Best movies like Ghost Town

Observations of three varied corners of China’s garment industry: workers in a large-scale production line factory; a designer who rallies against the mass-machine-production of clothes and has created the eponymous hand-made collection called ‘Useless’ (Wuyong) for Paris Fashion Week; and finally the simple life of increasingly out-of-work tailors in small town Fengdang.

Wind power... It's green... It's good... It reduces our dependency on foreign oil... That's what the people of Meredith, in upstate New York first thought when a wind developer looked to supplement this farm town's failing economy with a farm of their own — that of 40 industrial wind turbines. Attracted at first to the financial incentives, residents grow increasingly alarmed as they discover side effects they never dreamed of, as well as the potential for disturbing financial scams. With wind development growing rapidly at 39% annually in the US, WINDFALL is an eye-opener for anyone concerned about the future of renewable energy.

Daily life in an impossibly cramped Beijing apartment takes on epic proportions in this, intimate portrait, with unprecedented access, of a working-class Chinese family. Boldly transforming documentary into fiction, Liu Jiayin cast her parents and herself as fictionalized versions of themselves. Her father, Liu Zaiping, sells leather bags but is slowly going bankrupt. He argues with his wife, Jia Huifen, and his daughter over methods to boost business in the shop. A cloud of anxiety follows them into sleepless nights shared in the same bed. But through the thousand daily travails of city life, a genuine and deeply moving picture of Chinese familial solidarity emerges from the screen.

Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America's rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.

Ram Dass is one of the most important cultural figures from the 1960s and 70s. A pyschedelic pioneer, author of Be Here Now, beloved spiritual teacher, and outspoken advocate for death-and-dying awareness, Ram Dass is now himself approaching the end of life. Since suffering a life-changing stroke twenty years ago, he has been living at his home on Maui and deepening his spiritual practice — which is centered on love and his idea of merging with his surroundings and all living things. Shot in a nuanced cinematic style, the film is an intimate summary of his life learning and awareness, and is ultimately a poetic meditation on life, death, and the soul’s journey home.

An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.

An unschooled young man, one of the countless victims of Mao's Cultural Revolution, is laboring in the countryside when he is assigned to teach in a nearby school. Gradually, he abandons the Maoist textbook and encourages the barely literate kids to write about their own lives and feelings.

Young student Bai Xuemei is cheated and sold as a wife by human traffickers to a remote village. Raped and beaten, she leads the life of a sex slave and child-bearer with no hope of escape because of the villagers apathy and selfishness.

Abandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.

The village of Sleepy Hollow is getting ready to greet the new schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane, who is coming from New York. Crane has already heard of the village's legendary ghost, a headless horseman who is said to be searching for the head that he lost in battle. The schoolteacher has barely arrived when he begins to pursue the beautiful young heiress Katrina Van Tassel, angering Abraham Van Brunt, who is courting her. Crane's harsh, small-minded approach to teaching also turns some of the villagers against him. Soon there many who would like to see him leave the village altogether.

When an English cartographer arrives in Wales to tell the residents of the Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw that their 'mountain' is only a hill, the offended community sets out to remedy the situation.

A humble noodle-maker in a remote Chinese province, Ermo feels that she's being taken for granted by family and friends. She decides the best way to impress them is to bring home the biggest, most expensive television set she can find - no matter how many noodles she has to peddle.

The fictional world of Royston Vasey is facing apocalypse and the only way to avert disaster is for our nightmarish cast of characters to find a way into the real world and confront their creators. From present day Soho to the fictional film world of 17th Century Britain, the residents must overcome countless bizarre obstacles in their bid to return Royston Vasey to safety.

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

An old postman has spent his whole life delivering mail to the mountain of Hunan and is about to retire. His only son is due to take over his duties. As father and son journey through the mountains, the son begins to appreciate the toil and burden his father has to bear as postman for the villagers, and the old postman is also deeply moved as his son relates his mother's anxiety as she waits for him to return home from every trip.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Yu-liang leaves a brothel in a small Chinese town, to become the second wife of Mr. Pan. While Pan is away at the revolution in Yunnan, Yu-liang learns to paint and takes art classes at the Shanghai Art Institute, until it is closed for painting nudes. Because she cannot bear him a son, Yu-liang leaves Pan to his first wife, and studies art in Paris, where she wins an award for a nude self-portrait. She returns to join Pan in Nanking in the 1930's, and becomes a Professor until it is discovered that she came from a brothel. She returns to Paris to live the rest of her life there, and finally gains a major exhibition of her work.

Xu Daqin, a retired Chinese factory worker, returns to the remote Yunnan province, where he hopes to reconcile himself with the life and opportunity he passed up in this place 40 years ago.

A surprising look at the past of movie star Jackie Chan and the difficulties of Chinese families during the Culture Revolution.

The film follows a peasant couple, Zhao Deshan and his wife Xiuzhi, living in rural Yunnan province near Zhaotong in southern China. Their lives are thrown into upheaval when the local mayor “rewards” them with two foreign sheep donated by a former villager, now an official in Beijing. The couple is then tasked with breeding the sheep for their wool and to bring prosperity to their small community. Much to their chagrin, the sheep do not take to their new environment and the couple are forced into ever more ingenious ways of making the sheep appear greater than they really are. As they do so, they also come to value the sheep as companions in their family. When it becomes clear that the two “great” sheep are not the boon they were thought to be, the local authorities repossess the animals.

