* Diaoyu Islands: The Truth (2014)

The current geo-political issues surrounding the historically Chinese Diaoyu Islands are a relic of Japanese Imperialism and post-WWII politics of the United States. This film take a deeper look at this subject to provide clarity that is currently escaping the majority of news agencies and Western understanding.

* The Silk Road: China to Turkey (2011)

The Silk Road influenced the great civilizations of China, India, Ancient Egypt, Persia, Arabia, and Ancient Rome. The Silk Road was filmed by award-winning filmmaker Marlin Darrah, and crew. Filmed in high definition. In 1271 Marco Polo left Venice, Italy on a journey of 4,000 miles to China. His book, "The Travels of Marco Polo," opened the trade route to greater traffic as cultures, ideas, and goods from the West and East were exchanged and great fortunes were made on the Silk Road. China traded silk, teas, and porcelain. India traded spices, ivory, textiles, precious stones, and pepper. The Roman Empire exported gold, silver, fine glassware, wine, carpets, and jewels. This program travels through five countries and thirty cities bridging the Far East with Europe. Visit these exotic lands and learn about their cultures, modern traditions, and histories.

* Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour (2010)

Architect, photographer, curator and blogger, Ai Weiwei is China's most famous and politically outspoken contemporary artist. As Ai Weiwei's latest work is unveiled in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, Alan Yentob reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for artistic freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of authoritarian rule.

* Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2013)

The first feature-length film about the internationally renowned Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei. In recent years, Ai has garnered international attention as much for his ambitious artwork as his political provocations. AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY examines this complex intersection of artistic practice and social activism as seen through the life and art of China's preeminent contemporary artist. From 2008 to 2010, Beijing-based journalist and filmmaker Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai Weiwei. Klayman documented Ai's artistic process in preparation for major museum exhibitions, his intimate exchanges with family members and his increasingly public clashes with the Chinese government. Klayman's detailed portrait of the artist provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.

* The Last Emperor of China (2008)

Living through one of the most tumultuous periods of Chinese and world history, Puyi, the last Emperor of China, was both a participant in, and victim of, his times. In 1908, aged only two, Puyi ascended the throne at the Forbidden City in Beijing as Qing Emperor of China. At six, rebellions forced his abdication but he continued to live at the palace surrounded by women and eunuchs. At 13 he started to learn of the wider world from his British teacher Reginald Johnston. Soon afterwards Puyi was evicted from the Palace and embarked on an amazing personal quest to recover his throne. He became a puppet Emperor controlled by the Japanese, a prisoner of the Soviet Union, an inmate of a Communist Chinese re-education camp and finally an ordinary citizen living in Beijing through the brutal upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. Featuring never-before-seen archive footage and photographs, as well as extracts from his writing and interviews with eyewitness relatives.

* Up the Yangtze (2007)

A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China.

* Chung Kuo - Cina (1972)

A documentary on China, concentrating mainly on the faces of the people, filmed in the areas they were allowed to visit. The 207 minute version consists of three parts. The first part, taken around Beijing, includes a cotton factory, older sections of the city, and a clinic where a Cesarean operation is performed, using acupuncture. The middle part visits the Red Flag canal and a collective farm in Henan, as well as the old city of Suzhou. The final part shows the port and industries of Shanghai, and ends with a stage presentation by Chinese acrobats.

It was very strange indeed when the Chinese government of the time banned this film and called it anti-Chinese propaganda. Surely, the communist government then had watched Zabriskie Point and perhaps agreed that its ending of blowing up consumerism literally in your face, warranted the commissioning of Michelangelo Antonioni to shoot a documentary about China, and probably expected some beholden, pro-communist doctrine look at the state of things in the country, where the positives exalted and the negatives swept under the carpet.

Alas Cina in my opinion stayed quite objective, and doesn't offer any judgemental criticism through its eye in the camera lenses, either for or against policies that unfolded in front of them. For the period of time that Antonioni and his crew were the host of the Communist Part in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, what we got instead was an extremely fascinating look at the facets of live within the iron curtain, from major sights and recognizable attractions, to the lesser seen mundane activities of the everyday lives of the average joe.

A magnum of a movie unfolding itself in 3 parts, we begin this rare look of a journey into China during its Revolution, and if pictures can tell a thousand words, what more moving images? Starting off at a defining location in Tiananmen Square, there are some subtle differences at the Square then, and now. The theme song for the documentary happened to be "I Love Tiananmen Square" which schoolchildren sing with gusto, and we see later how the little tykes get indoctrinated quite innocently through propaganda infused into song and dance that they participate enthusiastically. Besides this recognizable landmark, it became like a journey through time as we also get to look at The Forbidden City, as well as The Great Wall in its pre-restored state of today, sans millions of tourists too, and witness broken, unmended sections that riddled the monument which was referred to as not one built by an Emperor, but one built by slaves.

It's a rare treat indeed because the filmmakers dare to push the boundaries of permission granted to them, where on occasions even after explicitly being told "No" to filming a particular moment or location, the camera still rolls anyway, and we're told and get to see just exactly what was forbidden, which I think in today's context, is nothing to get riled up with. We get an observation of a slice of everyday life, where the camera lingers on to provide strange yet intriguing images such as a typical work day in a factory, women with bound feet, and amazing sights and sounds such as a man riding a bicycle and practising Qigong simultaneously! We also get explained certain policies of the communists at the time, which seem quite unbelievable that home rentals are capped at 5% of whatever your monthly salary is, or how workers work with a general lack of anxiety and urgency.

In true Antonioni fashion, we get to see luxurious shots of vast landscapes in the country as they make way to the rural areas, such as the Honan Province and the Yellow River, in a balance with city landscape shots in Shanghai and Suzhou. It's this fine balance of the rural and the urban, of Chinese people living and working in both contexts in the country, that I thought makes this documentary quite a winner.

