Moving the Mountain

A powerful, informative and sometimes deeply moving documentary about China's Tianamen Square protests in 1989; what led up to them, how they went down, and their aftermath for the participants.

Both the interviews and the historical footage are riveting.

What isn't quite as solid is Apted's choice to stage reenactments, and sometimes intercut them into the middle of real footage. It can feel hokey and unneeded.

But that one minor glitch is not enough to seriously damage such an important and worthy work.

It's a shame that such an important and alive work on recent history has been allowed to go out of print in the US, although some of the better video stores still have copies.

What happened in 1989 was grandeur. I am not sure what this is called. The first ten minutes, one student leader talked about his childhood which really has nothing to do with the 1989 students' democracy movement. So it is not a 100% documentary about it.

And basically, he spent the whole time talking about himself, he was sort of a narrator for this film. They even found someone who looked like him to act as him when he was a boy. The film would be more effective, if they actually have someone in the background to tell the viewers from the beginning till the end of the student democracy movement and filled it with personal interviews, raw footages, etc.

A good documentary about the movement can easily make viewers cry. This one lacks of the emotional elements. It doe have real shocking footages which I have never seen before.

I watched the DVD, it doesn't have closed caption or English subtitle. Some of the people who appeared in film speak with an accent, so sometimes it is hard to understand them.

"Moving the Mountain" does an excellent job of showing the complexity of a protest movement as it develops, apparently, spontaneously. The film roots the origins of the Tiananmen Square protests in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Although shifts in Chinese governmental policy and Glasnost in Russia gave the participants the courage to ask for a dialogue about greater democracy, the Chinese government feared the instability created by a group of people questioning the government. The film will give you a sober account of the innocence and naivety of a group of young people who simply want to make a change for the better in their country. With the continuing globalization protests and the creation of the `Patriot Acts', this film is quite relevant for a glimpse into the motivations that bring diverse groups together in a common cause, not to mention the intolerance of the people in power to the public questioning of their policies. "Moving the Mountain" provides one example of the many protest movements that occur around the world, meeting with varying levels of repression. This film is well worth viewing and may stimulate a hunger to find out more about the conditions in China as well as other protest movements.

This excellent documentary traces the lives of a group of student leaders, their role in the 1989 democracy movement in China, and what happened to them after the tanks moved in to Tiananmen Square. This film is harrowing, as many of those interviewed are still traumatised by their experience (the film was made four years after the protests were crushed) and are living in exile. Even so, the film is important for the lessons to be learned about building a movement and resisting an authoritarian regime. It also raises many questions about leadership, responsibility, and guilt when things go wrong. And it's not all depressing - it does present a dramatic account of an extraordinary moment in 20th century history. All human rights activists should see this film -if for no other reason than to remember what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989. I showed it in 1999 at our local university to an Amnesty International group; and last week showed it to a group of human rights activists, to commemorate all those unknown people who lost their lives in the struggle for democracy, and to remember the courage of all who participated in those events.