followed by Q&A with Lihong Shi - videographer/environmental reporter

This 79-minute documentary follows the extraordinary and unprecedented campaign by farmers, NGOs and media to create a national debate around whether to dam Tiger Leaping Gorge on the Upper Yangtze River in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province. Tiger Leaping Gorge is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas World Heritage Site and one of the deepest and most spectacular river canyons in the world.

This campaign began when the central government passed a new environmental law, and for the first time in China's history, ordinary citizens had the right to speak out and take part in government decisions. Activists tested this new right and, for the time being, stopped the project. Featuring archival footage and interviews with a government insider and witnesses, the film follows the development of environmental consciousness in the People’s Republic of China. It focuses on the recent campaign by local villagers and farmers, NGOs and media to create a national debate around preserving China’s natural and cultural heritage. The campaign heralded the beginning of a grassroots environmental movement in China. The film has won numerous awards including the 2012 Grantham Prize for Environmental Reporting.

Waking the Green Tiger, 2011, directed and produced by Gary Marcuse, is the third in a series of documentaries commissioned by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for its long running series The Nature of Things which explore the emergence of environmental movements in North America (Nuclear Dynamite, 2000), Russia (Arktika, the Russian Dream that Failed, 2004) and now China.

Lihong Shi began her involvement as an environmental activist in 1996, and is among China’s earliest environmental reporters and grassroots activists. She has been involved in the conservation campaigns to save the habitat of the Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys and to stop illegal poaching of Tibetan antelopes. Since 2004 when she co-founded Wild China Film, she has been an independent documentary filmmaker committed to protecting nature through imagery. Her film “Voice of An Angry River” played a significant role in mobilizing local people to rise against the damming of Tiger Leaping Gorge. In collaboration with Gary Marcuse, she is currently working on a documentary on Buddhism’s contribution to nature conservation in China.

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