Up the Yangtze June 13, 2008

Chinese Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang's UP THE YANGTZE, a documentary set in the shadows of the Three Gorges Dam project, opens June 13, 2008. UP THE YANGTZE, a Zeitgeist Films release, runs 93 minutes, is in Mandarin with English subtitles and is not MPAA rated.


A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze, navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as “The River.” The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river’s edge, a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam, contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle, provides the epic backdrop for UP THE YANGTZE, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside the 21st century Chinese dream. Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang crafts a depiction of peasant life, a powerful narrative of contemporary China, and a disquieting glimpse into a future that awaits us all.


About the Filmmaker

Yung Chang is a Canadian filmmaker currently based in Montreal, where he earned a degree in film production in 1999 from Concordia University. His parents are both first-generation Chinese immigrants to Canada. Through their influence, Yung maintains a strong interest in contemporary Chinese issues. Since 1996, he has spent extended periods in China and has traveled throughout the country. His first documentary film, EARTH TO MOUTH is a meditation on migrant farm labor, food production and Canada's Chinese community. It circulated widely on the international festival circuit, winning several awards. He is also a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, where he studied the Meisner technique. He makes innovative use of this methodology in his first feature-length documentary, UP THE YANGTZE, in which the highly contested Three Gorges Dam forms a dramatic and unsettling backdrop for a moving and richly detailed narrative of a peasant family negotiating unprecedented historic changes.

Official Website: http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=uptheyangtze