CIFA (the Chinese Independent Film Archive) has recently helped restore The Crack, a low-budget independent film made on 35mm, which has been screened only four times to a small circle in China since its completion in 2000. This semi-autobiographical film, set during the Cultural Revolution, provides the missing link between the roots-seeking and scar literature and art of the 1980s and the perfo...

On December 15, 2008, a citizens' investigation began with the goal of seeking an explanation for the casualties of the Sichuan earthquake that happened on May 12, 2008. The investigation covered 14 counties and 74 townships within the disaster zone, and studied the conditions of 153 schools that were affected by the earthquake. By gathering and confirming comprehensive details about the students...

As a sequel to Ai Weiwei’s film "Disturbing the Peace," the film "So Sorry" (named after the artist’s 2009 exhibition in Munich, Germany) shows the beginnings of the tension between Ai Weiwei and the Chinese Government. In "So Sorry," you see the investigation led by Ai Weiwei studio to identify the students who died during the Sichuan earthquake as a result of corruption and poor building constru...

Non-narrative series of shots: in factory, sex workers etc.

The ubiquitous loudspeakers, television propaganda and slogans in towns and villages are constantly instilling the will of the powers that be and the alienation of thinking in the minds of the people. Men, women, and children of all ages are trapped in a huge brainwasher-like airbag promoted by propagandists, and they roll forward and backward.

Li Wake travelled to Beijing in June 1998 with a desperate post-modernist passion and had models dressed in his "shroud fashion" walk through the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Wangfujing and other venues, and virtually performed a "living dead" shroud fashion show in front of a crowd of people. The footage was then mixed with clips from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and edited in...