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Films & DVDs on Asia  Text Size Increase Font Size Decrease Font Size
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    A

  • Advertising MissionariesAdvertising Missionaries - Follows the mission of one theater company to bring the consumer revolution to the people of the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

  • Against My Will - The stories of three women who took refuge at the Dastak women's shelter in Pakistan, founded to help women fleeing abusive and murderous families.

  • Agent Orange - A look at the long-term effects, on U.S. soldiers, the Vietnamese people, and the environment of Vietnam, of the spraying of Agent Orange on Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

  • All About My Sisters - Qiong Wang boldly explores her family history and relationships, and how they intersect with the ongoing consequences of China’s one-child policy.

  • Almayer's FollyAlmayer's Folly - Narrative film adaptation by Chantal Akerman of Joseph Conrad's first novel, following a European man living in Southeast Asia and his half-indigenous daughter.

  • Angry Monk - Gendun Choephel, a legendary figure in Tibet, turned from the monastic life he was born to (as the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama), to become a fierce critic of his country's religious conservatism and isolationism.

  • The Apology - In this Peabody Award-winning film, former "Comfort Women" forced to serve Japanese troops during WWII tell their harrowing stories.

  • Around India with a Movie Camera - Sandhya Suri skillfully weaves together archival footage—including hand colored sequences and a new score—to create a story about life across India from 1899 to 1947.

  • B

  • Before the FloodBefore the Flood - The residents of the historic Chinese city of Fengjie clash with officials forcing them to evacuate their homes to make way for the world's largest dam.

  • Before The Flood II - Gong Tan -

    Yan Yu follows BEFORE THE FLOOD with this profile of the residents of Gongtan, a 1700-year-old village soon to be demolished by a hydroelectric dam project.

  • Beijing Besieged by Waste - Wang Jiu-liang travels to more than 500 landfills, documenting Beijing's unholy cycle of consumption.

  • Betelnut - Along a sleepy Hunan riverside, two delinquent boys experience a summer of love and violence.

  • Bird's NestBird's Nest - Superstar architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron must negotiate between two cultures, two architectural traditions and two political systems to build the new National Stadium for the Olympics in Beijing.

  • 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 to work in its textile factories.

  • Bittersweet Joke - Examines the experiences of single mothers in South Korea, where there remains a strong social taboo against single parenthood.

  • The Black and White Milk Cow - A young schoolteacher unknowingly enters a tangled web of politics.

  • Blue IslandBlue Island - This creative documentary shows real-life characters recreating protest movements from Hong Kong's modern history.

  • Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan - The first film about the Kyrgyz tradition of bride kidnapping takes viewers inside families, to talk with kidnapped brides who have managed to escape as well as those who are making homes with their new husbands.

  • C

  • The Caste Struggle - A controversial affirmative action policy in India has brought about unprecedented social and political change.

  • Chain of Love - A film about the Philippines' second largest export product - maternal love - and how the international trade in love and care affects the women involved, their families, and families in the West.

  • China ConcertoChina Concerto - An observational essay about public spectacles in contemporary China.

  • D

  • Dead Souls - Dead Souls documents the testimony of survivors of the hard-labor camp in the Gobi Desert in Gansu, China.

  • A Decent Factory - Can multinationals make an ethical profit? This film finds out as it follows Nokia's new "ethical management consultant" on a trip to a supplier factory in China.

  • Digital Underground in the People's Republic - Six documentary shorts chronicle the changing state of China's independent, and underground, film scene.

  • DisorderDisorder - Footage from a dozen amateur videographers becomes a symphony of urban social dysfunction in China.

  • Division of Hearts - Ordinary people from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh recount their tumultuous experiences after the 1947 British subdivision of colonial India.

  • Dong - The great filmmaker Jia Zhangke travels with acclaimed painter Liu Xiaodong to Thailand where they meet workers in the throes of social turmoil.

  • E

  • The East Wind State Farm - Condemned "Rightists" sentenced "thought reform" share first-person accounts of life in a notorious Chinese labor camp.

  • Education and NationalismEducation and Nationalism - Documents the Japanese government’s re-writing of textbooks and education to support their political point of view.

  • Enter the Clowns - Straight, gay and in-between Beijingers unleash a whirlwind of transsexual mayhem.

  • Er Dong - A rebellious teenager endures the harsh realities of rural life in northern China, until an uncovered secret from his past changes his life forever.

