Tu Qiao

For a long time, Tu Qiao has been dedicating herself to exploring films and TV programmes which feature people living in the margin or at the bottom of society. At the end of 2000, she published a long non-fiction novel entitled “The Sore of Century: The First Chinese Full Record on AIDS Patients”. In the same year, together with her partner Chen Yuanzhong, she shot a documentary entitled “Xiao Lu, a Patient of AIDS”, which records the process in which the life of Xiao Lu (the first Chinese AIDS patient who dared to face the media) gradually vanished in his last 180 days. This film was broadcasted at more than 100 Chinese TV stations including CCTV, HNTV and Dragon TV. CCTV broadcasted this film for 12 times through different channels. In the next year, Tu Qiao was designated by “the Year-end Inventory” of “New Weekly” as one of “the Eight Men of China”. In 2004, Tu Qiao was appraised by the “Half the Sky” column of CCTV as “the Most Wonderful Woman in China”. From 2006 to 2008, she shot a documentary entitled “A Wrong Path, and A Homeward Journey” invested by Guangdong Anti-drug Foundation. As a teaching material, this film which features the psychological course of drug abusers under detoxification has been broadcast at high schools, colleges, reeducation-through- labor centers, prisons and other sites in Guangdong for nearly 1800 times. It has aroused an unusually strong response. From 2008 to 2012, with a self-raised fund, in such forms as secretly investigating tourists, Tu Qiao arduously shot “Luna Bears”, the first Chinese documentary which exposes the truth of cruelly extracting gallbladder from live bears. “Luna Bears” has been successively awarded “the Film with the Highest Educational Value” at the Fifth International Panda, Animal and Natural Film Week, Ya’an, China, “the Award of Protection” at 2012 Telenatura Film Festival in Spain, and “Communication of Public Interest Power”, “the Best Tour Guide” and “the Award of Judging Panel” at 2012 One Foundation Video Festival. On June 26, 2012, a documentary film entitled Phoenix Road (two parts) created a miracle again in the online audience ratings among Chinese documentary films. The shooting of this film lasted for 6 years, during which 9 drug-taking women were followed. The film narrates the tragic fate of these women who came from different origins and lived on a street named Phoenix Road. With shocking pictures, this film is reputed as “an outstanding anti-drug documentary in China”. This film was put on Youku, the first video website in China, and was clicked more than one million times within three hours. So far, it has been clicked for more than 7 million times.