Into the Island

On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.

Presented by the British Museum this is the story of the most famous army in the world. A triumph of early mass production and craftmanship, they were dreamt up by a man whose face we will never know; a figure who remains a more shadowy presence than that of his constructed warriors. And yet, Qin Shihuangdi was one of the greatest military leaders in history. Based on the latest research and including location photography at key sites in China, this film sheds new light on the achievements, ambitions and legacy of this enigmatic and intriguing ruler - an emperor who wished to reign for all eternity.

Red Guards were a student movement supported by Mao Zedong in 1966-67 during the Cultural Revolution. A group of students at Qinghua University who issued 2 big-character posters in May-June 1966 called themselves Red Guards. The students criticised the university administration of elitism and bourgeois tendencies. In August 1966 Mao Zedong expressed support for the Red Guards. This gave the student movement political legitimacy and it spread outside Beijing. The Red Guards started to attack the Four Olds and marched across China to eradicate old ideas, old cultures, old customs and old habits. Ultimately the struggle between different Red Guard factions led to a chaotic civil-war-like situation. During 1967-68 the Peoples Liberation Army got the movement under control and restored social order. Beginning late 1968 members of the Red Guard movement were sent to the countryside to undergo re-education. We met and filmed them in August 1971.

In the 19th century, China held the monopoly on tea, which was dear and fashionable in the West, and the British Empire exchanged poppies, produced in its Indian colonies and transformed into opium, for Chinese tea. Inundated by the drugs, China was forced to open up its market, and the British consolidated their commercial dominance. In 1839, the Middle Empire introduced prohibition. The Opium War was declared… Great Britain emerged as the winner, but the warning was heeded: it could no longer depend on Chinese tea. The only alternative possible was to produce its own tea. The East India Company therefore entrusted one man with finding the secrets of the precious beverage. His mission was to develop the first plantations in Britain’s Indian colonies. This latter-day James Bond was called Robert Fortune – a botanist. After overcoming innumerable ordeals in the heart of imperial China, he brought back the plants and techniques that gave rise to Darjeeling tea.

Cao Fei recorded her experiences within the online social platform Second Life. The result is a wistful, surreal vision of an alternative reality sprung from the pop culture fantasies and hyper-consumerism of contemporary urban China, while also trying to transcend its real-life limitations. It can be seen as an answer to the challenge posed by River Elegy: how to envision a new Chinese destiny founded on principles of individuality, creativity, discovery, and freedom. The film also reflects the contemporary condition of the virtual supplanting our experience of the real.

10 May 2007 - China's staggering economic growth has overshadowed a more subtle shift in Chinese society. In domestic life, many women are now ignore the advice of their mothers and grandmothers, turning instead to counselling hotlines and, increasingly, divorce.

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns to the shooting locations of his films, along with his actors, friends and close collaborators. Jia recalls the inspiration sources for his movies, such as Platform, Still Life and A Touch of Sin. The film is the memory of a filmmaker and of a country in convulsion, China, which reveals itself little by little.

Follows Long Island’s Mary Lamont Band on their groundbreaking 23,000-mile tour in six cities and provinces across mainland China in 2002.

A documentary about the development around Barton Springs in Austin, Texas, and nature's unexpected response to being threatened by human interference.

A film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition and its impact on the Nordic building-tradition. Winding its way through visions of the future, traditions, nature, concrete, gardens and high-tech, KOCHUU tells us how contemporary Japanese architects strive to unite the ways of modern man with the old philosophies in astounding constructions. Interviews with, and works by, Japanese architects Tadad Ando, Kisho Kurokawa, Toyo Ito and Kazuo Shinohara and Scandinavian architects Sverre Fehn, Kristian Gullichsen and Juhani Pallasmaa.

Regular or Super is a fascinating and informative introduction to the work of Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), one of the 20th century's most influential architects, and a thought-provoking demonstration of the social and artistic contributions that architecture at its best can make to our urban environments

Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City reveals the fascinating life and complex legacy of architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham. In the midst of the late nineteenth century urban disorder, Burnham offered a powerful vision of what a civilized American city could look like, one that provided a compelling framework for Americans to make sense of the world around them. A timely, intriguing story in the American experience, Make No Little Plans explores Burnham's impact on the development of the American city as debate continues today about what urban planning means in a democratic society.

This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.

Kingdom of Granada, al-Andalus, 14th century. After recognizing that his land, always under siege, is hopelessly doomed to be conquered, Sultan Yusuf I undertakes the construction of a magnificent fortress with the purpose of turning it into the landmark of his civilization and his history, a glorious monument that will survive the oblivion of the coming centuries: the Alhambra.

The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.