These are a few examples of freely available online web resources on Chinese film. As with any online resource, you should be careful if choosing to cite from freely web pages in your research. At the same time, just because it is free, does not make it invalid. Be sure to consider where the information is coming from, who wrote it, and what biases can you assume about the author based on their writing and their website. For more information see How to Evaluate Resources on the World Wide Web.

Internet Movie database is perhaps the most well known and comprehensive resource for movies and TV Shows available on the web. It also has a number of features to aid in searching for Chinese film:

Country Browser: China

Country Browser: Hong Kong

Country Browser: Taiwan

Search for films from China: mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (oftentimes, but not always, differentiated by the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese languages).

Titles in Mandarin

Tiles in Cantonese

Browse through a list of Mandarin only or Cantonese only materials by title

Search Tips

Typically the easiest way to search IMDB is by title as that is the default setting for searches. Searching for Chinese films is done by searching the English title, i.e. "Yellow Earth". Chinese films are always listed by the transliteration of their Chinese titles, which does not allow for character searching. For the linguists, NOTE that the English title may differ greatly from the original Chinese.

An easy way to find out more about a director, say Zhang Yimou, is to look up "Raise the Red Lantern" and click on director to view the list of films that have been directed by Yimou Zhang. Or you can directly search "Zhang Yimou" to locate Raise the Red Lantern.