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Asian Studies


Asian Studies



DAI'S GARDEN

Dai's Garden is a short documentary directed, shot, produced and edited by Ruohan Xu. A Chinese slow-food movement pioneer, Dai Jianjun, is dedicated to bringing back vanishing traditional Chinese culture in an era of rapid urbanization and industrialization. He runs an expensive farm-to-table restaurant in the city of Hangzhou, and uses all his profits to build a green utopia in a remote village 200 miles away, where migrant workers can stay home.

DVD / 2017 / 34 minutes

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MARLINA THE MURDERER IN FOUR ACTS

By Mouly Surya

In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina, a young widow, is robbed and raped for her cattle. To defend herself, she kills several men of the gang, including decapitating the gang leader. Seeking justice, she goes on a journey for empowerment and redemption. But the road is long, especially when the ghost of her headless victim begins to haunt her.


DVD (Color, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 93 minutes

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SLOW ANGELS

In China, if you can't walk on your own, you can't go to school. It is not a policy, but a mentality of a society. Slow Angels profiles three families with children with cerebral palsy from different background in Shenzhen, as they struggle to cope with the disability and fight being ostracized by society.

DVD / 2017 / 33 minutes

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TOKYO IDOLS

By Kyoko Miyake

"IDOLS" has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. TOKYO IDOLS - an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet popularity.

This ever growing phenom is told through Rio, a bona fide "Tokyo Idol" who takes us on her journey toward fame. Now meet her "brothers": a group of adult middle aged male super fans (ages 35-50) who devote their lives to following her-in the virtual world and in real life. Once considered to be on the fringes of society, the "brothers" who gave up salaried jobs to pursue an interest in female idol culture have since blown up and have now become mainstream via the internet, illuminating the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.

With her provocative look into the Japanese pop music industry and its focus on traditional beauty ideals, filmmaker Kyoko Miyake confronts the nature of gender power dynamics at work. As the female idols become younger and younger, Miyake offers a critique on the veil of internet fame and the new terms of engagement that are now playing out IRL around the globe.


DVD (English, Japanese, Color) / 2017 / 88 minutes

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WE THE WORKERS

By Wen Hai, Zeng Jinyan

Shot over a six-year period (2009-2015) in the industrial heartland of south China, a major hub in the global supply chain, WE THE WORKERS follows labor activists as they find common ground with workers, helping them negotiate with local officials and factory owners over wages and working conditions. Threats, attacks, detention and boredom become part of their daily lives as they struggle to strengthen worker solidarity in the face of threats and pressures from the police and their employers. In the process, we see in their words and actions the emergence of a nascent working class consciousness and labor movement in China.


DVD (English, Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2017 / 174 minutes

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BITTER MONEY

By Wang Bing

BITTER MONEY documents China's rapid economic and social transformation by following the rural workers who leave their Yunnan hometown to move to the city of Huzhou, one of the busiest cities of eastern China (with the highest number of part-time workers), to labor in its textile factories. But what they find are few opportunities and poor living conditions that push people, even couples, into violent and oppressive relations. The camera follows Xiao Min, Ling Ling, and Lao Yeh closely, capturing the emotions of their daily hard work and disappointments upon receiving their wages. The film deals directly with the effects of 21st-century capitalism, as filmmaker Wang Bing acts as witness to the lives of people forced to adapt to a new economic landscape.


DVD (Mandarin, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 152 minutes

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DEMOCRACY ROAD

By Turid Rogne

After more than 20 years in exile in Norway, the Burmese journalists of DVB are returning to their homeland to establish their independent news station there. Editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing and reporter Than Win Htut have dreamt about this for years, but their struggle for freedom and democracy is not over yet.

DEMOCRACY ROAD is a road movie documentary following the journalists of DVB in Myanmar in a critical phase of the establishment of the newborn democracy. With their existence as an independent news channel and Myanmar's future as a democracy at stake, senior reporter Than Win Htut and his colleagues hit the road with their groundbreaking show "Our Nation, Our Land." Their goal is to investigate the living conditions of ordinary people off the beaten path in Myanmar, but the machinery of the old dictatorship is still running. Simultaneously, editor-in-chief, Aye Chan Naing, has to negotiate with DVB's former enemies in the infamous Ministry of Information. The road towards democracy has only just begun...

