Movies Similar to Veteran's Letters to Home

Before the Flood(2005)

Before the Flood is a study of the final weeks of a dying city, as thousand-year-old Fengjie on the Yangtze River is reduced to rubble and its inhabitants uprooted to make way for the new Three Gorges Dam that will flood the entire valley.

10.0

Springtime in Wushan(2003)

Zhang Ming went back to his hometown Wushan to record the last images before it being changed forever by the upcoming Three Gorges Dam.

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Guranay(2019)

This film is a realistic record of a sixty-year-old couple living in a remote village (Gurenay) in the Badain Jaran Desert of Alashan, Inner Mongolia plant thousands of mu of ammodendron and euphratica to fight against expanding deserts.

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Seedlings Protection Rite(2019)

Seedlings protection rite (also called the parade of big rice dumplings) is a spring agricultural festival of Hakka people in Western Fujian, China. People worship the God of Grains (Shennong) in the rite. People collect thousands of fresh bamboo leaves, sew them together and make a pair of big dumplings ﬁlled with 120 kilograms of rice each. They also make tens of thousands of ﬁnger-sized rice dumplings for believers to take home. On the 15th day of the 2nd lunar month, villagers carry out the statues of the God of grains and big dumplings. Followed by ﬂowers cars, eight sheds carry children chosen from every clan name in the village who are dressed up as ancient heroes, as people parade around the village. After the rite, villagers believe that farmland is awakened and that disasters are averted. A new agricultural cycle begins.

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Chronicles of Hulling Rice(2011)

In the sound of rice huller, the rice falls to the jar; and in the booming sound of thunder, the rain drops falldown on the ground. Witha shovel on shoulder, we're farming under the sky. -- This is a children's folk rhymes used to be very popular among the Hakka people lived in the westernpart of Fujian Province, China. While farming is not an easy work, rice hulling is an even more laborious work. Rice-huller is a tool used by the peasants in southern China to hull the rice for thousands of years in theirfarming history. This documentary films the making of probably the last rice-huller ever made by mankind.

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The Silent Voyage(2003)

A Jian, Zhang Chiand Gou Zi took the train from Beijing to Tongliao. They made a promise that no one could speak during the trip, and who broke the rules should be punished. But it's still necessary to pick up some phone call, ask the way after you get off the train...For educated decadents, life is as if always in a state of intoxication, without goal or objective.

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The District Councillor(2018)

The year 2003 is a rather turbulent period for Hong Kong – the economy was in recession, the government constantly implemented futile policies, the SARS outbreak, and, on July 1st, 500,000 people went on strike opposing the adoption of Article 23 of the Basic Law. It was against this political atmosphere that YIN Zhao-Jian gave up his social worker job, a 10 year long and steady career, and joined the political circle and participated in the district councilor election, which he had no idea about.

10.0

Umbrella(2007)

Workers, peasants, soldiers, students and merchants were five groups of Chinese society in the 1950s, after the so-called elimination of the exploited class. Borrowing this concept, the umbrella is taken as the clue to rediscover changes in various social classes after the economic reform, and to analyze the social problems in China. Workers making umbrellas, merchants selling umbrellas, students looking for jobs in the rain. Umbrella is used as a metaphor that can be seen everywhere. As the raindrop, what we see is sometimes clear, sometimes untraceable.

6.3

Ram(2016)

This investigative documentary gives a comprehensive record of the development of China's "August 3 Crackdown on Mafia" campaign. Li Xiaoming, the main character of the film, escapes from the incident and goes through many ups and downs. The film explores that period from a personal point of view, slowly revealing the untold story of that period.

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WANG HONG WEI: CHINESE INDIE FILM(2018)

The player of Jia Zhangke's early film "Xiao Wu" and the famous independent film activist Wang Hongwei talked about Chinese independent films at the IFF Independent Film Forum.

