Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 24): Mao Xianghui

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 24): Mao Xianghui

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Garden of Paradise

Garden of Paradise

The year 2003 was known as the birth of the Weiquan—the rights defense–movement, which was marked by the Sun Zhigang incident in Guangzhou. At the same time, a campaign began to get justice for Huang Jing, a teacher from Hunan who was sexually assaulted and killed by her boyfriend. The campaign involved the victim’s family, netizens, feminist scholars and activists, and lasted for several years. This documentary records the process of Huang Jing’s case from filing to post-judgement, and analyzes the broader issue of sexual violence against women in China. The films in this series are in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
The Central Plains

The Central Plains

Due to poverty in rural areas in Henan Province—part of China’s Central Plains—many farmers contracted AIDS by selling their blood. This documentary dives into the lives of these AIDS patients, depicting the manner in which they cope with life, officials’ responses, and the stories of volunteers who helped the infected villagers. The filmmaker visited several villages with high incidence of AIDS, interviewing and recording people’s accounts of how the “plasma economy” arose. This documentary presents the living condition of families and individuals, especially women and children, who contracted AIDS due to blood donation and blood transfusions, and demonstrates the formation of grassroots organizations. This film is in Chinese with both Chinese and English subtitles.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 12): Zhai Minglei

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 12): Zhai Minglei

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 2): Xu Zhiyong

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 2): Xu Zhiyong

How can China build a real civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple sat for a series of interviews with scholars and civil society actors.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 5): Cui Weiping

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 5): Cui Weiping

The Xi’an-based videographer Zhang Shihe, or Tiger Temple, has been a fixture on the independent Chinese history scene for more than twenty years. In 2010, he began a thirty-part series of short interviews with leading Chinese thinkers called “Working Toward Civil Society,” in which he explores how China can build a true civil society. Some of those interviewed have now been silenced, passed away, or moved abroad, making the series itself a work of history. In this episode, Zhang interviews one of China’s most thoughtful public thinkers, Cui Weiping. Cui is a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, and translator of Havel into Chinese. She was a signer of Charter 08, and friend of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Although the interview is only 8 minutes long, Cui touches on some of the key problems that continue to plague China: how to break free of overwhelming government control of civic life? Note to English speakers: this interview only has Chinese subtitles. The CUA is working to add English subtitles to all of our video offerings so check back in a few months.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 39): Xu Zhiyong

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 39): Xu Zhiyong

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Our Children

Our Children

This documentary records the stories of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The narrators mainly consist of the parents of students who fell victim to the earthquake, and the film is interspersed with comments from media workers, independent scholars, internet authors, geologists, and environmental protection and legal workers. They expressed their views on the Sichuan earthquake from different perspectives. This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 23): Liang Xiaoyan

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 23): Liang Xiaoyan

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 30): Ran Yunfei

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 30): Ran Yunfei

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 36): Liu Xuiwei

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 36): Liu Xuiwei

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working Toward a Civil Society (Episode 17): Du Guang

Working Toward a Civil Society (Episode 17): Du Guang

How can China build a true civil society? Independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants since 2010.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 32): Teng Biao (1)

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 32): Teng Biao (1)

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working Toward a Civil Society (Episode 22): Yin Deyi

Working Toward a Civil Society (Episode 22): Yin Deyi

How can China build a true civil society? Independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants since 2010.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 13): Li Jiafu

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 13): Li Jiafu

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 45): He Weifang

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 45): He Weifang

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 43): Gan Cui

Working toward a Civil Society (Episode 43): Gan Cui

How can China build a true civil society? Since 2010, independent director Tiger Temple has conducted a series of interviews with scholars and civil society participants.
The Gulag Book

The Gulag Book

This movie records how Zhang Xianzhi went from being a soldier to a prisoner and then to an independent writer. His experience and thought process is compared with that of the Russian writer Solzhenitsyn. The title of the film is taken from the title of Zhang Xianzhi's book <i>Anecdotes from the Gulag</i>, which takes the viewer on a journey to China's Gulag Archipelago, a labor camp in Sichuan. The extreme conditions and little-known tragic history of the camp are presented. The movie is 42 minutes long and was filmed in 2012.
Onlookers

Onlookers

People from all over China rush to the scene of China's trial of Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing Party Secretary of the Communist Party of China. The trial took place in August 2013 at the Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Shandong Province. Reporter Liu Xiangnan captured the scene.
Songs from Maidichong

Songs from Maidichong

This film was shot in a village called Maidichong in the mountains of Yunnan Province. The village is inhabited by a community of Miao people who are Christians. More than 100 years ago, the British missionary, Samuel Pollard, came to this village, invented the Miao script, and brought faith, education, and medical care to the Miao people. This film tells this history and how their journey of faith was brutally suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. It also presents the challenges they face today.