Director Turid Rogne has followed the journalists of DVB for more than 10 years. With both boldness and sensitivity, she tells the story of life in a former dictatorship through the people who try to influence history.


DVD (Color) / 2016 / 60 minutes

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PROFESSOR, THE: TAI CHI'S JOURNEY WEST

Director: Barry Strugatz

The Professor: Tai Chi's Journey West is a feature documentary about Tai Chi and one of its greatest masters, Cheng Man-Ching, a man who brought Tai Chi and Chinese culture to the West during the swinging, turbulent 60's. Though Cheng is an important transformational figure, his teachings have been overlooked. This documentary film tells the story of his remarkable life and features Tai Chi as a martial art and a spiritual practice.


DVD / 2016 / 67 minutes

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TA'ANG

By Wang Bing

Director Wang Bing brings his careful eye to the mountainous border-region of northeastern Myanmar in Ta'ang, a powerful and revealing observational documentary that follows members of the Ta'ang minority as they flee to China to escape an ongoing and escalating civil war. In a pair of refugee camps, those displaced by the war attempt to create reasonably safe living conditions, while others go deeper into China where they may find work in sugarcane fields or try their luck in urban areas. Meanwhile, those still in Myanmar must journey across the mountains, belongings and livestock in tow, as the sounds of gunfire and artillery echo around them.

Ta'ang captures the constant insecurity, instability and disorientation that come with life as a refugee, the complexities of the choices the Ta'ang face, and the emotional toll they take.


DVD (Color, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 147 minutes

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FORGETTING VIETNAM

By Trinh T. Minh-ha, Jean-Paul Bourdier

One of the myths surrounding the creation of Vietnam involves a fight between two dragons whose intertwined bodies fell into the South China Sea and formed Vietnam's curving S-shaped coastline. Influential feminist theorist and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha's lyrical film essay commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of the war draws inspiration from ancient legend and from water as a force evoked in every aspect of Vietnamese culture. Minh-ha's classic Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) used no original footage shot in the country; in Forgetting Vietnam images of contemporary life unfold as a dialogue between land and water-the elements that form the term "country." Fragments of text and song evoke the echoes and traces of a trauma of international proportions. The encounter between the ancient as related to the solid earth, and the new as related to the liquid changes in a time of rapid globalization, creates a third space of historical and cultural re-memory-what local inhabitants, immigrants and veterans remember of yesterday's stories to comment on today's events.


DVD / 2015 / 90 minutes

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IT'S ME - REVEALING THE HOMOSEXUAL COMMUNITY

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide on 26th June 2015, marking a new milestone for homosexuality rights. Whereas in China, the ways homosexuals are treated may have improved after the removal of homosexuality from the list of psychiatric disorders in 2001, their lives continue to be filled with numerous difficulties. By gathering stories from 9 different cities and interviewing over a dozen homosexuals as well as their family members, the programme thoroughly reveals the truest sides of the homosexual community in China.

Episode 1 Why Me
It has been a constant debate whether homosexuality is born or made, and most homosexuals tend to feel the same frustration at first - why am I different? Yue Jianbo regards a childhood experience as the cause of his homosexuality, while Tao Tao realized his interest in the same sex only after he was married and has children. In this episode, they share what they have been through from the fear and denial of discovery to self-recognition.

Episode 2 Surround Me
"Coming out of the closet" is a figure of speech describing homosexuals' self-disclosure of their sexual orientation. In China, many homosexuals are still hesitated to come out. Li Peng chose to lie to his family because he is afraid of letting them down. Xiao Tao, on the other hand, told his mother the truth out of no choice and was relieved by her acceptance. Let Xiao Tao's mother tell you how she coped with the news.

Episode 3 Marry Me
Many traditional families in China think marriage is essential and parental involvement is needed to expedite the process. Under such pressure, Zhang Xiaoyu and Yue Jianbo who compromised and married the opposite sex both have their marriages ended miserably. Lily used "marriage of convenience" to satisfy her parents' request. On the contrary, Xiao Tao and his boyfriend, Xiao Xin have the blessings from their families to get married in the United States.

