Documentary footage taken in the square shows them arm in arm,happy, surrounded by cheering students. Knowing their time togethermight be short, they enter a tent that is erected on the spot. "Ihad never been with a woman," Li Lu remembers. "We had just begunto undress, but never got a chance to perform our duty." They wereinterrupted by growing tension in the square. Before long the troopsbegan to move, and the lovers were separated. "I never saw heragain," Li Lu says.
Now a graduate with three degrees from Columbia University, hetells this story during an interview in New York with Michael Apted,director of "Moving the Mountain." Li Lu is one of several leaderswho tell their stories in the film; some are in New York, some arescattered overseas (Paris, Hong Kong) and one is still in hiding inBeijing.
The larger story of Tiananmen Square has been told many times,symbolized by a remarkable live shot of a single student facing downthe approach of a tank. What this film documents are some of thesmaller stories that went into it. Apted talks to several of the keyleaders, who still express disbelief that the People's Army wouldfire on Chinese citizens, and who blame themselves (sometimes withtears) for not being "adequate" to protect the lives of theirfollowers.
No one knows for sure how many people were killed in theTiananmen massacre. "When they said (on government broadcasts) thetroops had not fired, that is how we knew they had fired," says oneof the leaders of the movement for Chinese democracy. "When theysaid no one had been killed, that is how we knew many people had beenkilled - not one or two, but many, because otherwise they would nothave mentioned it."
Apted is a remarkable figure among directors for his lifelongpractice of moving between fiction films and documentaries. Hisfeatures include "Coal Miner's Daughter," "Gorillas in the Mist,""Blink" and the recent "Nell." At the same time, he has continuedthe "7-Up" films, a series tracking the lives of the same group ofpeople every seven years. His other documentaries are on subjectssuch as a shooting at the Oglala Indian reservation, the RollingStones and Sting.
In "Moving the Mountain," where original video source materialis thin, he augments the narration of Li Lu and the others withfictional flashbacks to their memories. In the case of Li Lu, whathe shows is a life typical of those who grew up during theneo-puritanical time of the Cultural Revolution.
Li Lu was taken from his parents while still a baby because hisfather, a Russian-trained engineer, and his mother, the daughter oflandowners, were deemed in need of ideological correction at workcamps. He was reared by a series of foster parents, none of whomwanted him, and then in an orphanage where he was mocked because ofhis class.
He remembers clearly the turning point: While standing in acorner for punishment, he looks down to see a lizard creeping acrosshis bare foot. He believes that when this happens, the foot willsoon fall off. When he still has his foot the next morning, hebelieves he can survive anything, and indeed he does survive, growingup to read everything he can get his hands on, and finally travelingby train to Beijing to take part in the demonstrations and hungerstrikes that led to the showdown at Tiananmen.
"Moving the Mountain" is not as gripping as it perhaps couldhave been, because Apted does not have access to footage from thesquare he no doubt would have liked to include (such footage probablyhas not survived). What he does have is extraordinary, however, andat a time when China's human rights policies are again in the air,and the annexation of Hong Kong grows closer, "Moving the Mountain"is an extraordinary glimpse behind the scenes of a country lurchingwith difficulty toward democracy.
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