

The East Is Red(1965)
Pre-Cultural Revolution propaganda at its most lavish, this model opera depicts the history and evolution of the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong from its founding in July 1921 to the establishment of "New China" in 1949. Detailed in the musical are several key events in CPC history such as the Northern Expedition, the KMT-led Shanghai massacre of 1927, the Nanchang Uprising and formation of the People's Liberation Army, the Long March and the founding of the PRC on October 1, 1949.

Movie: The East Is Red
Top 4 Billed Cast
Singer
Singer
Singer
Singer
Recommendations Movies
7.9Hibiscus Town(zh)
Based on a novel by the same name written by Gu Hua, a melodrama about the life and travails of a young woman who lives through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.
7.0Platform(zh)
China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.
7.2Yellow Earth(zh)
A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust.
6.8Jersey Boys(en)
A musical biopic of the Four Seasons—the rise, the tough times and personal clashes, and the ultimate triumph of a group of friends whose music became symbolic of a generation. Far from a mere tribute concert, it gets to the heart of the relationships at the centre of the group, with a special focus on frontman Frankie Valli, the small kid with the big falsetto.
7.2The Stage(zh)
During the Republican era, wars and conflicts were frequent. On stage, the "Overlord" sings with resounding passion, while below, the absurd spectacle of life unfolds. They must both secure the opera troupe's livelihood and appease the audience in their seats. Once the curtain rises, how should this play be performed?
6.3Sight(en)
Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.
6.1Step Up: Year of the Dance(zh)
Two young people from different social classes put aside their differences and come together to form a dance group and win a championship in China.
7.8In the Heat of the Sun(zh)
Beijing, 1970s. The Cultural Revolution has driven most adults to the provinces leaving 14-year-old Monkey and his pals have free reign over the city. They hang around, get up to no good, and discover that unsolvable mystery known as "girls."
7.3One Second(zh)
A movie fan escapes from a labour camp during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and strikes up a relationship with a homeless female vagabond.
7.1Cadillac Records(en)
The story of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in 1950s Chicago, and the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Chuck Berry.
6.8Battle of the Year(en)
A down-on-his-luck coach is hired to prepare a team of the best American dancers for an international tournament that attracts all the best crews from around the world, but the Americans haven't won in fifteen years.
8.1To Live(zh)
Married couple Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in mid-20th century mainland China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.
6.3Krush Groove(en)
Russell Walker is a young, successful manager of rap performers, handling acts for the Krush Groove label, including Run-DMC and The Fat Boys. When Run-D.M.C. has a hit record and Russell needs more money to press more copies, he borrows it from a street hustler and soon regrets his decision.
7.3High Strung Free Dance(en)
Zander Raines, a dazzling and tempestuous young choreographer, gives the break of a lifetime to two hopeful artists when he casts a stunning contemporary dancer, Barlow, and innovative pianist, Charlie, in New York’s most-anticipated new Broadway show: Free Dance. But the move throws off the show’s delicate creative balance when Charlie falls hard for Barlow, while Zander embraces her as his muse.
6.1Sarafina!(en)
The plot centers on students involved in the Soweto Riots, in opposition to the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. The stage version presents a school uprising similar to the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976. A narrator introduces several characters among them the school girl activist Sarafina. Things get out of control when a policeman shoots several pupils in a classroom. Nevertheless, the musical ends with a cheerful farewell show of pupils leaving school, which takes most of act two. In the movie version Sarafina feels shame at her mother's (played by Miriam Makeba in the film) acceptance of her role as domestic servant in a white household in apartheid South Africa, and inspires her peers to rise up in protest, especially after her inspirational teacher, Mary Masombuka (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the film version) is imprisoned.
6.6The Island(zh)
A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.
6.8Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(zh)
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor's beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.
6.8Drumline: A New Beat(en)
A girl from New York attends a college in Atlanta to join their once-famous marching band.
Similar Movies
6.1Short Working Day(pl)
A dramatisation of the workers' protests in June 1976 in Radom, seen from the perspective of the local Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party.
7.2The Travelling Players(el)
A traveling theatre troupe tours the Greek countryside from 1939 to the early 1950s, staging “Golfo the Shepherdess”. As the years pass, its members endure persecution, betrayal, executions, and exile. Their personal stories become entangled with the country’s major historical events, in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and loss.