Episode 4 Save Me
How can the voices of the homosexuals be heard when ignorance and discrimination are all around? The ones featured in this episode have found their own ways to fight for their own rights. Liu Shi is an AIDS patient, but it did not stop him from flying all the way to Cleveland to join the Gay Games 2014. Yan Zi won the lawsuit against the clinic that performed "gay conversion therapy" on him, and the verdict marked another important step in proving homosexuality is not mental illness.


DVD / 2015 / 120 minutes

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JALANAN

A rare look at the vibrant subculture of Jakarta's street buskers, JALANAN offers fascinating and occasionally heartbreaking insight into Indonesian urban life. Director-producer-cinematographer Daniel Ziv captures the beauty and risks of street life as charismatic buskers Titi, Ho and Boni struggle to make a living. He follows them as they play beautiful music on buses, in markets and on the streets. Personal struggles such as imprisonment, domestic violence, floods and family illness round out the lives of the musicians. We are also invited to the rural mountains to visit Titi's family, which proves a poignant counterpart to the rush of the city. The film gives voice and exposure to the lives of Jakarta's street buskers, and allows us to follow them out of the bus and into their homes. Ziv's fearless exploration of this subculture is beautifully crafted, interweaving the three stories over several years as they find love, seek education and work to improve their lives. JALANAN is a captivating and ultimately unforgettable documentation of oral culture and marginalized urban lives.

DVD / 2015 / 107 minutes

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JOURNEY TO NORTH KOREA 2015, THE

North Korea celebrated the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party with a military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square On 10th October 2015. It appeared to be the largest military parade the country has ever thrown. International media were also invited to cover the celebration. In the programme, the crew arrives at Pyongyang to witness this country-wide celebration with extravagant military parade and performances.

Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, the only North Korean university that is jointly operated with parties outside the country uses English as its medium of instruction. Only the most outstanding students will be admitted into this university and all its faculty members are foreign educators who came to teach voluntarily without compensation. In a visit to this modern university with a heavy political atmosphere, our crew takes the opportunity to explore its teaching and learning environment as well as its influence to the future of the country.

To learn more about the food crisis that has been troubling North Korea for two decades, our crew initiates a tour to Jangchon cooperative farm to take a look at the latest developments of the country's agriculture. Meanwhile, the crew also goes to Mansugyo Meat and Fish Shop to get a better picture of the food rationing system of North Korea as well as the unreasonable price of the non-rationed food.

Just like its leader Kim Jong-un who has demonstrated improved level of confidence and motivation in his speech at the military parade, North Korea itself is indeed also showing numerous changes and improvements in these years. The crew's journey to North Korea this year captures not only the latest differences seen in the country compared to the past, but also the little known facts behind all its portrayed magnificence and unity.


DVD / 2015 / 80 minutes

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NUCLEAR NATION II

Director: Atsushi Funahashi

Nuclear Nation II follows a new group of people exiled from Futaba, the region occupied by the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since the 1960s, Futaba had been promised prosperity with tax breaks and major subsidies to make up for the presence of the plant... until the townspeople lost their homeland on March 11, 2011.

The film portrays their lives as refugees in an abandoned high school, and in temporary housing. The political fallout from the nuclear disaster results in conflict between residents, and the mayor is forced to resign. Many decide to move back to Fukushima prefecture, just outside the evacuation zone. The town finds itself divided by the arbitrariness of evacuation, radiation levels, and compensation guidelines from the plant's operator. And then, the Japanese government announces a plan to turn Futaba into an official, literal wasteland.

Is it possible to truly compensate the townspeople for what they have lost? Through their agonies and frustrations, the film questions the real cost of nuclear energy and unbridled capitalism. But perhaps more important, this film gives a fully textured, all-access account of governmental bureaucracy's attempt and ultimate incapacity to adequately deal with displaced peoples. This is a problem we continue to face: Hurricane Katrina uprooted over a million people in the Gulf Coast region, more than a million migrants and refugees entered Europe in 2015, and over 11 million unauthorized immigrants seek home in the United States. There are over 60 million refugees worldwide.