But what was truly fascinating, were the carefully prepared episodes that pepper the documentary. One unforgettable episode that you must see for yourself, is something of a celebration of Chinese traditional medicine vis-a-vis modern Western medicine. I just cannot imagine how acupuncture is used as an anesthesia for a Cesarean section, as we see incredibly long needles poked into a woman to numb her womb and nerves, as doctors both work on getting her newborn out, while talking, and feeding(!) her at the same time! It's so unsettling at I was tempted to look away when the scalpel cuts through flesh, yet on the other hand, just refused to blink with wide-eyed amazement at how this feat was performed, and wondered if it's still being performed until this day!

Something else I found peculiar, was how the last act rattled on like an acrobatics variety show. Granted that for an audience of the time, they might have found it to be an experience watching it, but somehow, I thought it was a sense of deja vu, whether or not having to watch that particular segment on some other variety show on television (could be this one, I'm not too sure), but the stunts performed were found to be quite familiar. I believe some would have made their way as a standard export items for travelling Chinese acrobats to arm themselves with in their travels overseas, and I'm fairly certain some I've seen in Chinatown some years back. But anyway, it's still quite something

Cina as a documentary film was one which was draped with fascination for both filmmakers as well as an audience, rather than championing anti-whatever sentiments from either side of the world. Not having seen many movies, either features, shorts or documentaries made during the Cultural Revolution era or about that era in question (propaganda included), I think this Antonioni film has more than made its mark as a definitive documentary that anyone curious about the life of the time, would find it a gem to sit through.

* High Tech, Low Life (2012)

A documentary that follows the journey of two of China's first citizen reporters as they travel the country chronicling under-reported news and social issues stories.

* Drachenmadchen (2012)

The documentary "Drachenm㣣hen" (Dragon Girls) tells the story of three Chinese girls, training to become Kung Fu fighters, far away from their families at the Shaolin Tagou Kung Fu School, located right next to the Shaolin Monastery in China, place of origin of Kung Fu. Three girls in a crowd of 27.000 children, under pressure to conform to the norms and structures: They are turned into fighting robots and yet, if you look behind the curtain, you see children with dreams and aspirations.

* China: Triumph and Turmoil (2012)

Part 1: Emperors
Niall Ferguson shows how the vast apparatus of the Chinese state has always been called on to subjugate individual freedom to the higher goal of unity. Ferguson also examines how, on the other hand, centralised control produces tensions that threaten to destroy the country.

Part 2: Maostalgia
Niall Ferguson asks how China manages to live under a Communist system of government but with a thriving capitalist economy The succession of revolutions orchestrated by Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. And yet this hard-line communist and murderer of businessmen is revered in China today as the founder of a modern-day capitalist superpower. Why?. To answer this question Niall travels from Beijing to Mao's birthplace at Shaoshan to the new supercity of Chongqing and to the rural backwaters of Anhui to track down survivors of the madness of Chairman Mao, newly minted billionaires and the Mao worshippers who believe tomorrow belongs to them. He finds the way China is governed is eerily similar to the way it was under the First Emperor. All the power lies in the hands of nine men with expressionless faces and what looks like the same hair dye - as unelected and as powerful as Emperor Qin. Autocracy that values unity over choice; secrecy over openness - not democracy. That has always been the Chinese way. It is the price that China is prepared to pay for the spectre that has always haunted its leaders: protest, rebellion and turmoil.

Part 3: SuperPower
Niall Ferguson asks what China's growing global presence and aggressive nationalism mean to all of us. China's supercharged economic growth signals a seismic shift in political power from West to East. We are increasingly dependent on China's money to bail out our own fragile economies. But at what price? How can we protest when China challenges our most deeply held beliefs about democracy and freedom of speech by locking up its citizens? Should we criticise them or just keep quiet for fear of frightening off much needed investment? When China transforms itself from an assembler of products invented in the West to an innovator in its own right what will be left for us to do? What will it be like to work in a Chinese-dominated world?

* China on Four Wheels (2012)

Anita Rani and Justin Rowlatt embark on two epic car journeys across China, navigating congested cities and winding mountain roads, to explore how the country's economic growth, symbolised by its booming car industry, is affecting people's lives.

Part 1
In the first programme, Anita takes the high road through the rich, industrialised cities of the east, driving a Great Wall Haval, the best-selling 4X4 in China. Meanwhile Justin drives a 'bread van', the loaf-shaped workhorse of the countryside, through China's poor rural hinterland, and discovers that here donkeys are often more common than cars. He visits the 'ghost city' of Ordos and puts his bread van through its paces on China's second-biggest racing track. On the first leg of their journey, Anita and Justin discover a country that has developed rapidly, raising millions out of poverty. But it faces important challenges that may affect us all: a potential property bubble, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and growing inequality.


Part 2
Anita and Justin continue their epic car journeys across China, heading for their final destination, the financial mega-city of Shanghai. On her route through the industrialised east, Anita visits some of the country's most sophisticated and luxurious cities. In Qingdao she discovers a little piece of the Loire valley: a Chinese wine chateau with an accompanying vineyard. In Hangzhou she joins a couple on their wedding day, complete with a luxury car fleet. Meanwhile Justin continues his epic journey through the poor, remote Chinese countryside in his loaf-shaped bread van. He bumps rather precariously up the potholed Aizhai Highway, one of China's most dangerous roads, and visits the brand new engineering marvel of the Aizhai Bridge. He explores the life of farmers from the Miao ethnic minority deep in the Hunan countryside, and tries to get to the bottom of Mao Zedong's legacy in contemporary China.