Johnson County Community College LibGuides - Chinese Film and Music

Feature Films

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 B1985
Set in the early 1970s during the later stages of China's Cultural Revolution, the film follows two city-bred teenage best friends who are sent to a backward mountainous region for Maoist re-education. There they discover the redeeming power of literature and love.
Beijing Bicycle
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 B4223
Just as Guai, a bicycle messenger, makes his final payment for the silver mountain bike loaned to him by his company, he finds it stolen. After endless searching, Guai discovers his bicycle is now in the hands of Jian who bought the bicycle with stolen money. Although Guai and Jian finally work out a deal, they find themselves involved in a series of unforgettable events.
Blue Kite
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 B6581 , [VHS] 791.43 C9524
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.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 C9524 , [VHS] 791.821
Set in 19th-century China, two master warriors are faced with their greatest challenge when the treasured Green Destiny sword is stolen. A young aristocratic woman prepares for an arranged marriage, but soon reveals her superior fighting talents and her romantic past. As each warrior battles for justice, they come face-to-face with their worst enemy, and the enduring power of love.
Curse of the Golden Flower
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 C9774
During the Tang Dynasty an Emperor is concerned with a conspiracy involving his Empress and several of his sons.
Eat Drink Man Woman
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 E14
A retired widowed master chef is worried about the future of his three unmarried daughters who are skeptical about marriage. Yet he himself surprises them with his secret love affair with a young woman many years his junior.
Electric Shadows
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 E384
When a delivery man crashes into a girl, she asks him to feed the pets in her apartment, while she is in the hospital. What he finds there is a diary that exposes the young girl for who she really is.
Farewell my Concubine
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 F2222 , [VHS] 791.43 F2222
In a story that spans more than 50 years in the lives of two men at the Peking Opera, who have been friends since childhood face the woman who comes between them. The film is also an absorbing drama of the period in Chinese history from the warlord era through the Cultural Revolution.
Flowers of Shanghai
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 F6443
Set in late nineteenth-century Shanghai and takes place in an elegant brothel. With its own highly ritualized codes of behavior, the lives of the "Flower girls" depend on their ability to win, and then keep, the affections of their wealthy callers.
For the Children
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 F6925
In the parched desert landscape of northwest China, peasant Meili Zhang founds a school, determined to give her students a chance at a better life. When Yu Xia, a cultured volunteer teacher from Beijing arrives to help her out, these two women from strikingly different backgrounds discover that they share the same goal: to help a generation of disadvantaged children overcome a legacy of poverty and lost opportunities with the most precious and valuable gift there is, education
Raise the Red Lantern
Call Number: [VHS] 791.43 R1591
Set in 1920's China, 19-year-old Songlian has become Fourth Wife to the wealthy Chen. Yet she must share her husband with three existing wives. Each must wait until dusk for the arrival of a red lantern, which signifies with whom the master will sleep tonight. When Songlian discovers that the other wives cheat to win the red lantern, she decides to join the fight for Chen's attention.
Red Sorghum
Call Number: [VHS] 791.43 R3129
Beginning as a lusty romantic comedy about a nervous young bride's arrival and ensuing seduction at a remote and winery, and ending as a heroic drama of partisan resistance during the Japanese occupation.
Shaolin: Wheel of Life
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 S5287
This tells the inspiring legend of how the Monks' loyalty to their Emperor was betrayed, how they were almost completely destroyed and how five young Monks survived to continue the "Wheel of life". The Monks display some of the most unique Kung-fu ever seen.
Still Life
Call Number: DVD] 791.43 S8574
After a town is completely destroyed by a flood, the residents must try to rebuild their homes, the town, and their lives.
The Emperor and the Assassin
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 E551 , [VHS] 791.43 E551
Ying Zheng, the King of Qin, has one driving ambition: to unify China's seven kingdoms into one magnificent empire.
The King of Masks Pien Lien
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 K536 , [VHS] 791.43 K536
Desperate for his art to survive, the King of Masks finds an apprentice in a destitute child purchased on the black market. When the child reveals an unexpected secret, their relationship is suddenly tested by both the old man's stubborn sense of tradition and the established customs of China.
The Road Home
Call Number: [VHS] 791.43 R6282
As a son helps his mother arrange for the burial of his father in the traditional Chinese custom of his mother's village, the beautiful and touching story of his parent's courtship unfolds. His father was from the city and came to his mother's village to become the schoolmaster. In the days of arranged marriages, the son discovers that his parents' marriage was the first marriage based on love.
To Live
Call Number: [VHS] 791.43 T6275
In a smoky gambling den in 1940's China, a drunken young man runs through his family's fortune, losing their ancestral home and all their possessions. This staggering loss proves to be their salvation, and the first step in an odyssey of survival that will take them through war and revolution love and loss, tragedy ... and triumph.
Together
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 T6453
When a shy small-town boy heads to Beijing for violin lessons, he discovers a new world filled with first loves, lasting friendships ... and a secret that will change his life forever.
When Ruo Ma was Seventeen
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 W56755
Ruo ma, a girl from Xiani tribe, lives with her grandma. Fantasizing about the outside world, Ruo ma wants to visit the city but has no money. She meets Ming, an amateur photographer, who helps her earn money by asking Ruo ma to take photos with tourists with her tribe dresses on. Eventually Ruo ma makes enough money, but Ming has to leave.