Teachers and students looking to understand the depth of challenges facing the fair and efficient administration of human rights in times of crisis will be pleased to find Nuclear Nation II.


DVD (Japanese with English subtitles) / 2015 / 114 minutes

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OKINAWA: THE AFTERBURN

Director: John Junkerman

Okinawa: The Afterburn is the first documentary to provide a comprehensive look at the battle and the ensuing 70-year occupation of Okinawa by the United States military.

On April 1, 1945, American troops landed on Okinawa, beginning a battle that lasted 12 weeks and claimed the lives of some 240,000 people. The film depicts the Battle through the eyes of Japanese and American soldiers who fought each other on the same battlefields, along with Okinawa civilians who were swept up in the fighting, with carefully selected footage from the U.S. National Archives.

The film also conveys the complex postwar fate of Okinawa, an island that has had to live side-by-side with an extensive array of US bases, and the related crimes, accidents, and pollution they have caused, while coexisting, on a personal level, with the occupying soldiers.

In Okinawa, the legacy of the war translates into a deeply rooted aversion to military force. This has been expressed in recent years by the island-wide rejection of the plan to build a new US base at Henoko, a source of controversy to this day. Okinawa: The Afterburn explores the roots of this resistance and Okinawa's vision for the future.

THE FILM IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR PARTS:

PART 1: The Battle of Okinawa depicts the ferocious battle through the testimony of Japanese and American soldiers who faced off in the conflict.

PART 2: Occupation reveals how military occupation policies were implemented.

PART 3: The Afterburn confronts the history of sexual violence that has accompanied the American military presence on Okinawa.

PART 4: To the Future explores the Japanese government's decision to build a new base in Henoko.


DVD (English and Japanese with English subtitles) / 2015 / 121 minutes

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PEOPLE ARE THE SKY

By Dai Sil Kim-Gibson

Director Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (MOTHERLAND CUBA KOREA USA) is the first Korean American filmmaker to be given official permission by the North Korean government to film inside its borders. In PEOPLE ARE THE SKY, Kim-Gibson's eighth and most personal film, the filmmaker makes a pilgrimage to her place of birth in North Korea for the first time in nearly 70 years, to explore if it is still home.

Kim-Gibson seamlessly weaves her own personal story as a native born North Korean, with the fractious history of the North/South division and pinpoints the roots of North Korean's hatred of the United States, giving Americans a much better understanding of the conflict. A mix of interviews epic images and graceful musings, PEOPLE ARE THE SKY offers some of the best political and social history of the relations between North and South Korea, and also a contemplative exploration of the meaning of home. The result is unprecedented, at times startling, for hers is an up close look of the hurts and desires, beauty and contradiction, pride and aspirations of the long held demonized nation.


DVD (Color) / 2015 / 94 minutes

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CHINA: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

UCSD Chinese scholar Karl Gerth relays his personal and professional perspectives of China in a deliberate attempt to bring us a more nuanced and balanced picture of how the country has arrived at its present state and what the future might hold.

DVD / 2014 / 63 minutes

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CHINESE MAYOR, THE

Directed by Zhou Hao

Once the thriving capital of Imperial China, the city of Datong now lies in near ruins. Not only is it the most polluted city in the country, it is also crippled by decrepit infrastructure and even shakier economic prospects. But Mayor Geng Tanbo plans to change all that, announcing a bold, new plan to return Datong to its former glory, the cultural haven it was some 1,600 years ago. Such declarations, however, come at a devastatingly high cost. Thousands of homes are to be bulldozed, and a half-million of its residents (30 percent of Datong's total population) will be relocated under his watch. Whether he succeeds depends entirely on his ability to calm swarms of furious workers and an increasingly perturbed ruling elite. The Chinese Mayor captures, with remarkable access, a man and, by extension, a country leaping frantically into an increasingly unstable future.


DVD / 2014 / 86 minutes

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DIE BEFORE BLOSSOM

By Ariani Djalal

Almost 70 years after independence and 10 years after the installation of the first democratically elected president, the educational system in Indonesia is increasingly being influenced by Islamic values. This observational documentary follows two girls and their families during a crucial period in their school careers: their last year at public elementary school in the city of Jogyakarta in central Java.

