Films with: Zhao, Tao

An Zhu Ding A touch of sin /

Inspired by four shocking and true events, the film focuses on four characters who are driven to violent ends. An angry miner, enraged by widespread corruption, decides to take justice into his own hands. A rootless migrant discovers the infinite possibilities of owning a firearm. A young receptionist is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. A young factory worker goes from one discouraging job to the next, only to face increasingly degrading circumstances.

DVD 10409

Ash is purest white

Qiao is in love with Bin, a local mobster. During a fight between rival gangs, she fires a gun to protect him. Qiao gets five years in prison for this act of loyalty. Upon her release, she goes looking for Bin to pick up where they left off.

DVD 13119

Er shi si cheng ji

A documentary film on the state-owned Factory 420, also called the Chengdu Engine Group, which was founded in 1958 to produce aviation engines. Now abandoned, the factory is sold for millions to real estate developers to be transformed into a complex of luxury apartment blocks called 24 City. The film revolves around eight dramatic interviews that present three generations with ties to the factory: the first factory workers, more recent employees, and the children of former laborers. Woven into this oral history are three fictional monologues delivered by actors.

DVD 10191

Mountains may depart

At once an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic that leaps from the recent past to the present to the speculative near-future, Jia's new film is an intensely moving study of how China's economic boom and the culture of materialism it has spawned has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.

DVD 11725

Muyong Wu Yong /

The first section of the film presents images of workers in Guangdong factories as they cut, sew, and package garments. It also gives glimpses of workers breaking for lunch and visiting the infirmary for treatment. In the second section, it follows the success of a fashion house called Exception, run by Ma Ke. Her new clothing line Wu Yong (Inutile) consists of handmade coats and pants that are stiff and heavy, almost armor-like, and that flaunt their ties to work and nature. Ending this part with Ma's Paris show, the film moves back to China and the industrial wasteland of Fengyang, Shanxi. There it concentrates on home-based spinning and sewing. Neighborhood tailors patch up people's garments while the locals descend into the coalmines. A former tailor tells us that he gave up his work because large-scale clothes production rendered him useless.

DVD 10675

Unknown pleasures

Follows two 19-year-olds, Bin Bin and Xiao Ji, as they wander the streets and hang out in pool halls, dance clubs and karaoke bars looking for excitement. Sparks fly when Xiao Ji meets a beautiful dancer and Bin Bin begins a romantic liaison with a young student. After watching American crime movies, the temptation for easy money becomes too much and in a final attempt to break free, the two embark on a half-baked plan to rob a bank.

DVD 3046

World Shi jie /

Looks at the loves, friendships and desperate dreams of the twenty-somethings from China's remote provinces who come to live and work in World Park, a sprawling Disney-like entertainment park in a Beijing suburb featuring lavish shows and scaled-down replicas of world landmarks. The film centers on a young woman dancer, Tao (Zhao Tao), whose entire universe seems to begin and end at the complex. Along with her boyfriend, security guard Taisheng (Chen Taishen), Tao yearns for a better life but can barely articulate much less envision what a life beyond this peculiarly conceived simulacrum might look like.

DVD 9117