Chinese Independent Documentaries: Online Video

Lacking in any formal plot, the film instead is content to capture seemingly mundane moments, customers asking for the train schedule, shots inside public buses, etc. The result, according to Chinese film scholar Berenice Reynaud, is a film that captures the "ennui, backwardness, and dreary atmosphere of a small town, and the impatience, hidden desires and private concerns of its inhabitants."

Mr. Jiang is a Shanghai dandy, living by himself in a house that stood the test of time since the 1930s as a witness to what happened to the city. Now, the house is about to be torn down as part of a redevelopment plan.

In 2003, the Reindeer Ewenki came out of the forest and moved to a new settlement built by the government. Now with hunting also banned, the Reindeer Ewenki find themselves in a dilemma: they can either stay or return to the forest. Reindeer cannot survive in the city, and a small number of the tribe people move back into the mountains again, back into their forest.

This film describes money and life in the eyes of taxi drivers in five representative metropolises in the Greater China Region—Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taibei and Singapore, and in two characteristic small and medium-sized cities—Chengdu and Dieling.

This is a documentary film that raises the alarm to the people. Brave father: Father, Han Peiyin, sent his son, Han Shengli, to college, hoping he can change the family's fortune. However, at graduation, Shengli is facing a gloomy prospect of employment and high pressure of family expectation and heavy debt.

Shadow play has been famous in Chinese rural place for hundreds of years.  Based on the ethnographic approach, this documentary focuses on changes of social and cultural structure after 1949 in rural China, because of which the shadow play is dying out. 

A film about growing up as part of the post-80s Chinese generation. The film reveals a grueling and painful journey of self-discovery filled with shattered dreams, disorientation, turmoil, revolt, helplessness, and cynicism.

Old Guangzhou, once known for its arcades, its old buildings that combine Western and Chinese styles, and its teahouses where one used to laze away the hours, is disappearing with rapid economic development and the advances of information technology, and the delectable flavors of shrimp dumplings and xiaomai are becoming things of the past.

Guan Kouni is 76 years old and she is the only Oroqen shaman still alive and well today. After recovering from an illness, she starts worrying about who will follow in her footsteps and continue to uphold the ancient religious traditions once she is gone. Nowadays young people don’t believe in the gods, and this is the greatest obstacle for Guan Kuoni when it comes to finding a successor.

The disappearance and preservation of Hakka cultural traditions on Hainan 

A group of vagrants in China’s Baoji county gathers on a trash platform near the railway station to celebrate the New Year.

A poor family in rural China struggling to care for a son who is dying of cerebral palsy; includes a short piece on the father's paper-cutting activities entitled "Paper cut."

Study Hard! Move Ahead! Be Patriotic! These slogans are drilled into the minds of Chinese boarding school students as they prepare for their college entrance exams. Since most of these teens come from impoverished rural areas, their tuition is paid for by the blood, sweat and tears of their peasant parents, most of whom never made it past junior high, so the pressure to succeed is stifling. As the battle for success rages on, this intense film provides a harrowing portrait of the new direction of Chinese education, one that aims to mass produce focused, result-oriented over-achievers.

In China, many parents are sacrificing everything to see their children graduate successfully from a university in order to obtain highly-paid jobs. Han Peiyin has sold off all the family’s home valuables and now works in Xi’an to make the money for his son, Shengli, to attend a university. For years, Han, carried a notebook in which he recorded all of his loans - mostly small amounts such as 10 or 20 RMB. Han is convinced that knowledge has the power to change destinies, and expects his son to be successful. 

The 7th Medical Ward, often called the “110 Ward” is a medical facility that holds mentally disabled homeless persons picked up by the Xiamen police. Here they receive treatment free of charge. They have no caregivers, no addresses and no income. They have been completely discarded by society

An illuminating documentary that explores the high-octane underground punk, thrash, metal and hardcore scene in Beijing. Focusing on the communities who live for their music and the reaction of the older generation to an unfamiliar phenomenon, the film follows a group of rockers to a ramshackle area in Beijing where bands share their creativity and cut their chops before hurtling themselves into the wider world with a vengeance.

Beijing Bubbles is a documentary about the punk and rock scene in Beijing, a portrait of five bands in the capital of China. It is also a movie about being different in a country which is the most developing in the world today, in which everybody seems to be obsessed with social advancement and the accumulation of prosperity.

The history of Chinese rock in 20 years, including famous rock singers in China, like Cui Jian, He Yong, Zhang Chu….

