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The Solitary Mountain

Gu Tao

Release year: 2014

Run time: 60 mins

Film type: Documentary

Synopsis

"Ulubu Iron" in Oroqen is translated into Chinese as "Gushan". It is an Oroqen township in the north of Inner Mongolia.

A former hunter contracted Lippo’s horse farm in the mountains and keeps more than 100 Oroqen hunting horses in a traditional manner. Although hunting is banned, Ge Libao occasionally goes into the mountains, not to hunt, but to abide by the hunting culture of his ancestors. Liangliang, Libao’s son, and his partners are inseparable from the forest, but they are more enthusiastic about modern extreme sports. They have formed a cross-country motorcycle team which consumes their youthful passion.

One day in the summer, when Lippo’s horse is shot by a poacher’s bullet, the Ulubu Iron sky is covered with a layer of gray.

 

Director biography

Gu Tao was born in 1970 in Inner Mongolia, China, where his father was an ethnographer and photographer. Gu graduated in 1995 from Inner Mongolia Art College with a major in oil painting. After studying photography at the China Academy of Art in Beijing, he started making documentaries, many of which have one awards at international film festivals (Yamagata 2011, Singapore 2012). Gu Tao pursues his ethnographic documentary vocation from a home in the artists’ village of Songzhuang, Beijing.