the size of England into a vast transport and manufacturing hub at the centre of the country.
Chongqing is being built on the back of migrant labor. More than fifty per cent of the city's population are migrants and half a million new laborers are drawn to it every year. But, as Unreported World highlights, these migrants are forced to endure years of cramped living conditions with no employment rights at all.
PBS/BBC - China from the Inside (2007)
Official WebsiteThis PBS documentary examines some of the major challenges facing contemporary Chinese society.
Episode 1, "Power and the People," focuses on the Communist Party's rule of China. Topics include government opposition to separatism in the heavily Muslim province of Xinjiang; the Party's efforts to create a prosperous society; the governance of Tibet; the National People's Congress, which puts the Party's decisions into action; the election of a village committee; and corruption in the Party.
Episode 2, "Women of the Country," focuses on the difficulties faced by Chinese women, especially in rural areas (where two-thirds of China's population lives). The episode examines birth planning, marriage, women who live in the country while their husbands work in the city, women in Tibet, the hopelessness of many young women in China, the Muslim women of Xinjiang, and the opportunities and hardships for women in cities.
Episode 3, "Shifting Nature," focuses on pollution brought on by rapid industrialization and on massive water diversion projects that involve resettling the populations of entire towns.
Episode 4, "Freedom and Justice," examines the limits on religious and political freedom of the press, AIDS deaths that the government could have prevented, the displacement of poor people by land "development," and the justice system.
CBC - China Rises (2006)
Official WebsiteEpisode 1, "Party Games," looks at the complex story of politics in China as it gets ready for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Three extras ripped -- includes a great 10 min doc on "The Great Wall(s) of China", a short look at the 60s Cultural Revolution from that time, and a contemporary travelogue of China.
Episode 2, "Getting Rich." As China has abandoned communistic collectivism, it has grown faster in the last few years than any nation in history -- but at what cost? Shanghai has more new skyscrapers than any other city in the world, but 75% of China's population still lives a rural life, in relative poverty.
Episode 3, "Food Is Heaven." From the steamy kitchens of Canton to the arid monoscape of the north, food is in some respects the very heart and soul of China. But increasing development, some of the world's worst pollution, and dwindling water supplies are threatening China's ability to feed itself. Extras include a short film on "The Forbidden City" and a slide show of beautiful photographs of modern China.
Episode 4, "City of Dreams." In the streets and neighbourhoods of Shanghai, a new dream of China is being turned into reality. A generation of Chinese now live in a style akin to New York, Berlin or Toronto. But for its poorer residents, Shanghai can be a city of despair.