Kun 1 Action is a boldly experimental work. In what the filmmaker calls a “quasi-religious tribute” to his childhood crush, Liang Kun, he weaves philosophical musings on revolutionary politics into the mundane fabric of his experiences in film school. Through the frequent appearance of his directorial signatures—uninhibited self-reflexivity, confrontational engagements with his subjects, inventive and irreverent voiceover narration—Kun 1 Action reveals Wu’s eccentricity and the provocative terrain he has carved out for himself in the Chinese documentary scene with his "action cinema" (xingdong dianying) aesthetics.

A short film about a frustrated young man who ends his life in a fishing village, a place that he remembered fondly. Ironically, the village is about to be demolished and replaced with a city.

A 20-year-old young man from the rural areas of Hunan, and his Gesao and little nephew in a course, is the place to take a shack by the corner of the dirty live down that the residents of the surrounding shells cotton for a living.

The story of a performing group of farmers on tour. The boss is Old Liu, who took his two sons, their girlfriends and some young farmers to tour. They want to change their existing conditions and make their fortune in the large cities, but they have always been refused. 

Around Beijing, some one million labourers from the Chinese countryside live in appalling conditions. Taking one family as an example, director Zhang Zhanqing shows the hopes and problems of living on the fringes of prosperity.

The true story of three girls who migrate to the big city to seek their fortunes. The girls take jobs at a night club, beauty salon, and massage parlor rendering their "services" on the side while one of their boyfriends holds forth in their apartment. 

A group of vagrants in China’s Baoji county gathers on a trash platform near the railway station to celebrate the New Year.

Street Life documents the lives of Chinese migrants in Shanghai, one of the world's largest and most vibrant cities, now symbolic of China's economic might. The film centers on Nanjing Road, one of China's oldest commercial streets and today a popular destination for tourists and moneyed Chinese. The street has also become a Mecca for uprooted and homeless Chinese, who make ends by collecting garbage and recyclables. These characters and their stories are the focus of the film.

The 7th Medical Ward, often called the “110 Ward” is a medical facility that holds mentally disabled homeless persons picked up by the Xiamen police. Here they receive treatment free of charge. They have no caregivers, no addresses and no income. They have been completely discarded by society

Born to a poor family in a small village in China, Lan has to leave school and look for a job after his father’s death. The 16-year-old young man goes to Shanghai to pursue his dreams, only to find them shattered by the harsh reality in the cosmopolitan city. He wanders in the darkness, painfully torn between the pursuit of dreams and the constraints of morality, between answering to desires and struggling for survival. ‘He’ gradually becomes ‘she’ with the sex-reassignment surgery.

Not long ago, Beijing’s Daxing District used to be filled with landfills out of which neighboring scavengers eked a living. With the tumor-like spread of skyscrapers and subway stations in Beijing’s recent urban development, the landfills have been filled, and the bright lights of the city shine upon them. Only one wobbly little shack still stands against the winds of change. This film documents one stormy year in the lives of its inhabitants. 

A documentary based on five young people's experiences in Beijing in 1980s. After graducating from their college, they left their officially assigned jobs and came to Beijing to search for thier dreams

Around Beijing, some one million labourers from the Chinese countryside live in appalling conditions. Taking one family as an example, director Zhang Zhanqing shows the hopes and problems of living on the fringes of prosperity.

Spring Festival is coming. In China, it is the time for family reunion and people keep up the tradition of returning home for the New Year celebration, especially the migratory workers who have been away from their hometown all year long struggling for a living in big cities. A cheap train ticket is their first choice. So begins the annual overcrowding of railroad transportation

Director Lixin Fan travelled with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like many of China's rural poor, the Zhangs have left their native village of Huilong in Sichuan province and their newborn daughter to find work in Guangzhou in a garment factory for 16 years and see her only once a year during the Spring Festival.

Shot over six days in 1992, the movie explores the feelings and thoughts of young men and women about their lives as students since the Tiananmen Square protest on June 4, 1989. 

The Moon Palace is a restaurant located in the west of Jiazhou City. Mr. Qiu, the owner and proprietor of Moon Palace, is extremely fond of drinking and is quite the connoisseur. His customers are friends as well as drinking enthusiasts themselves. 

Two young men named Gu Yue (谷岳) and Liu Chang (刘畅) travelled from Houhai of Beijing to Brandenburg Gate of Berlin mainly by hitchhiking, finishing a journy of 16,000 km across 13 countries for the purpose of visiting Gu Yue’s German girlfriend. According to these two young men, who were born in the 1970s, their inspiration came from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.