Produced and Directed by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon, and Edited by David Carnochan:

THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE (1995), a documentary exploring the 1989 protest movement in the context of the political habits and attitudes that have come to inform public life in China over the past century. THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE has received several awards, including a George Foster Peabody Award, and both the International Critics Prize and Best Social and Political Documentary at the Banff Television Festival. (Associate Director and Co-Writer Geremie Barmé)

ABODE OF ILLUSION (1992), an hour-long film about Chang Dai-chien, a famous modern Chinese painter who is arguably the greatest forger of all time.

ONE VILLAGE IN CHINA (1987), a three-part series examining life in Long Bow, a rural community 400 miles southwest of Beijing (broadcast on PBS, BBC, Arts & Entertainment Cable and throughout Europe and Asia). ONE VILLAGE IN CHINA includes:

1. SMALL HAPPINESS, which explores sexual politics in rural China with segments on love and marriage, foot-binding, child-bearing and birth control. Completed in 1984.
2. TO TASTE A HUNDRED HERBS, which explores themes of religion and medicine by examining the life of Dr. Shen, a Catholic village doctor. Completed in 1986.
3. ALL UNDER HEAVEN, which chronicles the history of Long Bow over several decades - from the Revolution in 1949 and collectivization in the 1950's through the recent shift to private farming. Completed in 1985.

FIRST MOON (1987), a thirty-minute documentary about lunar New Year celebrations in the Chinese countryside.

STILT DANCERS (1981), a thirty-minute film about stilt dancing.

YIN YU TANG: A CHINESE HOME (2003), a seventeen-minute film about a house that was moved from a Chinese village and re-assembled for the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

GUONIAN (2003), a sixteen-minute film about rural New Year's festivities and rituals in southern China.

GUOMEN (2003), a sixteen-minute film about wedding preparations and rituals in a southern Chinese village.

SELECTED AWARDS & FEATURED SCREENING

2004-2003: MORNING SUN: John E. O'Connor Film Award - American Historical Association; Berlin Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival, Banff Television Festival, San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, SilverDocs (AFI/Discovery Channel), Vancouver Film Festival, Film Forum - New York, Museum of Fine Arts - Boston.

1997: Featured Retrospective, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE: George Foster Peabody Award; International Critics Prize, Banff Television Festival; Best Social and Political Documentary, Banff Television Festival; Nomination for a National News & Documentary Emmy Award; Award for Excellence, American Anthropological Association

1996: THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE: Golden Spire, San Francisco Film Festival; Best of Festival, New England Film & Video Festival; Hong Kong Film Festival

1995: THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE: New York Film Festival; Berlin Film Festival

1994: Featured Retrospective, Margaret Mead Film Festival

1993: ABODE OF ILLUSION: CINE Golden Eagle

1988: SMALL HAPPINESS: George Foster Peabody Award; FIRST MOON: Golden Gate Award, San Francisco Film Festival; TO TASTE A HUNDRED HERBS: Earthwatch Film Award

1986: ALL UNDER HEAVEN: Earthwatch Film Award

1985: SMALL HAPPINESS: New Directors/New Films Festival, Museum of Modern Art; CINE Golden Eagle; Grand Prix, Festival du Monde Rural (France)

1984: SMALL HAPPINESS: Silver Hugo, Chicago Film Festival

1982: STILT DANCERS: Best Short Documentary, Hemisfilm International; Best Short Documentary, Nyon Festival of Documentaries

---

About the Directors of Morning Sun:

Director, Producer, and Interviewer Carma Hinton was born in Beijing in 1949, and lived there until she was twenty-one; Chinese is her first language and culture. She is a scholar as well as a filmmaker. She has a Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University and is a Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University. She has also taught courses in Chinese language, history, and culture at Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wellesley and Northeastern. The Morning Sun project has been deeply influenced by Hinton’s personal and first-hand understanding of the politics and history of the period, and her direct witness of and participation in many of the events of the Cultural Revolution, which began when she was sixteen years old. All interviews were conducted by Hinton in Chinese.

Director, Producer and Writer Geremie R. Barmé lived and studied in China during the last years of the Cultural Revolution. He is the author of two collections of essays in Chinese, coeditor of Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience (New York, 1988) and New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices (New York, 1992). He is the author of Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (New York, 1996), In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York, 1999), and An Artistic Exile: A Life of Feng Zikai (1898-1975) (Berkeley, 2002), and editor and main translator of the journalist Sang Ye’s latest volume of Chinese oral histories, Chairman Mao’s Ark: The People on the People’s Republic (forthcoming, 2003). His many translations include Ba Jin’s essays, Random Thoughts (Hong Kong, 1984), and the Cultural Revolution memoirs of Yang Jiang, Lost in the Crowd (Melbourne 1989). He was an associate director and co-writer of the documentary film The Gate of Heavenly Peace (1995). He is a research Professor in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University where he is also the editor of the journal East Asian History.

Director, Producer, and Cameraman Richard Gordon has been involved with numerous projects in China as director of photography or producer. His credits include work for National Geographic, the National Film Board of Canada, NOVA, the independent feature documentary DISTANT HARMONY: PAVAROTTI IN CHINA, and the PBS series CHINA IN REVOLUTION. For his previous work, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986 and a Rockefeller Intercultural Film/Video Fellowship in 1988.

Top of page