Kiki and Dila are modern city girls from a middle-class background: they like to listen to pop music, are very interested in their appearance and giggle about girl stuff. At school, all the children wear uniforms, everyone prays together, the national anthem is sung and the girls learn how to behave now that they are approaching puberty. Although Islam isn't a state religion, its influence on the once secular school system is growing. The educational system is underpinned by three moral principles: piety, patriotism and discipline.

The strictness of the school regime doesn't seem so bad-for example, Kiki is able to talk her way out of studying the Koran. But once the final exams start to loom, things suddenly get very serious, both for the girls and for their parents. A lot is riding on their exam results, for the popular schools in the city only take those children who get the highest scores.


DVD (Color) / 2014 / 89 minutes

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FADING OF THE IRON CURTAIN - REVEALING THE RASON SPECIAL CITY OF NORTH KOREA

In the extreme northeast of North Korea, there is a rarely mentioned city called Rason. With its advantageous geographical location near the borders of China and Russia, Rason Special City was among the first to become North Korea's special economic zone in 1991. Domestic economic reforms and foreign investment projects are in full swing in this special area.

Aquatic products processing activity contributed much to the domestic economic development of Rason Special City. Workers of Suchobong Aquatic Products Company worked extremely hard to process the aquatic products to be ready for export in return for an annual foreign earning of USD 1 million for North Korea.

Rason Special City welcomes foreign investment. Among the foreign investors, Russia had leased a pier on Rajin Port for 49 years, while China had constructed a highway connecting Wonjeong Customs and Rajin Port. China also sent experts and modern equipment to Rason Special City to teach the local farmers how to improve farming methods and increase yields.

Since Kim Jong-un became the leader of North Korea, he had been trying to show a new and modern image of the country to the world. Though the diplomatic relations are still tense, Rason Special City is conducting economic reforms at its own pace. Following the entertaining and fashionable music performed by Moranbong Band, an all-female westernised band set up by Kim Jong-un, the programme reveals the current situation in this experimenting economic zone.


DVD / 2014 / 60 minutes

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INCREDIBLE INDIA

Following the rapid development of India in recent years, it is predicted to be the third largest economy in the world by 2024. Meanwhile in this particular country, the extreme contrast between the poor and rich is distinctively shown from the side-by-side existence of slums and modern cosmopolitan buildings. In the programme, host Lu Chen visits Mumbai, the most significant microcosm of India's development to discover the boundless energy of this mysterious ancient land.

Being the first country in Asia to own a train, railway remains the most important mean of transportation in India today. The history of rail transport has also played an important role in shaping the Indian cultures. However, with the population density continues to surpass the carrying capacity, the terrifying scene of train surfing is still very common here. Let Lu Chen show you some of its truest facts through a train ride around Mumbai.

Despite the fact that Mumbai is showing the charms of a vibrant metropolis, half of its citizens are actually residing in slums. Among the 2000 slums that spread all over the city, Dharavi, Asia's largest slum is definitely the one that most known in the world. Apart from serving as a shelter for a million residents there, Dharavi is also a hub of small-scale industries initiated by the poor. Inside its seemingly disorganized exteriors, there is in fact a well arranged environment for the poor to work for their lives. Lu Chen walks through the streets and lanes of Dharavi to learn more about this slum and its inseparable connection with the urbanization of Mumbai.

What's more, Lu Chen visits the sites of two iconic traditional industries in Mumbai, Dabbawala and open air laundromat before she drops by some residences to get a sense of the living condition of the locals. Here you will discover the energetic sides of this incredible nation.


DVD / 2014 / 30 minutes

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SONGS FROM THE NORTH

Director: Soon-Mi Yoo

Songs From the North is an essay film which offers an unique look at the enigma of North Korea, a country typically seen through the distorted lens of jingoistic propaganda and derisive satire. Interweaving footage from director Soon-Mi Yoo's three visits to North Korea together with songs, spectacle, popular cinema and archival footage, Songs From the North tries to understand the psychology and popular imagery of the North Korean people. To look closely and objectively at North Korea, a country that challenges our most fundamental assumptions about the human condition, is ultimately to question the meaning of freedom, love and patriotism.


