Trudie Styler was deeply moved when she learned Moving the Mountain: The Tian’anmen Square Massacre, the 1994 documentary she produced with Gorillas in the Mist director Michael Apted, was being screened in New York City and around the world on Dec. 10 in honor of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who languishes in prison for speaking out for democracy in communist China.
“Michael and I are extremely touched that the film was selected to be played as part of the tributes to the Nobel Laureate this year,” the actress, film producer, director, human rights activist, UNICEF ambassador — and, of course, wife of iconic rocker, Sting — (with whom she founded The Rainforest Foundation Fund) tells Tonic exclusively.
Moving the Mountain, which won the International Documentary Association’s prize for best documentary in 1994, tells the story of the student-led pro-democracy movement in Beijing that turned to bloodshed in June 1989 when the People’s Liberation Army fired on protesters in Tian’anmen Square. Xiaobo joined the hunger strike in the square and sought peaceful negotiations between the students and the government.
On Dec. 10, the 62nd anniversary of the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights, and coincidentally the day Xiaobo was supposed to collect his award, Culture Project, New York City’s premiere theatrical venue for political theater, joined with the Cinema for Peace Foundation to screen the film in Xiaobo’s honor.
After the screening, Styler and Apted joined Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, which has been campaigning for Xiaobo’s release, in a panel discussion.
Styler says she is deeply saddened that Xiaobo was unable to accept the award himself — the first time since 1936 that a Nobel Laureate was unable to accept the prize in person. But, Styler says, she hopes the film “will draw light around this subject and to this extremely magnanimous human being who dedicated his peace prize ‘to all those who have sacrificed their lives in non-violent struggle for peace, democracy and freedom,’ as he said.”
In December, 2009, Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in Chinese prison — the fourth time he has been detained as a prisoner of conscience — for co-authoring “Charter 08,” a proposal for political and legal reform in China. He was charged with “inciting subversion of state power,” which the Beijing Municipal Higher People’s Court upheld in October.
Styler says she hopes audiences will see how far-reaching ramifications of the 1989 massacre remain. “What comes out of stories like this is that we are sharply reminded that this is a communist government that wants to do big business with the West and yet their human rights violations continue at an alarming rate,” she says. “Anyone who is courageous enough to speak out there is quickly squashed. It’s a call to consciousness for those of us in the West. We should raise our voices and let our voices be heard.”
Recounting Tragedy
Styler and Apted, the award-winning director of hit films including Coal Miner’s Daughter and Nell, who had directed her in 1985′s Bring on the Night, began working on the film in January 1990. “It was the first film I produced,” she says.
They traveled to China after meeting Li Lu, a Chinese student democracy leader in Tian’anmen Square.
Styler bought the rights to his book, Moving the Mountain: My Life as a Child in China from the Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square about growing up during Chairman Mao’s terrifying Cultural Revolution, the arrest and exile of his parents and the events leading up to and including the 1989 massacre.
Li eventually fled Beijing. “Quite a few of escaped because the Chinese government made a most-wanted list and Li Lu was number 14 on the list,” says Styler. “They were told if they were caught they would face a lifetime in prison or execution. They fled, with no visible means of income.”
Styler says she bought the rights to his book as a way to help him through school at Columbia University in New York City, where he ended up. “He is brilliant,” she says. “He was the only student in their history books to study economics, business and law, and graduate in three years. He spoke very little English when I met him.” (Today, Li is a top fund manager and investor who was once rumored to be named to the top investors team at Berkshire Hathaway when its chairman and CEO, billionaire Warren Buffett, retires. Li remains on China’s most-wanted list.)
A Dangerous Undertaking
The BBC was covering the Tian’anmen protest “brilliantly,” until the tanks came, says Styler. “Then all the cameras left. The million people who were largely assembled left, but the student body stayed on the square. Many of them lost their lives in the next 24 hours that followed.”
Styler and Apted, who secretly filmed the documentary in Beijing, as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan, obtained rare footage of some of the students being gunned down.
The film angered the Chinese government. “We were told to cease and desist and were blacklisted from going to China,” she says. “We were a little bit nervous while we were there, because we had smuggled in a camera and film and there may have been time in prison before we were bailed out.”
Styler says she was less concerned about her own fate than getting critical information about the massacre out to the world. “I was so committed to the project and Michael was, too,” she says. “Having spoken to the students who were there who saw their fellow class members being shot down…the cause became bigger than, ‘What will happen to us?’
To this day, Styler remains on China’s blacklist. When Sting was invited to China years after she made the documentary, she says, “He was told that his wife was not welcome. He said, ‘Then I will not be taking up your invitation.’ It’s a badge of honor because I have no regrets about making this film.”
Freedom For Those Who Speak Out
Styler is optimistic that Xiaobo will be freed, though she says it will be challenging. “There has to be a great will and passion to achieve it, but Bill Clinton showed that during his tenure when he got some of the students out and into safety,” she says. “But there has to be the will. Sadly, it’s very far from people’s minds”
The Internet — with so many kinds of viral campaigns — is a powerful way to incite change, for example, by visiting www.amnestyusa.org, she says. “The Internet is a great way to campaign for Xiaobo’s release. This is the moment for us to come together as a global family and say to China, “This is not acceptable and until you set Liu Xiaobo and other prisoners of conscience free, we won’t be doing business with you. We should not do business with a country who incarcerates people just for believing in something different.”
Photos of Trudie Styler with Li Lu and director Michael Apted courtesy of Trudie Styler/Xingu Films.