The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Few of us have stopped to consider the lives of the workers who manufacture the objects that make up our daily lives. We use these objects without knowing anything about the Foxconn plants in which they are made, or even where these factories are located, let alone who works in them. One such worker was the young Chinese poet Xu Lizhi, who, at the age of 24, jumped out of a building not far from where he worked at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen.
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30 Jan 2018
At the turn of the 19th and 20th century Finnish philologist G. J. Ramstedt travelled around Mongolia and Central-Asia. In this documentary Ramstedt’s memoirs are heard in the modern day setting, where tradition is replaced with hunger for money, and deserts give way to cities.
25 Feb 2025
A journey among the forgotten: U.S. citizens experiencing homelessness, forced to live in extreme marginalization. Giving voice to these wounded souls is the unmistakable sound of Tom Waits.
21 Oct 2015
Confucius was one of history's most influential thinkers. He was a sage, philosopher and teacher who, with Socrates and Buddha, lived at an extraordinary time in the evolution of human civilization. This stunningly beautiful drama-documentary explores the life and times of Confucius, while reflecting on his influence on modern justice and morality. Today, Confucius is a window into China's rise.
02 Jan 2013
A coming-of-age story about a filmmaker and his family as they struggle to adapt to both a changing world and a traditional one. Can the filmmaker's family accept that he is more interested choosing to document a famine that happened 50 years ago than choosing a wife? Will the family continue to farm their land and grow rice as they always have or sell it to developers? How can they adapt to life in modern China when the country itself is in the midst of identity crisis? The film explores these topics and more in a refreshingly original style that bridges the gap between documentary and narrative feature while providing a delightfully intimate portal into family life in modern China.
10 Oct 2015
A Thousand Years of Joy charts poet/activist Robert Bly's journey from Midwestern farm boy to global troubadour, bestselling author of Iron John and leader of the men's movement.
27 Dec 2021
Dante Alighieri was a poet, philosopher and politician in 1300 Florence. The visionary author of "Inferno", the first book of the "Divine Comedy", he was both a direct witness and a narrator of his times and his poem is a remarkable geopolitical chronicle of a tumultuous period of the Middle Ages from 1300 to 1320, a time when Kings, Popes, rulers and warlords played a deadly chess game for the control of Europe. In this high end docudrama, some of the world's finest scholars will help provide historical context to the unfolding of events, making them accessible to a wide audience, and giving us a privileged viewpoint over one of the most eventful and funding chapters of European history.
28 Feb 2015
Chai Jing's documentary about the massive smog problem in China. Chai Jing started making the documentary when her as yet unborn daughter developed a tumour in the womb, which had to be removed very soon after her birth. Chai blames air pollution for the tumour. The film, which combines footage of a lecture with interviews and factory visits, has been compared with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in both its style and likely impact. The film openly criticises state-owned energy companies, steel producers and coal factories, as well as showing the inability of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to act against the big polluters.
14 Jun 2021
Tomáš Etzler worked for seven years as a foreign correspondent in China. He came to know a country that was developing at an admirably fast pace, was swayed by its energy, and for a moment believed that modernity could bring about political change as well. Before long, it dawned on him that many people would continue to be severely punished, and the regime would still keep most of the nation in a state of indecision and ignorance. Without neglecting that face of China today, Etzler chose to tell a story of hope in his personal documentary. Using the example of an orphanage for disabled children, he shows that the answer to collectivist brutality and ruthlessness can be mutual assistance, tolerance and empathy.
08 May 2020
Language of Mules is a poignant exploration of the haunting legacy of the Holocaust through the eyes and words of poet and author John Guzlowski. Born to Polish parents who survived the unimaginable horrors of Nazi concentration camps, Guzlowski's poems give voice to the stories passed down from his parents, stories of suffering, resilience, and survival. The film interweaves interviews with Guzlowski in his home in Virginia, with vivid poetic depictions of his parents' harrowing experiences: the brutality of the German soldiers, the daily horrors of camp life, physical torture, and enslavement in conditions that dehumanized those who endured them. With profound sensitivity and depth, Language of Mules becomes not just a retelling of history, but a meditation on the enduring impact of war on the human psyche.