DVD (Region 1, Korean, Color) / 2014 / 72 minutes

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STORM MAKERS, THE

Director: Guillaume Suon

Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians work abroad, and over a third have been sold as slaves. Most are young women, held prisoner and forced to work in horrific conditions, sometimes as prostitutes. Featuring brutally candid testimony, The Storm Makers is a chilling expose of Cambodia's human trafficking underworld and an eye-opening look at the complex cycle of poverty, despair and greed that fuels this modern slave trade.

At the age of 16, Aya was sold to work as a maid in Malaysia. She was exploited, beaten and eventually ran away, only to be captured and raped. When she returns to Cambodia with an infant son, just as poor as when she left, her mother greets her not with joy, but with anger that her daughter has come back with yet another mouth to feed instead of money. "I should have died over there," says Aya in a singsong, childlike voice that masks the horrors she endured.

Pou Houy, 52, is a successful trafficker who runs a recruitment agency in Phnom Penh and claims to have sold more than 500 girls. Shockingly outspoken and expressing no remorse, he sees himself as a smart businessman and good Christian.

Pou Houy's enterprise relies on local recruiters who bring him candidates from their rural communities. One of these is Ming Dy, who sold her own daughter and continues to supply Houy with new recruits from her village. In one wrenching scene, Ming Dy's husband cannot bring himself to speak to his daughter when she calls from a new job abroad, where she earns a dollar a day. "I told my wife not to sell young people from the village," he says. "Buddha condemns those who sell people like animals."

As Amnesty International, the United Nations, other NGOs, and governments argue over the best way to protect vulnerable migrants, The Storm Makers shows the real consequences for individuals, their families and communities.


DVD (Khmer with English Subtitles) / 2014 / 66 minutes

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ECOPOLIS CHINA

When one billion rural Chinese move to cities, our planet will change irreversibly. Finnish professor Eero Paloheimo and Chinese business magnate Zhang Yue are going to save the world by reinventing the city. Their utopias are very different: Zhang plans to build the tallest and most ecological building on Earth, an Eco-city in the shape of a skyscraper, built at world record speed. Paloheimo has designed a unique clean-tech test laboratory city, and struggles to get it built in a flourishing valley outside Beijing. Is the future of urban mankind in the cherry valleys of China or high up in the sky?

DVD / 2013 / 56 minutes

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SURVIVING THE TSUNAMI - MY ATOMIC AUNT

By Kyoko Miyake

Film director Kyoko Miyake remembered Namie, a fishing village ravaged by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, as her childhood paradise. Revisiting her family's hometown after 10 years abroad, Miayke's multilayered documentary examines the disaster's profound personal, social and environmental impact.

While Namie's younger generations have permanently relocated elsewhere, Miyake's Aunt Kuniko, like other older residents, has clung to dreams of eventually returning to her home. Over the course of a year, Miyake follows this warm, indomitable businesswoman as she recalls happy family memories and strives to adapt to life outside the contamination zone. In the process, Kuniko starts questioning her unconditional trust in Fukushima's plant operators and pro-nuclear past in a community that once hoped to house a nuclear power station.

A timely reminder of Fukushima's continuing meltdown, this insightful, often funny film offers fresh perspectives on Japanese national identity and today's most press


DVD (English, Japanese, With English subtitles) / 2013 / 52 minutes

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WITHOUT SHEPHERDS

Directed by Cary McClelland, Imran Babur (Co-Director)

Six bold Pakistanis from very different walks of life attempt to build a new future while struggling with their country's current crisis.

Six bold people navigate the dangerous waters of Pakistan's current crisis to discover a new tomorrow: a cricket star starts a progressive political party, a female journalist goes behind Taliban lines, an ex-mujahid seeks redemption, a trucker crosses dangerous territory to feed his family, a supermodel pushes feminism through fashion, and a subversive Sufi rocker uses music to heal.

Filmed by a team of Americans and Pakistanis over two years, WITHOUT SHEPHERDS cuts through alarmist media depictions of the country to celebrate the bravery of its people.