  • F

  • Fangshan Church - The inner workings of a Christian community in rural China, whose ways of life and worship are threatened by the world around them.

  • Far from VietnamFar from Vietnam - The landmark collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais in protest of the Vietnam war.

  • Floating - Yang is a 30-year-old itinerant singer with a complicated love life, illegally busking in China's big cities, trying to evade the authorities. Which he does, for a while...

  • Fortune Teller - The life of a countryside fortune teller provides a candid and deeply revelatory look at people living on the fringes of Chinese society.

  • Fujian Blue - Two interweaving stories of youth crime and family crisis shed light on illegal emigration and human trafficking in China's Fujian province.

  • G

  • Gai Shanxi and Her SistersGai Shanxi and Her Sisters - The story of one woman's brutal ordeal as a "comfort woman" for the Japanese Army during World War II.

  • Ghost Town - A remote village in southwest China is haunted by traces of its cultural past while its residents piece together their existence.

  • Girls Always Happy - A feature film which confronts contemporary Chinese life with a brand new perspective, as it portrays a fraught single-mother, daughter relationship in Beijing.

  • Golden Slumbers - An inventively directed history of the lost Cambodian cinema.

  • Gringo TrailsGringo Trails - A global survey of the impacts on cultures, economies, and the environment of the most powerful globalizing force of our time: tourism.

  • I

  • In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Malaysia - Imamura tries to locate unreturned Japanese soldiers in Malaysia.

  • In Search of the Unreturned Soldiers in Thailand - Shohei Imamura continues searching for unreturned Japanese soldiers.

  • In the Intense Now - A meditation on 1968 political uprisings in France, Czechoslovakia, China, and Brazil.

  • J

  • JamiliaJamilia - The film, set in Kyrgyzstan, is a search for Jamilia, the title character in the novella by Chinghiz Aitmatov about a young woman who rebels against the rules of Kyrgyz society.

  • Japan's Peace Constitution - Explores the origins of Japan's Constitution in the ashes of war, and the significance of its famous peace clause, Article 9, and the debates surrounding it, in the 21st century.

  • Journey to the West - Six countries in 10 days! A group of Chinese tourists visits Europe at whirlwind speed.

  • K

  • Karamay - In Karamay, filmmaker Xu Xin helps a community break the silence nearly two decades after a horrible fire killed nearly 300 schoolchildren.

  • Khmer Rouge, A Simple Matter of JusticeKhmer Rouge, A Simple Matter of Justice - A UN-appointed court tracks down those responsible for the crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge.

  • Kings of the Wind & Electric Queens - A colorful, sensory experience of the Sonepur Fair in India.

  • The Knowledge of Healing - The first feature documentary dealing extensively with Tibetan medicine.

  • Kochuu - A visually stunning film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in Japanese tradition, and their relationships to modernist Scandinavian design. With two Pritzker Prize winners, Tadao Ando and Sverre Fehn.

  • L

  • Late SummerLate Summer - LATE SUMMER captures a centuries-old Beijing theatre in its incarnation as a modern-day transient space.

  • Level Five - In Chris Marker's futuristic reverie, game-developer Laura creates a video game based on the WWII Battle of Okinawa.

  • Little Moth - When an impoverished country couple adopts a crippled young girl and puts her to work begging on city streets, a battle soon ensues over her fate.

  • Lost Course - Examines an unprecedented experiment in local democracy in the southern Chinese village of Wukan.

  • M

  • Madam Phung's Last JourneyMadam Phung's Last Journey - Madam Phung and her transgender singers travel around Vietnam, sparking fascination and hostility from the local people.

  • Man in Black - WANG Xilin, 86, is one of China’s most important modern classical composers. In this film by Wang Bing, he revisits some of the horrifying events that still live on in his memory.

  • A Man Vanishes - Shohei Imamura's investigation into the disappearance becomes an investigation into the nature of fiction and reality.

  • Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts - In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina, a young widow, is robbed and raped for her cattle. Seeking justice, she goes on a journey for empowerment and redemption. 

  • Meishi StreetMeishi Street - Ordinary citizens take a stand against the planned destruction of their homes to make way forthe 2008 Beijing Olympics.

  • Mothers - A gripping cinema verite documentary that shows how China's one-child policy plays out in the daily lives of women in one Chinese village.

