76 Films & TV Shows Set In Asia During The 1900s
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Shadow Magic
Beijing The 1900sBeijing, 1902: an enterprising young portrait photographer named Liu Jinglun, keen on new technology, befriends a newly-arrived Englishman who's brought projector, camera, and Lumière-brothers' shorts to open the Shadow Magic theater. Liu's work with Wallace brings him conflict with tradition and his father's authority, complicated by his falling in love with Ling, daughter of Lord Tan, star of Beijing's traditional opera. Liu sees movies as his chance to become wealthy and worthy of Ling. When the Shadow Magic pair are invited to show the films to the Empress Dowager, things look good. But, is disaster in the script? And, can movies preserve tradition even as they bring change?
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Retro Puppet Master
🇫🇷 France 🇨🇭 Switzerland 🇪🇬 Egypt The 1940s The 1900sThe Legacy Begins ... — Toulon runs a puppet theatre in the heart of Paris and meets the sorcerer (the mysterious Afzel). When his life is saved by the lovely Swiss Ambassador's daughter Ilsa, we bear witness to the origin of the Puppet Master.
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The Barber of Siberia
🇷🇺 Russia The 1900s The 1890s The 1880sHe's Russian. That explains a lot. — Douglas is a foreign entrepreneur, who ventures to Russia in 1885 with dreams of selling a new, experimental steam-driven timber harvester in the wilds of Siberia. Jane is his assistant. On her travels, she meets two men who would change her life forever: a handsome young cadet Andrej Tolstoy with whom she shares a fondness for opera, and the powerful General Radlov who is entranced by her beauty and wants to marry her.
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Of Freaks and Men
🇷🇺 Russia The 1900sDariya the maid getting a boy to touch her large breast is just one incident that occurs when Yohan and Victor infiltrate two families, forcing young Liza and blind Ekaterina to appear in porn, but they are not so innocent themselves.
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Stiff Upper Lips
England 🇮🇹 Italy 🇮🇳 India The 1900sStiff Upper Lips is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties. Although it specifically targets A Room with a View, Chariots of Fire, Maurice, A Passage to India, and many other films, in a more general way Stiff Upper Lips satirises popular perceptions of certain Edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery.
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Red River Valley
Tibet The 1900sAt the turn of the century, a young Chinese girl escapes from a religious sacrifice, and is rescued by an honorable Tibetan herdsman. The two fall in love, but problems arise when she is ignorant of their time-honored traditions and runs into trouble with a glamorous and proud Tibetan princess. Meanwhile, a British expedition is planning to invade the sacred mountain. Facing the country's enemy, the three set aside their disputes and jealousy, and join the militia force to protect their homeland.
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My Heart Is Mine Alone
🇮🇱 Israel The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890s The 1880s The 1870s The 1860sHelma Sanders-Brahms directs this inventive film that uses the verse of Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Nazi poet Gottfried Benn to dramatize the passionate, real-life affair between the two unlikely lovers. Forced out of Germany, Lasker-Schüler makes her way to Jerusalem even as Benn discovers the true nature of the Nazi ideology he had once championed. Lena Stolze and Cornelius Obonya star.
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Madame Butterfly
Nagasaki Prefecture The 1900sCio-Cio-San, a young Japanese geisha, seeks to fulfill her dreams through marriage to an American naval officer. Her faith in their future is shattered by his empty vows and the loss she endures touches something deep within us all.
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The Jungle Book
🇮🇳 India The 1900s The 1880sRaised by wild animals since childhood, Mowgli is drawn away from the jungle by the beautiful Kitty. But Mowgli must eventually face corrupt Capt. Boone, who wants both Kitty's hand and the treasures of Monkey City – a place only Mowgli can find.
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Amor e Dedinhos de Pé
🇲🇴 Macao The 1900s The 1890sMacau 1897. Life is easy for Portuguese settlers. Young reveler Francisco Frontaria is deemed as irresponsible for all his partying and boozing. Shunned and exiled for crossing a line by insulting the daughter of a prominent family, he finds himself penniless and vagrant.
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The Feasts of Valtasar, or The Night with Stalin
🇬🇪 Georgia 🇷🇺 Russia The 1900sA dance troupe from the autonomous region of Abkhazia in western Georgia perform for Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, Abkhaz leader Nestor Lakoba, and other high-ranking party officials in the Black Sea coastal town of Gagra.
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A Chaos of Flowers
Liaoning Province Tokyo Prefecture Kyoto Prefecture Hokkaido Prefecture The 1920s The 1900sSet in the Taisho era, which might be regarded as Japan's Hippie Phase, Hana no ran is a story about fashionable people without impulse control. Much of the action centers on a popular woman writer, the real-life poet Akiko Yosano, and her experiences among the literati of early 20th century Japan. Because of her independent, anti-war and often erotic poetry, she was a lightning rod for revolutionaries and other extremists, many of whom were destined to glamorous, yet ultimately pointless, deaths. The closest parallels might be the Byron/Shelley group or the people drawn to the Beat Generation.