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 145 minutes

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NANKING: THE 1937 MASSACRE

This award-winning film recounts the 1937 Nanking Massacre committed by the Japanese army in the former capital city of China. In the winter of 1937, the Japanese army occupied Nanking, where they killed more 200,000 people and raped tens of thousands of Chinese women. In order to protect Chinese civilians, a small group of European and American expatriates, including Western missionaries, professors, and businessmen, banded together, risking their own lives to form the Nanking Safety Zone and ultimately saving 250,000 Chinese individuals.

DVD / 2012 / 90 minutes

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RED WEDDING: WOMEN UNDER THE KHMER ROUGE

By Lida Chan and Guillaume Suon

The Killing Fields in Cambodia became known to the world but little is known about the struggles of the women left behind. From 1975-79, Pol Pot's campaign to increase the population forced at least 250,000 young Cambodian women to marry Khmer Rouge soldiers they had never met before. Sochan Pen was one of them. At 16, she was beaten and raped by her husband before managing to escape, though deeply scarred by her experience. After 30 years of silence, Sochan is ready to file a complaint with the international tribunal that will try former Khmer leaders. With quiet dignity, she starts demanding answers from those who carried out the regime's orders.

To tell a story little known outside Cambodia, Cambodian Lida Chan and French-Cambodian Guillaume Suon include Khmer Rouge era footage underscoring war's traumatic legacy for Sochan's generation of women. Awarded two prizes at Amsterdam's prestigious International Documentary Film Festival, RED WEDDING demonstrates the liberating power of speech and memory in the quest for justice.


DVD (Cambodian, Color) / 2012 / 58 minutes

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TOKYO WAKA: A CITY POEM

Directed by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson

A poem about a city, its people, and 20,000 crows.

Tokyo is a digital metropolis and wellspring of spectacular pop culture, its commercial crossroads carpeted with people day and night. Above them, watching from perches on buildings and power lines, are more than 20,000 crows. As their numbers soared in recent years, Tokyo fought back: trapping them, destroying nests, and securing trash. The crows adapted; they are among the smartest of animals. The 13 million people of Tokyo now live alongside them in a stalemate.

TOKYO WAKA tells this story, and a larger one as well. A Buddhist priest comments on garbage as the remnants of desire; a gardener considers the relentless persistence of nature amidst urban grit; a homeless woman talks about forging community in her tent village deep in the corner of a city park. TOKYO WAKA gives these smart, opportunistic crows their due, but the film is ultimately an episodic and discursive poem about the life and culture of Tokyo, one of the great cities of the world.


DVD (Japanese with English Subtitles) / 2012 / (Grades 7-9, College, Adult) / 63 minutes

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UNDER SNOW (UNTER SCHNEE)

By Ulrike Ottinger

In the Echigo region of northwestern Japan, where heavy snow blankets entire landscapes and villages for more than half the year, a distinctive way of life has evolved. Time follows a different, slower rhythm, and everyday routines, along with religious rituals, wedding traditions, festivals, foods, songs, and games, are adapted to Echigo's austere living conditions and natural beauty. Ulrike Ottinger's latest film leads us into this mythical country, turning her lens on daily and communal life under the snowy mountains. Narrated in English by American literary and media theorist Lawrence A. Rickels, this stunning documentary sequences merge with the tale of students Takeo and Marko, played by Kabuki performers. Their journey through the past and repeated encounters with the present find them wondrously transformed with help from a beautiful vixen fox. Under Snow is clear evidence that Ottinger, whose career spans more than four decades, remains one of world cinema's most original artists.


DVD (Color) / 2011 / 103 minutes

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WHY DEMOCRACY? PLEASE VOTE FOR ME

Directed by Weijun Chen

An experiment in democracy is taking place in Wuhan, the most populous city in central China. For the first time ever, the students in grade three at Evergreen Primary School have been asked to elect a class monitor. Traditionally appointed by the teacher, the class monitor holds a powerful position, helping to control the students, keeping them on task and doling out punishment to those who disobey. The teacher has chosen three candidates: Luo Lei (a boy), the current class monitor; Cheng Cheng (a boy); and Xu Xiaofei (a girl). Each candidate is asked to choose two assistants to help with his or her campaign.

