Press Kit

To her people she is a leader –

To China she is a terrorist

A 53-minute Documentary.

Producer: John Lewis, Dennis Smith & Jeff Daniels

Writer/Director: Jeff Daniels

Production Company: Arcimedia & Common Room Productions

Contacts:

Arcimedia:

John Lewis (Producer) +61 3 9416 4595 +61 407 515 630 johnlewis@arcimedia.com.au

Jeff Daniels (Director) +61 425 735 413 jeffdaniels10@yahoo.com

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Arcimedia Pty Ltd ABN 20124603327

t: +61 3 9416 4595 Level 1, 179 Johnston Street, Fitzroy

e: arcimedia@arcimedia.com.au Victoria, Australia 3068

w: www.croomp.com

SYNOPSIS

THE 10 CONDITIONS OF LOVE is a love story – of a woman, a man, a family, a people and a homeland. It is the story of Rebiya Kadeer, China’s nightmare – the woman it accuses of inciting terrorism.

It is also the story of the other Tibet, the Muslim Tibet - the country its people call East Turkestan, but which the Chinese call Xinjiang Province - the other stain on China’s moral character.

It is a big story: a story of the ruthless oppression of 20-million people; of the global politics of energy; of Super Power politicking over the War on Terror; and of the pain of a deeply loving family torn violently apart.

Exiled in the US, Rebiya Kadeer is fighting for the human rights of her people, the Uyghur (pron. wee-ger), China’s oppressed Muslim minority. But Rebiya Kadeer’s campaign condemns her sons to on-going solitary confinement in a Chinese prison. Having done six years solitary herself, she understands the appalling consequences for them of her actions - but she will not relent.

Twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, once the richest businessperson in China, Rebiya Kadeer is a remarkable woman who pays daily a terrible price for patriotism.

And it will never be over.

THE STORY

Rebiya Kadeer was a poster child for success as China embraced the free market. From a deeply impoverished childhood, she grew to become the seventh richest person in China and East Turkistan’s most well-known philanthropist. The government gave her an honoured place at the International Womens’ Conference in Beijing in 1995.

Unfortunately, she is also a woman of the Uyghur, the people who gave the Mongols their language as they unleashed their hordes on the world. The Uyghur are Muslims, with a distinctive approach to their religion. The women rarely wear burkhas, they drink alcohol, and their society is unusually egalitarian. They are a tough, enduring people.

They live in an extraordinary landscape of vast deserts dotted with oases and mountain towns in a way of life that is ten centuries old. This is the land of apricots and cherries, black sand hurricanes and Bactrian camels in the vicious cold of the Taklamakan Desert.

To the Chinese, this is barbarian country - not East Turkestan, but Xinjiang Province, the wild west of the Han dynasties. What is more, it has huge reserves of oil and gas which must be claimed for the motherland. This is the end of a thousand year struggle to secure China’s borders and prosperity.

At the 1995 Conference, Rebiya Kadeer realised she was being used as a puppet. Soon after, she was invited to speak in front of the Peoples’ Congress in Beijing and told the truth - the Uyghur are losing jobs to an overwhelming flood of Han migrants, their culture is being ground down, and they are strangers in their own land.

The government pounced on her. Six years later, near to death, she was allowed to leave prison and travel to America for medical treatment. Threatened through her family, she chose to set up a Uyghur embassy in Washington, and pursue politicians and governments.

She and her family have been the continual victims of the cruel and subtle mind games by which the Chinese try to silence overseas dissidents. Her family who defended her in prison are themselves beaten and gaoled, punished for Rebiya’s defiance.

Rebiya works from Washington, appealing to international politicians, and lobbying the US government to send witnesses and apply pressure. In reply, the Chinese adroitly manoeuvre trade deals and paint the Uyghur as terrorist demons to feed into the American nightmare.

Smeared, intimidated and defiant, Rebiya, too, plays a media game to become symbol and witness, leader and inspiration for a culture defying the most powerful forces on the planet.

