Yung Chang is a Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal. He has a degree in film production from Montreal's Concordia University and has studied the Meisner technique at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse.
His first documentary film, Earth To Mouth, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, won praise for its beautifully crafted meditation on food production and migrant labour. He displays a remarkable sense of cinematic storytelling in his first feature-length documentary, Up the Yangtze, in which the contested Three Gorges Dam forms an unsettling backdrop to a richly detailed narrative of life inside contemporary China.
Wang Shi Qing is a cinematographer and independent filmmaker based in Beijing. A graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, he has been the director of photography on over 120 productions, ranging from TV dramas and music videos to commercials and documentaries.
He both directed and shot the short films Drifting Dust (2002), about migrant labour, and SARS in Beijing (2003), which won awards at the 2nd Asian International Short Film Festival and the Isfahan International Short Film Festival.
He is currently directing a documentary for China Central Television about the opium trade and ruby mining that occurs along the Mekong River.
A native of Toulouse, France, Olivier Alary is a Montreal-based musician and composer who has released his own recordings, as well as composing for film and exhibitions.
A former student of architecture, Alary created Ensemble in 1998 as a musical persona to explore the encounter between melodic noise and disjointed pop. He moved to London, England, and in 2000 he released his first album with Rephlex Records, Sketch Proposals, under the name Ensemble.
Sketch Proposals caught the attention of Bjork, and Alary's remixes of two of her songs-"Sun in My Mouth" and "Cocoon"-were released as b-sides. He went on to co-write the song "Desired Constellation" with Bjork on her 2004 album, Medulla.
Alary's follow-up album, the self-titled Ensemble, blends symphonic wall-of-sound with intimate folk-pop vocals, and was released in 2006. It features vocal performances by Chan Marshall (of Cat Power fame), Lou Barlow and Mileece; drums by Adam Pierce; and orchestral arrangements by Johannes Malfatti, performed by Germany's Babelsberg Film Orchestra.
Olivier has also composed music for several exhibitions at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, contributed to an installation by Doug Aitken at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and has received an honorary mention at the Ars Electronica Festival for his project Chlorgeschlecht. He has also collaborated with photographer Nick Knight.
He composed original music for Up the Yangtze.
Hannele Halm is one of Canada's most experienced non-fiction editors. She is a veteran of some 50 documentaries, including 10 feature-length films.
A native of Finland, she came to Canada some 30 years ago to attend film school at York University. Since then she has most often worked at the National Film Board with veteran filmmakers like Paul Cowan, Kent Martin, John Walker and Barbara Doran. Her credits include Westray, When Women Kill and Donald Brittain: Filmmaker.
More recently, her talents have been appreciated by a whole new generation of documentarians-emerging filmmakers such as Rohan Fernando (Blood and Water and Trudeau's Other Children), Sergeo Kirby (Wal-Town) and the co-directing team of Samir Mallal and Ben Addelman (Discordia and Bombay Calling).
In addition to editing Up the Yangtze, directed by Yung Chang, she also edited his 2002 film, Earth to Mouth.
In this age of gigantic shooting ratios-200 hours of rushes for a two-hour film is not uncommon-her ability to craft a compelling story from a wealth of diverse material is highly valued.
Hannele Halm lives in Montreal with Lola, her rescued greyhound, and her husband, Giles Walker, a rescued filmmaker.
Li Li is a Canadian actress/producer currently based in Montreal, Quebec. She has a double major in Digital Image and Sound and Computer Applications and a minor in Theatre from Montreal's Concordia University.
Li Li helped to bring Up the Yangtze from pre-development to completion. She worked as associate producer, researcher, translator, interviewer and occasional boom operator.
Before working with EyeSteelFilm, Li Li was an actress in a number of films and television shows, including lead actress for Song, a Jutra nominated movie; and a recurring guest star role on the award winning TV series Fries with That II. Recently Li Li was the dialect coach to international star and actress, Michelle Yeoh, on the Hollywood film The Mummy III.
