Ian Hart is a documentary and fiction film maker with more than 40 years experience in Australia, Europe, South-East Asia and China. A graduate of the London International Film School, Ian worked as a stringer cameraman in Europe and the USSR during the Prague Spring and its aftermath, then at Film Australia as assistant producer and director. Ian was line producer on major TV series in Thailand and Indonesia (see IMDB) and produced supporting documentation for schools. Ian has a PhD in Educational Technology and taught Film and Television at the University of Canberra. For 12 years he was Associate Professor and Head of the Interactive Media Group at the University of Hong Kong. Ian is also a scriptwriter and a film and theatre director.
A B O U T
IAN HART AND XIAO JUN ARE DIRECTORS OF PEACE MOUNTAIN PRODUCTIONS
Xiao Jun worked as a television journalist for Xi'an TV until she joined the WIN-TV/University of Canberra team as associate producer on Zouba!, a documentary TV series being shot in China in 1990. She came to Australia to assist with the post-production. Jun acquired a PhD in Communication, worked as an academic at the University of Canberra, an independent businesswoman and a senior public servant for the ACT Government.
Ian and Jun set up Peace Mountain Productions in Canberra 2011. We specialise in educational and arts documentary videos and are working actively on forging a co-production relationships with Chinese film companies. We have a strong relationship with ScreenACT and are active members of ACTSIA. In 2015 we signed a MOU with Inlook Beijing and in 2016 with Shanghai Bright Productions, to co-produce a slate of low-budget features.
Xiao Jun and Qian Haiyi (Shanghai Bright Pictures) discuss
Peace Mountain (Tai Ping Shan 太平山) is the Chinese name of the Peak on Hong Kong Island and of the district where the great plague of 1895 was centred—the subject of our feature film project Looking for Johnny Fong. It is also the name of several other peaks in China e.g. in Yilan and Fujian. Taiping is also a name that resonates in Chinese history, from the 14 year rebellion which preceded Sun Yat Sen’s revolution that led to the first Chinese Republic. The name also resonates with Australian history. A wave of Chinese miners swept into Australia, known as New Gold Mountain (新金山), in the 1850s and featured in the riots at Lambing Flat and the Eureka Stockade. The Chinese have been a part of Australian history from very soon after European settlement. (Even earlier according to the historian Gavin Menzies — 1421: The Year China Discovered the World).