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The Last Emperor
Beijing Shanghai The 1980s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s1500 slaves. 353,260,000 royal subjects. Warlords. Concubines. And 2 wives. He was the loneliest boy in the world. — 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.
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Qiu Jin
Beijing Zhejiang Province Tokyo Prefecture The 1890s The 1900sBiopic of Qiu Jin (1877-1907), early Chinese feminist and martyred revolutionary.
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Anna Pavlova
England 🇫🇷 France 🇷🇺 Russia The 1930s The 1900s The 19th CenturyThe young talented girl Anya, dreaming of a ballet, enters the choreographic school. Due to poor health, learning for her becomes unbearably difficult, but dreams of a ballerina career make her stubbornly deal with adversity. Anna’s performance and determination does not go unnoticed by the celebrated choreographer Marius Petipa, who helps to stage Pavlova's examination performance. Such a gift becomes a starting point for Ani in the world of big ballet, her fast-paced career, position in high society and world fame make her forget about close friends and especially her faithful Michel Fokine, who invested a lot of energy in the formation of a ballerina.
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The Guns and the Fury
🇮🇷 Iran The 1900sTwo turn of the Century fortune hunters (Peter Graves and Cameron Mitchell) discover oil in Persia and attempt to claim it. Serious resistance is met.
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Gandhi
England 🇮🇳 India 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890sHis triumph changed the world forever. — In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.
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Siberiade
🇷🇺 Russia The 1960s The 1940s The 1930s The 1910s The 1900s The 1920s The 1950s The 1970s The 1980sThe history of Russia from the beginning of the century till early 80s. — The story about a very small god-forgotten village in Siberia reflects the history of Russia from the beginning of the century till early 80s. Three generations try to find the land of happiness and to give it to the people. One builds the road through taiga to the star over horizon, the second 'build communism' and the third searches for oil. The oil is found but the destruction of the old cemetry and everything the people of the village cared for followed to get the 'black treasure' of Siberia.
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An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano
🇷🇺 Russia The 1900sAt the dilapidated country estate of Anna Petrovna Voinitseva, a group of feckless Russian aristocrats whiles away a summer afternoon. Unbeknownst to their respective spouses, local schoolteacher Platonov and the wife of Anna's stepson, Sophia, are former lovers whose meeting revives both passion and regret. Thrilled to see each other, they are nevertheless haunted by the loss of their youthful ideals.
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Dersu Uzala
🇷🇺 Russia The 1910s The 1900sKurosawa's Academy Award Winning Masterpiece — A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.
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This Bloody, Blundering Business
🇵🇭 Philippines The 1900s The 1890sAn incisive satire on U.S. foreign policy, THIS BLOODY BLUNDERING BUSINESS traces the history of American intervention in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. A silent movie format with lively ragtime piano music is combined with a dramatically understated narration and excerpts from "newsreels" of the period to reveal the nature of American attitudes toward Third World peoples and significant parallels with contemporary American foreign policy.
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The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
🇨🇳 China The 1900s The 1800sHammer Horror! Dragon Thrills! The First Kung Fu Horror Spectacular! — Professor Van Helsing had been asked to help against the tyranny of skeletal creatures that are responsible for terror and death amongst the peasants in rural China. He is the only person qualified to deal with the cause of these phenomena, for the undead are controlled by the most diabolical force of all.... Count Dracula. But he is not alone- to aid him comes a mystical brotherhood of seven martial arts warriors.
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Horror Express
🇷🇺 Russia Shanghai The 1900sA nightmare of terror travelling aboard the Horror Express! — Mysterious and unearthly deaths start to occur while Professor Saxton is transporting the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature he found in Manchuria back to Europe.
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Tevye and His Seven Daughters
🇷🇺 Russia The 1900sRussia, 1905. Tuvia is the only Jew living in the village of Antevka. He is very poor but things change when, as a token of gratitude for a service rendered, he is given a cow and some food. Now, his wife, his seven daughters and himself have access to a better life. Tuvia sells his milk and his butter. Moreover, he is now able to give his daughters a dowry and marry them. But you can't buy happiness...
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I Killed Rasputin
🇷🇺 Russia The 1910s The 1900sGrigori Rasputin becomes a fixture of Russia's Imperial Court after saving the life of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, the haemophiliac heir to the throne. However as war breaks out, Rasputin's enemies see him as a cause and plot fatal revenge against the Russian mystic.
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