After all, East Turkestan is the only place in China where prisoners are executed for their political beliefs. And while Rebiya fights a diplomatic war, the most radical Uyghur turn to violence and fight alongside Muslim extremists across the Middle East. If the moderates lose their grip, the results will be truly catastrophic.

In Washington, Rebiya fights her battle on yet another front: her daughter Ray is deeply conflicted by her mother’s political activities and the consequences for her brothers, rotting and possibly tortured in a Chinese prison.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I first learned about the Uyghur around seven years ago while having a beer with a friend of mine in a modest bar in Beijing. He told me about a student in his English conversation class who appeared more Iranian than Chinese. My friend asked the student where he was from and was amazed to learn of a thriving Muslim population living in the far western deserts of China. When the Uyghur student noticed another Chinese student intently listening in, he told my friend to do his own research on his people as there was only so much he could say in public.

Soon after my friend and I were on a train for four days travelling across China’s vast and diverse terrain until we reached the desert oases and mountain valleys of Xinjiang province. We had done our research about this land and knew how the Chinese annexed what was once an independent East Turkestan in 1949. We also understood how China saw the Uyghur’s demands for autonomous rule as a threat to its unity and banned all public protests. Some Uyghur responses were violent leading to harsh military crackdowns and human rights atrocities in this region. The Chinese government justified their actions to the world as a homegrown battle in the global War on Terror.

Passing ourselves off as tourists we were able to collect footage of a colourful and resilient people. They were Muslim, but the women did not all where burkhas and the men were known to drink alcohol. We were invited to a wedding where we learned how to toast by rubbing shot glasses and dance with other men to show off our moves to the women before they joined in. The Uyghur loved a celebration and after witnessing their second-class status in their own country, we understood why.

Over the next few years I met with Uyghur exiles in New York in libraries, coffee shops and Turkish restaurants. They suspected me of being a spy for the Chinese as so many other supposed journalists and filmmakers turned out to be. Why else would anyone be so interested in their plight? Eventually they trusted me enough to meet Rebiya Kadeer, recently released from prison after 6 years for mailing Uyghur newspaper clippings to her exiled husband in Washington DC.

Rebiya Kadeer told me how she had overcome a lack of Chinese government support for Uyghurs in education and economic development to become the wealthiest entrepreneur in the country. She gave me unprecedented access to her work raising awareness of the Uyghur’s struggle in China. She then introduced me to her daughter Ray who feared her mother’s work would endanger her siblings still living in China. When these concerns came to a head Rebiya continued to allow me access to her private life. I was able to observe how an exiled leader makes impossible decisions for her people at the cost of her family.

With my own funds and help from Film Victoria and Screen Australia I was able to follow Rebiya over three years as her awareness campaign grew and family situation worsened. She has been put in a horrible position, which plays out differently for both her and her daughter. I soon found that I was filming an astonishing story which clearly embodies the living history of a forgotten people as they struggle to demand basic human rights in China.

CREATIVE TEAM

JEFF DANIELS

Writer/Director/Producer

Jeff has worked for the past 10 years in New York, Los Angeles and Australia as a researcher and in post-production on a number of commercial and documentary projects and features including Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary series (PBS), The Justice Files (Discovery Channel), American President documentary series (PBS), A Matter of Choice (PBS), Muddy Waters (SBS), Wildness (SBS), Troubled Minds: The Story of Lithium (ABC), Hitmakers (ABC), and The Cable (Showtime, ABC).

He has also written and directed a number of short documentary films covering topics from Jewish-American identity in Holocaust films to Gaelic football culture in the Bronx. He is currently filming his latest documentary on Jewish terrorism and anti-Semitism in the United States. Currently, he teaches multimedia, video production, film theory and Australian History at a high school in Melbourne, Australia.

JOHN LEWIS

Producer

John is an independent documentary and television producer (Arcimedia). His most recent productions include Constructing Fear: Australia’s Secret Industrial Inquisition a net-disseminated documentary produced ahead of Australia’s 2007 general election, and PNG: The Rules of the Game, produced for ITVS (US) and SBS Television.