  • Mrs. B., a North Korean Woman - Attempting to escape North Korea, Mrs. B. is sold by smugglers to a Chinese farmer. She becomes a smuggler herself and struggles to reunite with her sons, but the secret service gets involved…

  • My Father's House - The story of an underground church founded by Nigerian missionaries offers a rare glimpse inside an immigrant African community in China.

  • Myanmar DiariesMyanmar Diaries -

    A hybrid film about life in Myanmar in the aftermath of its military coup.

  • N

  • Nanjing - Till today the history of the 1937 "Rape of Nanking" is a point of contention between China and Japan. How is it seen in each country, and can a shared memory ever be constructed?

  • A New Old Play -

    One evening in the 1980s, Qiu Fu, a leading clown-role actor in 20th-century Sichuan opera, is killed in an accident and must reluctantly set off for the Ghost City.

  • The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk - The life story of Norodom Sihanouk, by turns Cambodia's King, Prime Minister, Prince, Head of State for Life, Exile, and Prisoner.

  • No. 89 Shimen RoadNo. 89 Shimen Road - It's the late 1980s, while Xiaoli's teachers talk about China's recovery from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, another wave of cultural change is already underway.

  • Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels - Re-traces the birth of the Non-Aligned movement, examining how a global project of political emancipation was constituted by the cinematic image.

  • A Normal Life: Chronicle of a Sumo Wrestler - The dreams and disenchantments of a teenager who is discovering the reality of the traditional world of sumo.

  • Nostalgia - Acclaimed filmmaker Shu Haolun explores the culture and history of his Shanghai neighborhood upon its impending destruction.

  • O

  • The ObserverThe Observer - China is doing everything in its power to silence filmmaker Hu Jie, but he remains on his lonely mission to document the country's true history.

  • Of Shadows - Set in China’s Loess Plateau, Of Shadows captures the liveliness and resilience of a local traveling group of shadow-play artists.

  • Old Dog - A family on the Himalayan plains discovers their dog is worth a fortune, but selling it comes at a terrible price.

  • 1428 - Du Haibin's award-winning documentary of the earthquake that devastated China's Sichuan province in 2008 explores how victims, citizens and government respond to a national tragedy.

  • The Other HalfThe Other Half - A brutally frank portrait of the social and environmental problems plaguing contemporary China.

  • Outcry and Whisper - A political manifesto for the resistance of women in Chinese and Hong Kong society, be they workers, artists, intellectuals or militants.

  • Oxhide - Daily life in an impossibly cramped Beijing apartment takes on epic proportions in this, intimate portrait of a working-class Chinese family.

  • Oxhide II - Breaking new ground, Liu Jiayin's follow-up to her masterful debut OXHIDE turns a simple dinner into a profoundly intimate study of family relationships.

  • P

  • Paths of the SoulPaths of the Soul - An astonishing journey of redemption, faith, and devotion, following a group of villagers who leave their families and homes to make a Buddhist "bowing pilgrimage" to the holy capital of Tibet.

  • Q

  • Queer China, 'Comrade' China - China's most prolific gay filmmaker presents a comprehensive historical account of the queer movement in modern China.

  • The Questioning - "At 12 o'clock at night, policemen came to our room and started a so-called 'room inspection.' As they began to knock at the door, I turned on a small camcorder. This film is the record of what followed."

  • R

  • Raised from Dust - This narrative sheds light on the unexplored lives of the approximately 40 million Christians in China.

  • Red PersimmonsRed Persimmons - A visually elegant paean to the cultivation and harvesting of the sweet red fruit, and the disappearance of a traditional way of life in rural Japan.

  • S

  • San Yuan Li - Armed with video cameras, twelve artists present a highly stylized portrait of SAN YUAN LI, a traditional village besieged by China's urban sprawl.

  • The Search (Xun Zhao Zhi Mei Geng Deng/'Tsol) - A film crew travels through Tibet, searching for actors for their adaptation of a classic Buddhist story.

  • Searching for Lin Zhao's Soul - A landmark documentary on the gifted young poet who spoke out at the height of Chairman Mao's rule... and her subsequent fate.

  • Seeds of HungerSeeds of Hunger - A global investigation into the evolving nature of food production, and the crisis it may portend.

  • Senso Daughters - Investigates the Japanese army's mistreatment of New Guinean women and "comfort girls."

