Movies: Ji Dan

A very special event that took place immediately following the 2009 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Furuyashiki Village. They held a ‘dojo,’ a school where the veteran independent filmmakers from Japan taught the younger generati...

"Baya in the Zhuang language means 'grandmother.' At the end of 2012, I attended a charity lecture in Beijing about left-behind children, where I heard the story of Baya and the grandchildren she raised. In early 2013, I arrived at the village of Deb...

Ji Dan’s documentary about the daughters of a dirt-poor family living among Beijing scrap heaps, and their ferocious determination to get an education, is exhilarating, heart breaking, life affirming, shocking, despairing and ecstatic, all at once....

Paia means old grandmother in Duan dialect of Zhuang language. I know that the Paya in the film was at a lecture about left-behind children at Pudao Caotang Bookstore in Nanluogu Lane, Beijing. The small hall of the bookstore is full of people. I can...

The time capacity of video works is different. In terms of rhythm and structure, the author will also have different considerations. What is the possibility of image language and self-expression? Director Ji Dan focuses on communicating her own exper...

For years he has stayed behind closed doors without leaving his home, uttering nothing to anyone. The desire to communicate and the energy to act have completely vanished, and the opportunity to change is dim and distant. This is an attempt by the fi...

An old man in hospice care tells his life story from beginning to end, of Peking Opera and singer Ma Lianliang, and of the humiliation and desperation of old age. Soon, the border between dreams and memories, reality and mental confusion become indis...

On a hill in Harbin in China's Heilongjiang Province in the director's hometown, a girl neglects her exam preparation in favor of drawing pictures, and her mother wants her to study. Below the hill, a couple is unable to say anything to their son who...

There are various pressures in Kampot's life. For example, he hopes that his wife will help him to have a son after six consecutive daughters; he is upset by the bank loan he owes for buying a tractor, and he is also worried about working outside. Th...

In the mid-1980s, a dozen old people in Old Latse Village in Shigatse, Tibet, voluntarily organized the reconstruction of the Gyang Temple, which was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. With the assistance of villagers, the reconstruction took 10 y...