Across the Plateau

Seven retired Chinese from different backgrounds and life experiences come together to form a cycling team. They take an extraordinary journey from the industrial city of Lanzhou in north-west China, across the Tangula Mountain and Tibetan plateau to Lhasa and finally to the Everest Base Camp. The whole journey is 3,100 kilometers and takes the cyclists across five mountains with altitudes of over 5,200 meters. After conquering countless difficulties, they eventually realize their

long-cherished dream, to cross the Roof of the World on bicycles. Among these seven, the oldest is 66, a man who had a brush with death when he suffered a stroke. Another was left paralyzed for a year after being poisoned in an industrial accident. There are two women among the team. All come from Guangzhou, the metropolis in southern China also known as Canton, and the first city to open to the outside world under Deng Xiao Ping’s reforms. In the highly commercialized city, people have changed significantly over the last twenty years. Lives are dominated by materialism and the quest for wealth, a sharp contrast to the Maoist days. But these seven men and women are looking to find fulfillment by setting themselves a grueling personal challenge.

Zhang Zeming was born in Guangzhou and grew up in the Pearl River Film Studio. His formal education was halted in 1966 by the Cultural Revolution and in 1968 he was sent to work on a rubber plantation in Hainan Island. He returned to the studio in 1978, working as a production assistant. He wrote his own screenplays and studied Chinese literature with the Guangdong TV University. The studio was impressed by his script Swan Song (85) and invited him to direct the film as part of an initiative to encourage young film-makers. He went on to direct Dan Yi (86), for the TV, and Sun and Rain (87). He went to the UK in 1989, working on projects with the BBC and British Film Institute, culminating in the making of A Date in Portland Street (94) and Foreign Moon (95). He directed also the documentary The Land of the White Cloud (2001). Paul Liu was born in 1955 in Guangzhou and has graduated in Beijing Film Academy (1986) and in Australian Film, Television & Radio School (1995). He has worked as sound assistant, editor, and cameraman.

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA