Escape From Huang Shi
Momentum Pictures presents the dramatic, war-torn epic Escape From Huang Shi from the award-winning director Roger Spottiswoode (Tomorrow Never Dies) released on DVD on 11 May 2009.
The outstanding cast includes Golden Globe® winner Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors, Mission Impossible III, Bend it Like Beckham), Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland, Phone Booth), Chow Yun Fat (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Dragon Ball), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha) and David Wenham (Australia, Lord of the Rings, 300).
Escape From Huang Shi is a brutal and compelling story based on true events that took place during the 2nd World War. In 1937 George Hogg (Rhys Meyers), a young English journalist travels to war ravaged China in search of the frontline and a big story.
What he must overcome, he could not nearly of imagined. When the Japanese invade and massacre hundreds of innocent men, women and children in front of him, Hogg, barely escapes with his life.
This brave young journalist then risks everything to lead sixty children, orphaned by the war, across hundreds of miles of treacherous terrain on the Silk Road, fending off air and ground attacks by the Japanese invaders and Chinese Nationalist Movement.
Hogg is thrown together with an American nurse Lee Pearson (Mitchell) and Chen Hansheng the leader of a Chinese partisan group (Yun Fat) who meet in desperate and unexpected circumstances.
The film is a passion project of director Roger Spottiswoode and the film’s creative team was assembled from around the world. Headed by the Chinese director of photography Zhao Xiaoding, (Curse of The Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers).
Steven Jones Evans, a production designer (Ned Kelly, Buffalo Soldiers) was brought in to form the design team with Huang Xinming (Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, Road Home), one of China’s leading art directors. Australia’s Kym Barrett (Romeo and Juliet, Gothika, The Matrix) joined the team as Costume Designer.
Filmed on location in China and Australia, the crew were extremely fortunate to secure some of the most famous national monuments and hauntingly beautiful locations in China, turning it into another character in the film.
Of great historical significance is the area where some of the biggest scenes were filmed in and around Dunhuang, not far from the Western end of The Great Wall. This site is also close to where the actual orphanage was built that inspired the film’s story.