EyeSteelFilm is a Montreal-based production company dedicated to using film as a catalyst for social and political change. Founded by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, the company specializes in documentaries and interactive media aimed at empowering groups historically ignored by mainstream media.
EyeSteelFilm made its mark with a trilogy of films about homelessness in Canada: Danny Boy (1993), The Street: a film with the homeless (1996) and SPIT: Squeegee Punks in Traffic (2002). These films chronicled a generation that fell victim to social funding cuts, political apathy, alcoholism and drug use. They also provided a template for blending cinéma-vérité, activism and interactivity.
In SPIT: Squeegee Punks in Traffic, a camera was given to a street kid named Roach, who had been living rough in Montreal. Over a period of three years, viewers see Roach transform from a drug-addicted street kid to filmmaker. He went on to direct three documentaries with EyeSteelFilm, including Punk le Vote!, which was selected for the 2007 Hot Docs film festival.
EyeSteelFilm branched out to make films on a range of topics. Inuuvunga: I am Inuk I am Alive documents the coming-of-age of young people in a modern Inuit village, while Music for a Blue Train goes underground to the musicians who perform in Montreal's metro system.
Moving beyond film production, EyeSteelFilm also created the interactive documentary project HomelessNation.org, a Web-based initiative that features user-generated content from across Canada, creating a forum where filmmakers and homeless people collaborate to democratize digital technology and document the homeless experience.
The feature documentary Up the Yangtze is the third EyeSteelFilm production that examines modern China. Bone (2005) features Willy Tsao's Beijing Modern Dance Company in the first China-Canada dance co-production, and Chairman George (2006) profiles a Greek-Canadian troubadour who has developed an unusual career and following in contemporary China.
Up the Yangtze is directed by Yung Chang. The EyeSteelFilm producers on the project are Mila Aung-Thwin and John Christou. The executive producer for EyeSteelFilm is Daniel Cross.
Lixin Fan is a filmmaker who recently immigrated to Canada from China. In 2003 he edited To Live Is Better Than to Die, which won a Peabody and a Grierson Award for its account of China's AIDS problem. The film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and broadcast on CBC, BBC, TV2 and PBS.
Lixin worked as associate producer, sound recordist and translator on Up the Yangtze.
Germaine Ying-Gee Wong's distinguished career with the National Film Board of Canada spans three decades, with numerous credits in documentary and feature film.
In 2001 she was a producer on the landmark Canadian feature film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Co-produced by the NFB, this first Inuit-language drama was hailed as a masterpiece by New York Times film critic AO Scott, and won many international awards, including the prestigious Camera d'or for Best First Feature Film at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival. The film also took home five Genie Awards (Canada's top film honour) including Best Picture.
In 2004, Wong received a Genie nomination for the documentary Mr. Mergler's Gift. Directed by Academy-Award-winner Beverly Shaffer, the film is a moving account of a student and her mentor? and a lyrical reflection on the transcendent power of music.
Other documentary credits include the award-winning Okimah, about the Cree goose hunt, and Music for A Blue Train, which documents the struggles of subway musicians in Montreal.
Daniel Cross is the founding co-owner of EyeSteelFilm, a documentary
production house in Montreal. Other feature documentaries projects in production include;
Basement Tapes, Taqwacore, Last Train Home, Atanasoff and Les Tickets.
Cross' award-winning theatrical documentaries include SPIT: Squeegee Punks in Traffic, The
Street: A film with the homeless and Chairman George: from Athens
to Beijing. TV documentaries include Too Colourful for the League, nominated for a
Gemini Award and Inuuvunga: I am Inuk I am alive, all screened in festivals around the world.
Current new media projects include www.homelessnation.org
and www.opensourcecinema.org, groundbreaking social
activist projects.
Daniel has served on the National Boards of the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association
(CFTPA), the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), L'observatoire du documentaire and the Hot
Docs Film Festival. In 2006 Daniel was honored as the Canadian Film Mentor of the Year.
Daniel is a film professor at Concordia University and a founding member of The Concordia
Documentary Centre where he co-hosted the Visible Evidence XII Conference and was convener of
the "Documentary Democracy" workshops.