7.0Indochine(fr)
In colonial Vietnam, dashing French naval captain Jean-Baptiste, wealthy plantation owner Éliane Devries, and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camillevare the three points of a cross-cultural romantic triangle. As the struggle against European imperialism sweeps Indochina, Jean-Baptiste and Camille have to choose sides and Éliane faces the emotionally difficult challenge of raising the child of her daughter and ex-lover.
0.0In One Hundred Years in May(et)
Viktor Kingissepp has been the underground head of the Communist Party of Estonia for three years. He corresponds with Moscow, writes speeches for the members of the Communist Workers' Party and makes leaflets for the events of trade union. His purpose is to overthrow the Republic of Estonia since he does not believe in Estonian independence nor in any national ideals. Yet the clock keeps ticking, tuberculosis spreads rapidly, the world revolution is being postponed. What to do in order to make one's efforts work?
6.2China, My Sorrow(zh)
In August 1966, the Cultural Revolution in full swing, 13-year-old Tian Ben is arrested for playing a pop record; he's sent to a remote mountain camp in Niu-Peng. There he's called "Four Eyes" and, with about 16 other older boys and men, he's made to carry muck up a mountainside, make bricks, saw logs, and sing daily to Chairman Mao of his faults. There's camaraderie among the five youths, especially with a young pickpocket named Baimao, and Tian is also drawn to a silent monk who cares for him when he falls ill and the others expect him to die. The camp is remote, so there are no fences or walls. Tian longs to escape.
7.4The Herdsman(zh)
In 1980, Xu Jingshan, a wealthy Chinese-American businessman returns to China to find his son, Xu Lingjun, whom he had abandoned over 30 years earlier. Labeled a rightist because of his capitalist father, Lingjun has been forced to live as a humble herdsman on the grasslands. His bitter life has been transformed by a happy marriage to the wise and beautiful Xiuzhi, and more recently by his rehabilitation by the Party. When he goes to Beijing for their reunion, he discovers his father wants him to work for his chemical company in San Francisco. Lingjun tells the story of his life to his father, as he ponders his future.
7.1Good Night, and Good Luck.(en)
The story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.
0.0The House of Forgetfulness(fa)
The Journey of a young man who is making a documentary about forgotten narratives around an old piano, takes him through an unknown path towards restoring history, culture and identity of his homeland, Iran, in dusty and abandoned objects.
6.8Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(zh)
During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor's beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.
6.3The Pioneer(zh)
The story of Li Dazhao's revolutionary deeds from 1912 to 1927, and the story of the benevolent and revolutionary pioneers who were led by him to devote themselves to the great cause of Marxism
6.2The Alley(zh)
The film is a powerful condemnation of the political radicalism of the Cultural Revolution and shows how ordinary people were victimized during a decade of turmoil.
7.6The Last Emperor(en)
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
4.7Dirty Hands(fr)
A young intellectual, Hugo, joins the Communist Party out of a sense of idealism, only to see his principles manipulated by party leaders. He is given the assignment of killing Professor Hoederer, a party deviationist. However, he grows to admire the man and begins to have doubts about morals and revolutionary politics. But jealousy - Hugo thinks Hoederer has made love to his wife, Jessica - takes matters out of the political realm.
6.7Hector and the Search for Happiness(en)
Hector is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara, he feels like a fraud: he hasn’t really tasted life, and yet he’s offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.
7.4The Motorcycle Diaries(es)
Based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he and best friend Alberto Granado had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.
7.2Still Life(zh)
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
8.5Kayla(en)
Seven-year-old Kayla's father dies unexpectedly on a mission in the U.S which changes Kayla's life completely. She takes on the responsibility of her broken family. She inspires the people around her with love and singing. And in the end, she manages to carve out a happy life.
6.6M. Butterfly(en)
In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.
6.0Mongolian Ping Pong(zh)
Bilike has never seen a ping-pong ball before. He and his family live without electricity and running water in a solitary tent home among the vast steppe grasslands. The magnificent landscape here has changed little since the days of Genghis Kahn. But life in the middle of nowhere can be exciting for a young boy. The smallest of details become big events for curious Bilike and his best friends Erguotou and Dawa. The mystery of the small white ball floating in the creek leads to questions about the world around them, as well as innocent mischief.


