The Vanishing Song

High on the Tibetan Plateau, the old way of life is on the decline. We follow the nomads of Ritoma as they navigate the collision of tradition and modernity.

This diaristic documentary follows Sokly Ny, an under-privileged and under-represented immigrant minority student, through his final year of high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ny, a.k.a. Don Bonus, provides commentary on his life, recounting the difficulty and triumph of his everyday experience. The drama builds to a crescendo as the day of his graduation ceremonies corresponds with the criminal trial of his brother. 

Hardly could anybody tell that 87 years old Lou has had Alzheimer’s disease. Over the years, Lou has forgotten almost everyone but firmly believes that 88 years old Feng is the one she is going to spend the rest of her life with.

Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

Five young Hong Kongers, equipped with digital camcorders, help filmmaker Ruby Yang create a portrait of a city in transition.

Young Sung Neng Yee, who is brought as part of a wealthy Chinese family. She is eager to become part of Mao Tze Tung's "new society", but soon becomes disenchanted by the economic misery the changes bring to her family. Before long, the authorities become aware of Neng Yee's feelings and she is taken to a labour camp, overseen by the sadistic Colonel Cheng.

A year in the life of children in the Province of Anhui in China, who have lost their parents to AIDS. Traditional obligations to family and village collide with terror of the disease.

Using government documents, archive footage and direct interviews with activists and former FBI/CIA officers, All Power to the People documents the history of race relations and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1960s and 70s. Covering the history of slavery, civil-rights activists, political assassinations and exploring the methods used to divide and destroy key figures of movements by government forces, the film then contrasts into Reagan-Era events, privacy threats from new technologies and the failure of the “War on Drugs”, forming a comprehensive view of the goals, aspirations and ultimate demise of the Civil Rights Movement…

Villagers in a remote district of central China take on a chemical company that is poisoning their water and air. For five years they fight to transform their environment and as they do, they find themselves transformed as well.

Will Keane, a Manhattan restaurateur, is content with his playboy lifestyle until he meets Charlotte Fielding, a free-spirited young woman. Together the pair pursue a passionate affair that forces them both to reevaluate what they want out of life, even as fate threatens to steal away their future.

Until 2015, the government proposed land resumption without consultation to build a subsidized housing unit. In Hong Kong, where land is extremely expensive, it is not difficult to become a target for eradication if it is regarded as "no economic value". Cloth vendors roar for their common beliefs, between struggle and life, between politicians and bureaucrats, in Sham Shui Po "shacks", in the wind and rain, on sunny days, this is their living space.

Acting is not always a life of glamour and excitement, and is often filled with sweat and tears. Devoted actor Gus is crushed when he fails to cry on cue. As self-doubt sinks in, he hears that his father has suffered a sunstroke. He decides to help at his father’s company and cast his dream aside. When his friend Mo offers him a role in a new film, he declines but not before Mo shoves him the script. When he starts to read the script at night, he is amazed to find that the plot is identical to the events around him. In the realm of a dream-like script or a script-like dream, Gus ponders his life as an actor and finds his own direction.

A Hong Kong documentary directed by Oscar winner Ruby Yang, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group of under-privileged middle school students as they undergo six months of vigorous training to produce a musical on stage.

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

How are ordinary people adapting to China's transformation - market economies, globalization, small families? Using compact digital video gear filmmakers Ruby Yang and Lambert Yam track four Chinese families as they step into the 21st century. Opting for the personal over the abstract, China 21 introduces lively and appealing people who would be lost in a bigger picture.