  • Shadow Play - With recently declassified documents and interviews with newly liberated Indonesians, offers a startling new interpretation of events that shaped modern Indonesian history and changed the destiny of Southeast Asia.

  • Six Films by Nikolaus Geyrhalter - Geyrhalter’s films are nothing short of startling works of art.

  • SparkSpark - In this incindiary film, artist Hu Jie shares the testimony of the brave survivors of the political magazine Spark for the first time.

  • Spark & The Observer - Director and artist Hu Jie has been called China’s most important unofficial historian-filmmaker.

  • Stony Paths - Following in his great-grandfather's footsteps, Arnaud undertakes a trek across Anatolia to study the Armenian Genocide.

  • Street Life - The hidden lives of homeless migrants who survive in the shadows of one of Shanghai's most affluent and historic streets.

  • StruggleStruggle - Explores the cruel realities of sweatshop labor and workplace injury in China, and one lawyer's mission to defend worker's rights.

  • Super, Girls! - Follows ten young women on their quest to become instant superstars on China's biggest television show.

  • T

  • Ta'ang - The daily life of Ta'ang refugees, a Burmese ethnic minority who are caught between a civil war and the Chinese border.

  • Tape - Performance artist Li Ning turns his life into art in this epic work of experimental documentary.

  • Though I Am GoneThough I Am Gone - Pioneering artist Hu Jie uncovers the shocking story of girls' school headmistress who was beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revolution.

  • The 3 Rooms of Melancholia - An award-winning, stunningly beautiful revelation of how the Chechen War has psychologically affected children in Russia and in Chechnya.

  • Three Sisters - Three little sisters live alone in a small village in the high mountains of the Yunnan region. The little girls don't go to school, spending their days working in the fields or wandering in the village.

  • Through the Looking Glass - On a high-land Tibetan pasture, a screening event unfolds quietly. Monks, herdsmen and their families gather by the screen to observe life captured through their own lenses.

  • 'Til Madness Do Us Part'Til Madness Do Us Part - The daily lives and isolation of a group of men locked on one floor of a Chinese city's psychiatric institution.

  • Timber Gang (aka Last Lumberjacks) - Yu Guangyi's stunning debut explores a grueling winter amongst loggers in Northeast China, as they work with traditional methods through one last, fateful expedition.

  • Time of the Locust - Critically examines American involvement in Vietnam through a compilation of American, Japanese and Vietnamese combat footage.

  • Torch Troupes - In this vivid portrait of China's musical heritage, Sichuan Opera performers strive to keep a centuries-old artform alive.

  • The Transition PeriodThe Transition Period - With unprecedented access to a Communist Party leader, investigative filmmaker Zhou Hao offers a startlingly candid look inside Chinese politics at the local level.

  • U

  • Umbrella... (San...) - Conceptual and observational but fundamentally a telling look at changes in China today, particularly between rural and urban society.

  • Under the Sun - A fascinating portrait of one North Korean girl and her parents in the year as she prepares to join the Korean Children's Union on Kim Jong-Il's birthday.

  • Using - An unusual relationship develops between a Chinese couple struggling with heroin and a filmmaker chronicling their addiction, in this provocative documenrtary on drug abuse, filmmaking and friendship.

  • W

  • Wandering SoulsWandering Souls - Thirty years after the end of the war against the United States, two Vietnamese veterans continue to search for the remains of their dead comrades.

  • We Are the ... of Communism - The mysterious closing of a Beijing school sends hundreds of migrant children on a desperate struggle to reclaim their right to an education.

  • We the Workers - Follows labor activists as they find common ground with workers and help them negotiate with local officials and factory owners over wages and working conditions.

  • What's for Dinner? - Meat consumption in China is skyrocketing; what does it mean for sustainability, public health, food security, climate change, and animal welfare?

  • When the Bough BreaksWhen the Bough Breaks - On the outskirts of Beijing, two teenage girls struggle to pay for their brother's schooling.

  • Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam - When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history.

  • The Widowed Witch - Shot in 11 days on borrowed equipment, Cai Chengjie’s deadpan fairy tale takes superstition and the furious chimera of women’s power to conjure an intriguing magic.

  • Winter Vacation - Bored teenagers and disillusioned adults rage at each other and the emptiness of life in frost-bitten northern China.

