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North China Factory

Jan 1, 1980

0h 56m

★ 8.0

Overview

This documentary from 1980 depicts a factory community in China where over 6000 workers process, spin and weave raw cotton into 90 million yards of high-quality cloth per year. Also seen are the workers' residential, social, recreational and educational facilities, all located on factory property. The film presents an engrossing study of a lifestyle that is very different from that of the Western world.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

ONF | NFB

North China Factory Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Donald Sutherland

Filmed inside Pharmacy No. 3 in Shanghai, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens document the daily work of a state pharmacy that functions as both a dispensary and a neighborhood medical center. The film focuses on routine interactions between staff and patients, revealing an integrated model of urban healthcare in 1970s China.

6.6

Megacities

Aug 12, 1998

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

3.0

Pathway

Mar 25, 2012

Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.

4.6

Maineland

Mar 11, 2017

Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.

6.0

World War C

Aug 9, 2021

It's war. War against an invisible enemy that is not as deadly as we are told. The world is changing rapidly. Disproportionate measures are taken worldwide that disrupt society as a whole. A dichotomy in society forced vaccinations and restrictions on freedom. Have we had the worst? Or is there something more disturbing to awaiting us.

0.0

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory

Jan 1, 2009

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory started as an investigation of the link between politics and chocolate, at the Karl Marx Confectionary Factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Since access to the factory was denied, the project had to be re-considered, re-invented or re-enacted. Mostly made of archival footage and re-enacted performances based on the company's website, the film merges what was left of the initial idea with what has been collected and realized instead. It borrows from the genres of video art, 'Man on the street' interview, direct address, corporate film, essay, and music video, without legitimately belonging to any of them. The film unravels as a reflection on its own failure, and yet keeps on investigating what has always been at stake: the shift from public to private property (and from analog to digital technology), dialectics of permanence and change, language as a mirror of ideology, and post-Soviet oligarchy culture.

No Image

0.0

Atlas

Dec 31, 1931

The concept of machine-made knit was known as early as the 1850s, but it was only during the 1920s that the quality of the material had improved. When the plant known as "Atlas" was introduced in 1931, the shop windows drew a lot of attention, and Aho & Soldan was ordered to make a promotional film. In this well-paced film, we see the jersey production step by step.

6.7

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

Mar 22, 1895

Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

10.0

Tibet: The Survival of the Spirit

Dec 5, 1989

No overview available.

10.0

China Jam

Apr 1, 2014

In their infinite quest for virgin big walls, adventurers Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, Nicolas Favresse, Stephane Hanssens and Evrard Wendenbaum, head in September 2013 to a remote valley in the westernmost region of China. There, they found a fantastic 1200m vertical pillar, culminating at 5842m. They spent 14 days on the wall facing snow storms and harsh conditions to finally achieve this amazing ascent with some frost bites but never forgetting to have a lot of fun and to play unreal musical sessions.

0.0

Nous irons jusqu'au bout (les Kaolins de Plemet)

Jan 1, 1973

Chronicle of the 9-week strike by the kaolin workers of Plémet. The film emphasizes the particular nature of such a strike in a rural commune and in a sector of the old Breton proletariat: that of subsoil mining, almost entirely liquidated after the closure of the Hennebont forges.

7.4

I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story

May 6, 2015

A documentary about Caroll Spinney who has been Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969. At 78-years-old, he has no intention of stopping.

8.0

Inside Red China

Aug 19, 1958

October 1st, 1957. Dusk descends on Tiananmen Square, Peking. Fireworks crackle light across the night sky, above a city alive with National Day festivities and celebrations. Two intrepid New Zealand film-makers - Rudall and Ramai Te Miha Hayward - are there, documenting the life and times of communist China. The distinction of being the first English speaking foreigners to film unfettered in communist China was significant. The invitation to visit China was facilitated through the New Zealand China Friendship Society. They filmed in Canton, Shanghai, Peking (Beijing) and Wuhan. It was a small window of opportunity for Westerners to gaze on a country that was largely a mystery to the outside world since 1949. The unfortunate irony was that two of the documentaries; “Wonders of China”, and “Inside Red China”, were considered to be communist propaganda, and were not distributed outside of New Zealand.

7.0

China vs USA: Empires at War

Jan 1, 2008

China keeps claiming sovereignty over Taiwan. The USA believes the Tech industry of the island nation needs to be protected. Prominent international experts from both sides, China vs. USA, Empires At War explores all the issues that could lead to war.

10.0

Crocodile in the Yangtze

Apr 12, 2012

Crocodile in the Yangtze follows China's first Internet entrepreneur and former English teacher, Jack Ma, as he battles US giant eBay on the way to building China's first global Internet company, Alibaba Group. An independent memoir written, directed and produced by an American who worked in Ma's company for eight years, Crocodile in the Yangtze captures the emotional ups and downs of life in a Chinese Internet startup at a time when the Internet brought China face-to-face with the West. Crocodile in the Yangtze draws on 200 hours of archival footage filmed by over 35 sources between 1995 and 2009. The film presents a strikingly candid portrait of Ma and his company, told from the point of view of an “American fly on a Chinese wall” who witnessed the successes and the mistakes Alibaba encountered as it grew from a small apartment into a global company employing 16,000 staff.

7.0

China's Last Little Train

Jul 1, 2014

In a mountainous region of Sichuan, best known for pandas and earthquakes, there are no roads, no cars, no buses. But there is … a train. This documentary tells the story of the last working narrow gauge steam railway in China.

8.7

Le Baron et l'Empereur : Japon, la voie de la guerre

Oct 29, 2023

No overview available.

6.9

Ascension

Oct 8, 2021

The film explores the pursuit of the “Chinese Dream.” Driven by mesmerizing—and sometimes humorous—imagery, this observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.

North China Factory

Overview

Genres

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North China Factory Trailers