Exploring connections between modern day artists and their relationship to China’s cultural history. Featuring a new artist each episode who journeys into a master class to understand a discipline of their art; which has shaped the artist they are today.
Understanding the symbiotic relationship between pop-culture and traditional Chinese cultures through Music, Poetry, Kung Fu, Printing, Painting, Food and Lego.
Having lived abroad his entire life, host Harry Yuan is back in China, travelling across the country to trace back his heritage along the mighty Yangtze River. He wants to see how this aquatic life-blood provided sustenance to communities and gave rise to settlements that have transformed a nation.
Filmmaker Connor Luke Simpson explores the underground —and often misunderstood— subculture known as Feederism. A community where the fatter you are, the sexier you are. Portrayed as a freak show attraction, the community speaks out against the mainstream media and wider society, who have smeared them for decades…
Throughout the film, Connor meets a range of feeders and feedees who have found salvation in their fetish, fat gainers cite a liberating feeling that comes from letting yourself go, as well as promoting the benefits of experimenting with food in the bedroom. But with skyrocketing obesity rates worldwide, critics ask ‘is this too good to be true?’
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam will flood 280 km of Ethiopia’s Blue Nile River to provide 80% of Ethiopia’s electricity. Eco-explorers Ben Peters and Charlie Head paddle-board this ancient river one last time – before it is lost forever – navigating uncharted territories and dangerous wildlife as they meet some of the 20,000 people who’ll be affected and learn how they feel about this change.
Last Paddle chronicles a life-long commitment to river conservation and restoration around the globe and is clearly a testament to the “power of one”. The film also delves into Mark’s current efforts, including the need to better protect and restore city waterways, understanding the impacts of climate change on rivers, and doing more to conserve the planet’s greatest river environments. In acknowledging Mark’s accomplishments, including the founding of World Rivers Day, Last Paddle makes an eloquent plea to cherish and better care for our life-giving waterways while also offering hopeful insights into how we might attain a more sustainable future.
This inspirational and visually stunning film chronicles the amazing lifetime journey of renowned river advocate Mark Angelo who has paddled more than 1000 rivers in well over 100 countries; perhaps more than any other individual.
Each year, between November and the following February, a group of Aborigines Taiwanese migrant workers set up camp near Lanyang River in Yilan County, on the northeastern coast of Taiwan. They travel from afar to this spot in hopes of catching that season’s eel fry. For those four months, these camp sights are their homes.
But no amount of warmth from within the campsite can shield them from the harsh ocean winds, the volatile squatter environment, harassment from local gangs, or a slew of unpredictability that arise from living on unfriendly grounds.
Singing in the Wilderness takes place in a utopian mountaintop village of Southwest China. Ping and Sheng are two idealist young Miaos that belong to an ethnic minority known for worshipping nature, freedom and spirituality.
In the 1930s, western missionaries brought Christianity. Since then, the beautiful voices of a Christian choir singing classical European hymns prevail the mountains. But then, a Propaganda official accidentally discovers the choir and decides to turn it into a national sensation.
State of Texas vs. Melissa explores the life journey of Melissa Lucio, the first Hispanic woman to be sentenced to death in the state of Texas. For over ten years she has been awaiting her fate, and now faces her last appeal. No one had ever seen Melissa be violent towards her children, yet she was blamed for the daily abuse and subsequent death of her two year-old daughter, who died from blunt head trauma. Set in the heart of the Latino community of South Texas, the film takes a look at Melissa’s broken childhood, her adult life plagued by poverty and prejudice, and the miscarriage of justice Melissa faced, from the court appointed attorney who willingly set aside evidence, to the District attorney who used her case to help his re-election.
State of Texas vs. Melissa is the portrait of a woman’s fight against an entire system.
Facing his future in retirement, “sitting in deck chairs and eating lemon drizzle cake”, 65 year-old piano tuner Desmond O’Keeffe decides instead to take on the most challenging and perilous delivery of his four decade long career: transporting a 100 year-old Broadwood and Sons upright piano from bustling London to the remote heart of the Indian Himalayas.
Setting off from his Aladdin’s Cave-like workshop in the quaint Camden Town district, and enlisting the help of two young and eager apprentices, Desmond’s ambitious destination is a primary school in Lingshed, Zanskar. At 14,000 feet above sea level it is one of the most isolated settlements in the world.
Aided by a team of local Sherpas and a motley crew of yaks and ponies, the trio’s various convictions are tested as they cross sheer mountain passes of breath-taking beauty, coming in direct contact with a different way of living – a world on a brink of change, filled with equal measure serenity and hardship. If successful, the expedition will be the highest piano delivery in history, but more importantly, it could become the ultimate gesture of music’s universal power: bridging cultures, inspiring strength and bringing joy.