RadiiChina's 100 Films to Watch to Help You Understand China
Created by dirty_score.
Favorited 4 times, disliked 0 times, added to 4 watchlists.
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.
Filter
-
10 new
Xiao cheng zhi chun
1948 — a.k.a. Spring in a Small Town, in 10 top lists Check -
15 new
Wu duo Jinhua
1959 — a.k.a. Five Golden Flowers, in 0 top lists Check -
30 new
Wan wu sheng zhang
2015 — a.k.a. Ever Since We Love, in 0 top lists Check -
54 new
Wo hu cang long
2000 — a.k.a. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in 27 top lists Check -
60 new
Xiu chun dao
2014 — a.k.a. Brotherhood of Blades, in 0 top lists Check -
69 new
Mei ren yu
2016 — a.k.a. The Mermaid, in 1 top list Check -
82 new
Tian ji: Fu chun shan ju tu
2013 — a.k.a. Switch, in 0 top lists Check -
83 new
Xiao shi dai
2013 — a.k.a. Tiny Times, in 0 top lists Check
Last updated on May 3, 2021; source