Short List of Films and Documentaries:  We will make our selection from the following list plus possibly some newly released films if we can obtain them in time.

 

CHINA DOCUMENTARIES

 

CALL #       DS779.32 .G37 1997  v. 1  & v. 2

The Gate of Heavenly Peace [videorecording]

NOTE    Discusses Tiananmen Square incident, June 4, 1989. Includes still photographs, eyewitness accounts, interviews, and newsreels.

 

 

CALL #       DS779.32 .S85 1998.

Sunrise over Tiananmen Square [videorecording]

NOTE         A blend of autobiography, cultural and political history by artist and filmmaker Shui-Bo Wang, who grew up in China during the upheavals of the 60's, 70's and 80's.

 

 CALL #       DS779.26 .R63 1999

Road to freedom [videorecording] : democracy in China.

NOTE  Lecture by Chai Ling. Chai Ling, who was chief commander of the Tienanmen Square Committee in 1989, speaks about inititives to democratize China.

 

 

 

CALL #       HQ777.9 .D68 1995.

Shaking the world. --"A Money Programme Special."

NOTE         Examines the potentials of China's newly emerged economic power and looks at the problems associated with China's economic reform.

 

CALL #       HC427.92 .C45 1998.

China [videorecording]

NOTE         This program seeks to understand the effects of economic reform on Chinese society.

 

CALL #       PM9021.N8 N8 1999.

TITLE        Nu-Shu [videorecording] : a hidden language of women in China

NOTE         Nu-Shu is a secret written language used only by women in Hunan Province, China. Passed down from generation to generation, it was "discovered" in the 1960s and nearly destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and finally was given serious study in the late 1980s.

 

 

CHINA FEATURE FILMS

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 W655458.

Women's story [videorecording] = Nu ren de gu shi /

NOTE         Longing for a change in their lives, three country women leave home and go to the big city. They experience failure and success, finally starting new lives. When they eventually return to their village they find while life there has not changed, they have.

 

 

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 R43883.

Red sorghum [videorecording] : Hong gao liang

NOTE         Based on Mo Yan's "Red sorghum" and "Sorghum wine".

NOTE         Beginning as a lusty romantic comedy about a nervous young bride's arrival and ensuing seduction at a remote winery, and ending as a heroic drama of partisan resistance during the Japanese occupation.

 

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 B5784.

ISBN/ISSN    3832900839.

The blue kite [videorecording] = Lan feng zheng

NOTE         Banned in China, this film is the most acclaimed and controversial to come out of the new Chinese cinema.  Told from the perspective of a young boy, Tietou, it traces the fate of a Beijing family and their neighbors through the political and social upheavals in 1950's and 60's China.

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 C4748.

China, my sorrow [videorecording] = Chine, ma douleur, Niu-peng

NOTE         A 13 year-old boy plays a love song to a girl and is arrested by Mao's cultural police and branded as a propagator of  obscene records. Sent off to a remote mountain re-education work camp, he befriends another teenage enemy of the people and an elderly, sage Buddhist monk. His new friends help him preserve his familial traditions and his unique sense of self.

 

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 Y455.

ISBN/ISSN    1879482800 :

Yellow earth [videorecording] = Huang tu di

NOTE         The year is 1939. The life of a young peasant girl in Northern Shaanxi province is changed forever by a Communist soldier sent out to collect folk songs for the use of revolutionary armies.

 

 

 

JAPAN DOCUMENTARIES

 

TITLE        Doubles [videorecording] : Japan and America's intercultural children

NOTE         After World War II, despite orders forbidding it, fraternization between U.S. soldiers and Japanese women resulted in a number of children born in and out of wedlock. This film focuses on interviews with American soldiers, Japanese women, and their biracial children thirty years after the Allies occupied Japan.  Includes documentary footage of the allied occupation between 1945 and 1952.

 

JAPAN FEATURE FILMS

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 B325.

The Ballad of Narayama [videorecording] = Narayamabushi ko

NOTE         A century ago in a remote Japanese mountain village, the elderly were customarily abandoned on a mountain top to meet the gods of Narayama. This is the story of a loving son in a impoverished region who must follow the cruel custom of abandoning his mother to the mountain gods as she turns 70.   Based on one of Japan's most moving legends, Orin, a matriarch whose time approaches, must make plans to assure the survival of her family.

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 M3226.

Maborosi [videorecording]

NOTE         Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother many years before, a young mother struggles to come to terms with the sudden loss of her husband.

 

CALL #       PN1997.A23 T6549.

Tokyo monogatari [videorecording] / Shochiku eiga ; kantoku Ozu Yasujiro = Tokyo story

NOTE         An elderly couple visit their grown-up children in Tokyo,  but find themselves a burden to the family. They return home, and the mother dies, leaving the father to face the future alone.