Gu, Tao

Gu Tao is an award-winning ethnographic and documentary ]ilmmaker. He was born in 1970 in Inner Mongolia, China, at the base of the Great Xing’an Mountains. His ]ilms have been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival among others. Gu graduated in 1995 from Inner Mongolia Art College with a major of oil painting.When he was a child, his father Gu Deqing was an ethnographer and photographer, who had his time and energy on documenting the nomadic tribes in the mountains near their home. In 2005, Gu Tao began following in his father’s footsteps, traveling back to Great Xing’an Mountains to make a documentary about its original residents, the Ewenki people. Gu Tao’s focus, however, was different from his father’s, as he saw the way of life that had been severely limited by governmental intrusion and environmental destruction since the 1970s when his father on work. He paid attention to the dying traditions of life, and focused on how marginalized groups are adapting to the modern world. Over the years, Gu Tao has completed many documentaries on the living condition of ethnic minorities in contemporary Northeast China, which include Aoluguya, Aoluguya (2007), Yuguo and His Mother (2010), The Last Moose of Aoluguya (2013), and Lost Mountain (2014).