To prove their worthiness, the candidates must perform in three events. First is a talent show, where each candidate plays an instrument or sings a song. Second is a debate, in which the candidates bring up the shortcomings of their opponents as well as their own personal qualifications. And finally, each candidate must deliver a speech, an opportunity to appeal directly to classmates and ask for their votes.

At home, each of the children is coached by his or her parents and pushed to practice and memorize for each stage of the campaign. Although their parents are supportive, the candidates feel the pressure. Tears and the occasional angry outburst reveal the emotional impact. At school, the candidates talk to classmates one-on-one, making promises, planning tactics (including negative ones) and at times expressing doubts about their own candidacies.

For all three children, the campaign takes its toll, especially for the losing candidates and their assistants. Viewers are left to decide if the experiment in democracy has been "successful" and what it might mean for democracy in China. Please Vote for Me challenges those committed to China's democratization to consider the feasibility of, and processes involved in, its implementation.


DVD / 2007 / 52 minutes

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IN BETWEEN DAYS

Director: So Yong Kim

In Between Days intimately portrays the joys and risks of first love and burgeoning adulthood with bracing and undeniable honesty. Aimie (Jiseon Kim) is a teenager recently transplanted from her native South Korea to a snowbound North American city. Disconnected from her single mother and bored at school, she struggles to find her way in a strange land of new faces, only to encounter a strange age of new feelings. Aimies sole meaningful connection is to her best and only friend Tran (Taegu Andy Kang), a Korean boy a few steps ahead of her on the path to assimilation. But as Aimies feelings for Tran grow in complexity and depth, her sole source of comfort and stability begins to cause her unease. On the threshold of maturity, Aimie struggles to find a place outside herself where past and future connect, and a place within herself where love and friendship don't cancel each other out.


DVD (Region 1, English and Korea, Color, With English Subtitles) / 2006 / 82 minutes

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MADE IN CHINA

Director: John Helde

At a time when the world's eyes are focused on China, Made in China uncovers a rare glimpse of America's connection to Chinese culture. This critically-acclaimed documentary follows the filmmaker on an international journey to uncover his white American father's remarkable childhood in pre-Mao China. Through stunning home movies, photographs and interviews, Made in China reveals an untold story of Americans whose cultural vision shaped their lives. Ultimately, though, Made in China is the story of a sons search to understand his father and a poignant exploration of the meaning of home.


DVD / 2006 / 70 minutes

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JAPAN: THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE - JAPANESE SOCIETY

How social issues affect daily life in Japan.

DVD / 1989 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

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JAPAN: THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE - THE TASTE OF JAPAN

This program about Japanese food and drink explores the bounty of the sea and mountains in Japan as a source for their nutrition.

DVD / 1989 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 30 minutes

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OYSTER FACTORY

Director: Kazuhiro Soda

"Oyster Factory" (Kaki Kouba) is a feature length documentary that observes and depicts the rich and complex world of small oyster factories including its fishermen and workers. The film closely follows their daily lives, which seem uneventful on the surface, but are facing some gradual, inevitable changes because of the depopulation of their town and globalization. The small remote town of Ushimado, Okayama, by the Seto Inland Sea, is the backdrop of this documentary.

Watanabe, who works for the Hirano Oyster Factory here, used to own an oyster factory in Minami Sanriku, Miyagi. However, since he was hit severely by the tsunami and the nuclear accident in 2011, he moved to Ushimado with his wife and small children to take over the business from Hirano who was thinking of closing the factory because he had no successor.

In Ushimado, the shortage of labor is a serious problem because its population is rapidly declining. Traditionally, oyster shucking has been a job of local men and women, but beginning a few years ago, some of the factories started using Chinese workers. The wave of globalization is already reaching this small remote town.

Hirano Oyster Factory had never employed any foreign workers before, but Watanabe finally decided to bring in two workers from China. He bought a prefabricated small house for their residence, investing a considerable amount of money.

Meanwhile, the new Chinese workers Zhao and Zhen finally arrive.

Can they all get along?


DVD / 145 minutes

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