01 Jan 1946
A fascinating compilation of scenes showing diversity and disparity in 1940s China. The ancient Forbidden City and Great Wall are followed by Shanghai’s metropolitan skyline; primitive farming methods are juxtaposed with mechanised factories; children in rags are contrasted with models wearing the latest fashions; Nationalist commanders and Communist leaders vie for support.
01 Jan 2010
French documentary from 2013. Mao Zedong and his fourth wife Jiang Qing were married for 37 years, from 1939 until Mao's death in 1976. After his death, she was tried and imprisoned where, at the age of 77, she committed suicide. All the official portraits of her were removed after her death and she became a scapegoat of the things for which Mao was ultimately responsible.
11 Jan 1976
This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse:Semantics is the study of meaning in language, and Bernstein's third lecture, "musical semantics", accordingly, is Bernstein's first attempt to explain meaning in music. Although Bernstein defines musical semantics as "meaning, both musical and extramusical" this lecture focuses exclusively on the "musical" version of meaning.
30 Sep 2010
A short documentary that captures the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, The Yellow Bank takes you on a contemplative boat ride across the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China. Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki, who lived and worked in Shanghai nine years earlier, uses the eclipse as a catalyst to explore the way weather, light, and sound affect the urban architectural environment during this extremely rare phenomenon.
01 Jan 1970
A cinema verite study of the world of the blue-collar worker and the economic and psychological bind in which he is caught.
26 Feb 2008
Actor Val Kilmer narrates this powerful film exploring the methamphetamine epidemic that's ravaged blue-collar America. Putting a human face on the problem, filmmaker Justin Hunt reveals the damage being done by this rural drug of choice, as well as the steps being taken by communities across the nation to wipe out the scourge. From Wyoming to New Mexico, Montana and Oregon, American Meth paints a picture of both devastation and hope.
31 Dec 2024
Reclaiming what was once stolen from him, a man journeys back to the place of his childhood nearly 80 years after his world came crashing down.
21 Jan 2021
Young Masters is an original series commissioned by NOWNESS China focusing on traditional Chinese cultures, and how they continue to be defined by a new generation of the country's youth. High above the clouds in a village in Mao County in Sichuan Prefecture, a post-90’s generation of young cultural guardians work to uphold the values and traditions of ancient Qiang culture. These cultural guardians, known as a ‘Shibi’, remain especially vital for a culture whose knowledge and language exist merely through practice and in sound, and without script. The role of a Shibi involves that of a priest, alongside folk rap, singing, and dance performances, amongst others. As a result, Qiang people have endowed them with a sacred status, believing that they possess a psychic power.
27 Dec 2017
Expedition China invites you on location in some of the world's most intense, hard-to-reach environments with the filmmakers of Disneynature's big-screen adventure Born in China.
28 Feb 2002
SHANGHAI GHETTO recalls the strange-but-true story of thousands of European Jews who were shut out of country after country while trying to escape Nazi persecution in the late 1930s. Left without options or entrance visas, a beacon of hope materialized for them on the other side of the world, and in the unlikeliest of places, Japanese-controlled Shanghai. Fleeing for their lives, these Jewish refugees journeyed to form a settlement in the exotic city, penniless and unprepared for their new life in the Far East. At the turn of the new millennium, filmmakers Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amire Mann boldly snuck into China with two survivors and a digital camera to shoot at the site of the original Shanghai Ghetto, unchanged since WWII.
28 Jan 2022
In the run-up, everything actually spoke against the Chinese capital as the host of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games: Beijing is neither a winter sports region nor are human rights respected in China. The IOC obviously didn't care. Topics such as sustainability, freedom of expression and climate protection were also pushed aside. It's about power and profit instead of the Olympic idea and its values. But more and more athletes are speaking up and calling for a reform of the Olympic Games. A pioneer in this matter is ARD Olympic expert Felix Neureuther, a former alpine skier, who sucked up the Olympic spirit with his mother's milk, because his parents are alpine ski legend Rosi Mittermaier, double gold medalist at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, and father Christian, a ski racer, who took part three times at the Olympics. Based on interviews with athletes, experts, IOC officials and persecuted Uyghurs, Felix gets a glimpse behind the scenes of the Olympic system.