Color/60min/DVCAM/2008
By: Yan Yu
E-mail: wcyygzs#yahoo.cn

Festivals and Awards：
2008 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam
2009 Hong Kong International Film Festival

Program Note:
Gongtan is a village located on the banks of the Wu River, a tributary of the Yangtze. It has a history of over 1700 years.
In 2007, the Datang International Power Generation Company built a dam on the Wu’s upper reaches. The people of Gongtan were going to be relocated.
While their father Ran Qicai, an old boat tracker, lies in bed ill, his sons Ran Qingsong, a barber, and Ran Si, a cell-phone shop proprietor, pull the people of Gongtan together to make a stand against the village’s relocation.
But while the will of the townspeople wavers amid pressure and suspicion, the two self-appointed leaders step up and fight fiercely for their rights. This is a struggle to save their land and homes.
Ran Qicai succumbs to illness. As the sound of bulldozers mingles with the sounds of the funeral, the houses fall, heralding the end of an era.

Director:
This piece is the continuation of an ongoing personal pursuit on hydroelectric dams that began with Before the Flood I (in collaboration with Li Yifan). Though the Pengshui Dam has not attracted the same worldwide attention as the Three Gorges Dam, it will force a small-scale relocation of a 1700 year-old town. Here I explore the effect that this move will have on the people who have lived there for generations, as well as their attitudes and reactions to the imposed migration. The complete relocation process is also part of my documentation of the changes taking place in Chongqing.

Yan Yu (b.1971. Chongqing)
Yu Yan worked as a video journalist at Chongqing TV from 1994 to 1998, and as a cameraman for documentaries and advertisements in Beijing from 1998 to 2001. He began making documentary films in 1996. His Before the Flood I (made in collaboration with Li Yifan) won numerous prestigious awards worldwide, including the Wolfgang Staudte Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Cinéma du réel Scam International Award, the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Grand Prize and the YUNFEST Grand Prize.

Filmography：
The People of Zhalong (“Zhalong de ren,” in collaboration with Zhang Lu)（1997）
Mother (“Muqin”)（2000）
Before the Flood I (“Yanmo I,” in collaboration with Li Yifan)（2005）
Still Life (“Sanxia Haoren,” in collaboration with Zhan Jiake)（2005）
Before the Flood II: Gongtan (“Yanmo 2—Gangtan”) （2008）