RadiiChina's 100 Films to Watch to Help You Understand China
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The history of cinema has shadowed the history of modern China, turning a lens on more than a century of radical upheavals that have given form and substance to the People’s Republic as it stands today. In the spirit of exploring this vast and complex country through the layer of its big-screen output, RADII presents our list of 100 Films to Understand China. This is not a ranked list of 1-100 — we’re not trying to tell you the 100 “best” or “most important” films to come out of China. Our goal is to give a round and deep profile of the country through the medium of films made here in the last 100 years or so.
This list is a syllabus of movies across the spectrum of time, space and quality that, taken together, provide a snapshot of today’s China, the forces that shaped it, and the directions in which it’s moving looking forward. We’re focusing primarily on films made in mainland China, since these come from a different cultural context and industrial framework than films made in Hong Kong or Taiwan.
In assembling the list we reached out to filmmakers, producers, distributors, curators, critics, experts and industry insiders, who gave us an eclectic mix of mainstream titles, cult classics, and deep cuts. They provided these via the category headings that we provided and therefore do not necessarily endorse all of the selections you’ll find here.
To make it easier to navigate, we’ve divided the 100 films up into 10 categories with 10 movies each:
- Pre-war Shanghai;
- The Mao Years;
- Opening Up;
- Indie & Arthouse;
- Documentaries;
- Wuxia;
- Pop(corn) Culture;
- China Today;
- Bad Films;
- Animation.
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7 new
Ma lu tian shi
1937 — a.k.a. Street Angel, in 6 top lists Check -
21 new
Cuo wei
1986 — a.k.a. Dislocation, in 0 top lists Check -
24 new
Ermo
1994, in 1 top list Check -
25 new
Min jing gu shi
1995 — a.k.a. On the Beat, in 0 top lists Check -
33 new
Guanggun'er
2010 — a.k.a. Single Man, in 0 top lists Check -
61 new
A Great Wall
1986 — a.k.a. The Great Wall Is a Great Wall, in 0 top lists Check -
62 new
Jiafang yifang
1997 — a.k.a. The Dream Factory, in 0 top lists Check -
63 new
Feng kuang de shi tou
2006 — a.k.a. Crazy Stone, in 1 top list Check -
64 new
Rang zi dan fei
2010 — a.k.a. Let the Bullets Fly, in 1 top list Check -
66 new
Bei Jing yu shang Xi Ya Tu
2013 — a.k.a. Finding Mr. Right, in 0 top lists Check -
67 new
Zhuo yao ji
2015 — a.k.a. Monster Hunt, in 1 top list Check -
81 new
Ren zai jiong tu: Tai jiong
2012 — a.k.a. Lost in Thailand, in 1 top list Check
Last updated on May 3, 2021; source