Shanghai Rumba

After Women’s Story, Peng returns to the most straightforward representation of women’s issues in Shanghai Women, a film about three rural women. As the first work in Peng’s Shanghai Trilogy, Shanghai Women describes the problem that women encounter trying to secure urban (residential) space through the story of women from three generations.

Women’s Story was the first work to garner international acclaim for Peng Xiaolian. It is about three women living in China’s northern countryside and straightforwardly raises the issue of gender inequality hidden in a communist society.

The ostensible subject of this film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village’s persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. The film’s larger subject, however, is the disappearance of Japan’s traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.

2000 film

The protagonists are mainly Huirong, Zhaobai, and Jikan, who have studied business management in the USA and have returned to their hometown, Shanghai. Huirong and Zhaobai are engaged, and although three of them are close friends, problems arise when they find out that their opinions clash on the matter of what the objective for building a new China should be and what direction it should take.

The film follows the rise and fall of a family in Shanghai. Once wealthy and capitalist, the family unraveled during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Their home, once a French concession mansion, was converted into a multi-family dwelling.

A young actress, successful in her small hometown, seeks fame and fortune in the big city. She goes to live with a friend, who is currently making a film about Zhao Dan. They live in a building about to be destroyed. Can their differing visions of art and love come to pass, or will heartbreak put an end to their relationship, as it does to the old Shanghai?

The Red Race recounts the stories of several Chinese children-gymnasts who (are forced to) dream of becoming famous athletes. The 6-year-olds at the Lu Wan District Youth Athletic School in Shanghai, trained relentlessly in the hopes they will one day be gold medalists, provide the subjects for a sometimes harsh, yet intimate portrait.

Documentary on Professor Situ Zhaodun of the Beijing Film Academy

Storm Under the Sun is a documentary about one of the "political storms" by Mao Zedong that fell upon the intellectuals of China in the 50's. Centered around the Hu Feng Case, the documentary traces the synergy that generated such an event, Mao's personal involvement in every step, and various victims' reaction to and realizations following the humiliation and accusations.

Children’s film from Peng Xiaolian.

A ballet director is killed by his own dog, the police believes that it is a murder.