To the young people of Ellington the Supermarket was many different things. Another home, a place they'd known as long as they can remember. A one-of-a-kind place to work, build friendships and have as much fun as possible without getting caught. The heart of their town, a farming community with more cows than people and the last outpost for Rockwell's America. But this summer Ellington, the Supermarket, and the young people who cared for it the most will grow up. A modern day Capraesque tale about growing into adulthood in small town USA, 'The Supermarket' is a story of laughter, love, old rivalries, coming home for the summer, barely functional cars, small triumphs and tragic loss, late-night lawbreaking, fearing the future, food fights, standing together, and finding your place in the world.

Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.

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.

Ah Shui returns with her sister to a remote mountain village in Hunan (Western China) by car(an S.U.V.) and remembers episodes of her life that are related to a water project. Despite being a foggy and sometimes rainy area water is scarce and poverty is omnipresent.

In World War II, an American Air Force pilot of the Flying Tigers was flying over Yunnan province of southern China on a special mission, carrying vital information. He was shot down and captured by Japanese invasion forces. A small rescue party of American GIs teamed up with resistance guerrilla fighters in the minority tribes of the south. The GIs and local guerrilla together conducted an International Rescue of the pilot and his information vital to the war effort.

The story takes place in a primeval forest in southwest China, the forest near the village each time they suddenly encountered the beast attacked, there will be a wild man in distress rescued villagers, local villagers called mountain charm. A group of uninvited guests broke the silence of the forest: a suffering Tong reporters with his autistic son Tong of the forest came to encounter the mountain charm; animal protection station claiming poaching gangs at this time find this savage, Wu owners and others in pursuit of mountain charm. Mountain charm in the way of escape injury, Charm Tong of looking to the mountain after mountain charm slowly and become good friends. Tong of twice sneaked into the nest poaching gangs and fight poaching. Master Wu killed little monkey, Charm Tong of the mountain in order to revenge, set up numerous institutions in the forest, protected forest, the gang of poachers gang to justice.

Tv movie that reunites most the show's cast members. The Douglases move back to New York. But when Haney tries to get everyone's property so that a developer can build on them, the residents go to New York to get Douglas to help them. But he's a little hesitant.

This documentary unveils previously unseen footage of Jimi Hendrix's seminal performance at the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival playing his greatest hits in front of 300,000 people. With interviews from Hendrix and his fellow musicians, including Paul McCartney and Mitch Mitchell, the insight they provide casts a new light into the musician's personality and genius at the juncture of this important cultural gathering, hailed as the 'Southern Woodstock'.

Documentary following the story of teenager Jamie Campbell, who wants to be a drag queen. Growing up in an ex-mining village in County Durham, Jamie has already faced his fair share of difficulties after coming out as gay at 14. However, with the majority of his family and friends being supportive, he has decided that he is ready to share his passion with the world. He plans to embrace who he really is by attending his end of school prom in drag, but he doesn't get the reaction he'd hoped for from both his school and his own father. Jamie has to make some difficult decisions. Jamie spends time with an established drag artist and battles his demons, performing as his alter ego, Fifi La True, for the very first time in front of a large audience. As Jamie has some frank and intimate family moments, and finds out just how strong he really is, the film explores his hopes and fears for the future. Will he get the acceptance he craves from his peers and the confidence to be who he really is?

Documentary series made in China in the early 90s. Agland was an anthropologist and he’d already made a wonderful series in the 80s about the Baka tribe in Cameroon. For Beyond the Clouds, he spent several years in a small town in Yunnan province telling the stories of various characters he met. He focuses on normal people but in doing so tells us about China’s past as well as its present and the monumental change that was coming.

Based on a true story, this film follows a 7-year-old boy, Wawa, and his older sister, Naxiang, who live beside the Nujiang River in Yunnan Province, China. Every day, Naxiang crosses the river to attend school using an overhead cable, but their mother will not allow Wawa to use the cable. Eventually, Wawa secretly uses the cable to cross to the other side. The dangerous activity has deadly consequences, and the siblings’ lives are changed forever.

An enigmatic Japanese woman, abandoned by her wealthy Chinese husband in a remote Pacific Northwest village, becomes entwined in the lives of two rugged locals.

Hoppy, California and Lucky take refuge from a storm inside a supposedly abandoned church outside a ghost town, only to meet a young woman and her mother there, then find themselves surrounded by a gang of "workmen" intent on tearing down the church if they have to kill the five to do it.

"Huayao Bride in Shangri-la" (2005) features a beautiful and wild village girl of the Hua Yao Yi minority tribe in Yunnan. Dancing with flying dragons, she has to choose between love and her passion for the colourful dances.

The film takes the viewer on an embodied journey moving through a space in which its existence in the real or imagined is debatable. Alike how the alleyway is a physical bridge between two main streets, the film presents a series of juxtaposed images that might seem opposing at a glance – the seer and the seen, the outside and inside, young and old, low and high, the leaving, coming, and returning – but are co-existing elements that sustain the living and breathing of the alleyway. The tactility of witnessing inherently embodied by the 16 mm celluloid is mirrored by the witnessing(s) of the tourists, the residents, the non-human subjects in the space. Via a constructed soundscape in which sonic elements from eastern spirituality find their prominence amongst real-life sounds, and through an embodied camera eye that moves freely in the geographical space of the alley, the film evokes a sense of magical realism which gives texture to the meditation on the Chinese American identity.

In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.