  • Working Women of the WorldWorking Women of the World - Focusing on Levi Strauss & Co., examines the relocation of factories from Western countries to nations like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, where low wages are the rule and employee rights are nonexistent.

  • X

  • Xu Bing: Phoenix - Documents the process of creating Xu Bing's monumental bird sculpture through to its installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).

  • Y

  • Youth (Spring) - Wang Bing's epic profile of Chinese garment workers.

More Films & DVDs on Asia
  • Celso and Cora - A young couple and their two children living in a squatter settlement in the Philippines' capital, Manila.

  • China Yellow, China Blue - Two-part documentary tells the history of China in the 20th Century - entirely with original archives and motion pictures.

  • Dam/Age - Traces renowned, prize winning writer Arundhati Roy's bold and controversial campaign against the Narmada dam project in India.

  • Elsewhere - An epic journey through voices and sounds from elsewhere. Landscapes, outlooks on the world, outlooks on life: Desert, snow, valley, jungle, ice, rainforest. An homage to humanity at the beginning of the 21st Century.

  • From Courtyard House to Block Apartment - Examines the impact of rapid industrialization on traditional housing styles and ways of living in Taiwan.

  • From Opium to Chrysanthemums - The Hmong, in Southeast Asia and America - struggling to preserve essential aspects of their culture, while coping with the enormous changes forced upon them.

  • Gao Rang (Grilled Rice) - The story of the North Vietnamese combat cameramen who filmed the Indo-Chinese & Vietnam Wars, and founded Vietnamese cinema.

  • I For India - A chronicle of immigration, from the Sixties to the present day, as seen through the eyes of one Asian family and their 40 years worth of Super 8mm home movies.

  • Jama Masjid Street Journal - First film by Mira Nair.

  • Karayuki-San, The Making of a Prostitute - Shohei Imamura profiles a former Karayuki-San who offers frank testimony into her horrific sexual slavery experiences.

  • Karen Refugees: Fleeing Burma's Forgotten War - A courageous band of "backpack medics" slips through the jungle, avoiding army checkpoints, to deliver medical supplies and care to their people, the Karen minority of Burma.

  • Kim's Story: The Road from Vietnam - The story of Kim Phuc, the subject of perhaps the most famous photograph of the Vietnam War, is a story of the personal and public healing of wounds from this century's longest, most divisive war.

  • Kumar Talkies - In Kalpi, a small city in northern India, Kumar Talkies is the only movie theater in town. This film juxtaposes life in the village, with the world of rebellion and romance on the silver screen.

  • The La$t Market - Documents the efforts of the multinational corporation Philips to reach five billion potential consumers among the world's poor. Can profitability fight poverty?

  • Litigating Disaster - December 3, 1984. Bhopal, India. The worst chemical disaster of all time. How has Union Carbide manipulated the US and Indian legal systems for 20 years to avoid facing justice?

  • Losers and Winners - Two worlds collide when 400 Chinese workers move to Germany for a year and a half to take apart an entire gigantic modern coke factory—and ship it back to China.

  • Outlaw-Matsu Comes Home - Shohei Imamura follows a former Japanese soldier during his first trip home after having been abandoned by the military in Thailand during World War II.

  • People Power - The first in depth look at non-violent revolutions around the world.

  • The Pirates of Bubuan - Shohei Imamura's look at rival gangs of pirates in the Philippines.

  • Shigeru Ban - A profile of the Japanese architect noted for his use of inexpensive construction materials, such as cardboard tubes, used in prefab housing adopted by the UN High Commission for Refugees.

  • Since the Company Came - In the Solomon Islands extensive logging forces the Haporai people to confront social, cultural and ecological disintegration.

  • Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square - An artist's personal exploration of China's recent history from the Cultural Revolution through the 1980s, told through a rich collage of original artwork, archival and family photographs, and animation.

  • A Visit to Ogawa Productions - Nagisa Oshima - the 'New Wave' Japanese director - visits the filmmaking collective led by Shinsuke Ogawa, to discuss the social and cinematic philosophy of one of Japan's best-known documentary film collectives.

  • The World's Next Supermodel - Asia, Brazil or Western Europe - which will be the world's next economic superstar?

  • The Written Face - Offers an insight into the Japanese Kabuki star Tamasaburo Bando, one of the last defenders of this ancient and disappearing performing tradition.

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