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Chenjiayong(2020)

An individual's life experience is always a reflection and epitome of the times. Through the environment, literature, oral narration, calligraphy and painting works, this film faithfully records the upbringing background, family circumstances and life of the painter Chen Jiyong. His life experience and mind-watching are an ordinary case of countless intellectuals who have disappeared in the dust of time. At the same time, he has become a sample of images and life statues about this period of history.

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Riverbed(2016)

This is an image of a family. Through the memories of many people, it traces the growth, migration and different life experiences of several generations of the author's family. It shows the destiny of ordinary people and their inner scenery in social transformation. Each generation has its own joy and pain, and life still continues in hope, hardship and helplessness. The various imprints of survival that remain in the film are the hard riverbed of individual life and a period of micro-history washed out by time

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Preachers(2014)

This is a documentary about faith, narrating the stories of a dozen or so Christians in the city of Tongchuan, in Shaanxi Province. Through the lives and beliefs of four generations of preachers, the film reflects on the profound influence of 50 years of social change on the local church. Whether recounting personal setbacks encountered on the serving path or people’s weaknesses, growth, or disputes within the church community, the film becomes a neutral and faithful portrayal of a group of preachers, of the history of the church community and of the status-quo of belief in this faithless era.

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SUMMER(2014)

The short film recorded a group of children living status in a brick factory.Their parents work here to earn money.Because of the language barrier, living habits and economic conditions, they didn't go to school. But they are living in a wonderful time and they have extraordinary ability to survive......

7.0

THE LONGWANG CHRONICLES: A YEAR OF LIFES IN A CHINESE VILLAGE(2009)

Unusually popular religions and extreme secular beliefs, unconstrained power and no authoritarian society, people work hard on the land and live thrifty but do not believe in the meaning of life at all. This is Longwang Village, an empty old farming society, the most essential reality of an ordinary western village. The film does not have a perpetual plot. The images are presented with the changing of the four seasons. There is no great joy or great sadness. Everything is recorded, and no results are produced. Strictly speaking, this is actually just a rural video file, a running account of ordinary western villages without all rhetoric.

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On the Road(2010)

Only a few days before the Spring Festival of 2008, several truck drivers set off from Nantong, Jiangsu Province, to Guizhou province to deliver goods. But what they didn't expect was that they ran into a big snowstorm not long after their departure. What would these drivers do after they got caught up in a snowstorm and coudn't do nothing about it but wait? How would they react to this unexpected halt? And what would happen to this convoy?

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Rock and Cliff: The Geological Surface of Horn Town(2019)

Video essay ‘Rock and Cliff' investigates the creation of Horn Town, a new model village and centre of large scale tourist development, and the experiences of rural residents moved there through government-led displacement. Horn Town is located in Wulong, a rural district near the Three Gorges Dam administered by the Chongqing municipality (a city of 30 million people). Narrated in the style of a science documentary but using local Chongqing dialect, the video brings a geological and topographical perspective to types of 'rocks' found in the area,from mythological stones from a mountain cliff, to ruins of the original settlement, to a stone sculpture from a dubious 'Land Art Biennial', in order to address issues of land acquisition, top-down development and spatial politic.

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The Iron Ministry(2014)

Filmed over three years on China’s railways, The Iron Ministry traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, and language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. The Iron Ministry immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world’s largest railway network.

6.6

Wu Ding River(2007)

In northern Shaanxi, those three-wheeled trucks who came to the city from rural areas came to be suffering. They talked hard and finally sent their children to distant universities. Four years have passed, the big children can't find a job, the future is uncertain, the smaller children have come to the age of the university. It seems to be in the instinct, a family is still like a hen hatch, waiting for the new hope to break out.

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The Ninth Grade(2014)

Class 172 is a key class for their excellent students of an ordinary secondary school in Hunan province, from which the kids’ main goal is to upgrade into one of the best province-level high school – No.1 high school of the county. In the recent few years, the school’s enrollment rate to high school was not quite satisfying, and this year, the newly promoted class in charge teacher – Mr. Xiang, who’s only graduated a few years ago, became their brightest hope to teach the students and raise the enrollment rate for school.

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