Executive producer of Penicillin – The Magic Bullet (SBS TV/RDF Media/The History Channel), and producer of Troubled Minds – the lithium revolution (Film Australia/SBS) which won Britain’s premier science documentary award, the Vega Award, and was a finalist at the Beijing International Science Documentary Awards.

Previous productions include AFI Award-winning documentaries, The Good Looker and Rainbow Bird and Monster Man, and the highly-acclaimed ABC TV art series, Eye to Eye with Betty Churcher. Also wrote, directed & produced the long-running ABC TV parliamentary program, Order in the House.

DENNIS SMITH

Producer

Dennis K. Smith is an award winning filmmaker with a background in history, health, social justice and science documentaries. He has worked with large and small crews around Australia, in the United States, in the Philippines, Ethiopia, China, Korea and Japan. His 2002 documentary “Rainbow Bird and Monster Man’ was nominated for four AFI Awards, a Logie Award and won two Awgie Awards including the prestigious Gold Awgie.

His film “Troubled Minds – the lithium revolution” received a 2004 Awgie Award, was the winner of the Main Prize at the Vega International Science Film Festival, in the UK and was a finalist at the prestigious Beijing International Science Film Festival. In 2006 Dennis completed “Fabric of a Dream - the Fletcher Jones story” and an SBS one-hour documentary called “Innocence” - an international investigation of DNA forensics to free wrongfully convicted men from gaol.

TONY STEVENS

Editor

Tony is one of Australia’s most outstanding editors in the field of documentary, feature films and TV drama, most recently “The Seed Hunter” and “Murder in the Snow” and “The Reincarnations of William Buckley”. He has edited 6 features, 5 TV mini-series, and more than 50 documentaries, which have won Tony numerous awards for editing and many of which are iconic Australian films.

In the last 3 years alone, he has edited 8 documentaries, including outstanding productions such as “Revealing Gallipoli”, “Hunt Angels” (AFI Best Doco) and “Vietnam Nurses” (AFI nomination for Best Editing).

DALE CORNELIUS

Composer

Dale is one of Australia’s foremost and exciting young film composers, working in feature, documentary and animation. Dale wrote the score for the 2009 international award-winning animation film, “Mary & Max” and he is currently engaged on the score for the comedy, “Charlie & Boot”’ for Paramount Pictures. His recent work in documentaries include, “Murder in the Snow” (ABC/BBC) and “Family Footsteps” (ABC/BBC); “Revealing Gallipoli” (ABC/RTE/TVNZ/S4C/TRT); and “Troubled Minds’ (SBS).

His feature success include “Till Human Voices Wake Us”, (Best Australian Film Score, 2002); “Strange Bedfellows”; the psychological thriller, “Torn’” and controversial Australian ‘outback’ zombie horror film, “Prey”. Dale also actively composes for installation and chamber music.

ARCIMEDIA

Production Company

Arcimedia is an award-winning factual production company with a strong track record of highly acclaimed documentaries about art, science, history, contemporary politics and contemporary human affairs.

Its most recent production, “The 10 Conditions of Love”, about Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the Uyghur people vilified by China as Muslim terrorist-separatists, will screen at the 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival, and has been acquired for international distribution.

In recent times, Arcimedia has produced documentaries like “Penicillin – The Magic Bullet” a docu-drama about the war-time politics behind the discovery of penicillin (SBS /A&E History Channel RDF); “Return of the Masta”, a film about the recent general election in Papua New Guinea (SBS/ITVS); and “Constructing Fear”, a contemporary industrial-political film about a highly controversial government body, which has been largely delivered through a multi-media on-line strategy.

Arcimedia was also a principal in the production of “A Stowaways Guide To The Pacific”, an ambitious interactive on-line adventure aimed principally at children.

Currently, Arcimedia is developing an international feature documentary about the history and music of the Hammond B3 organ; an international series looking at pivotal periods in recent world history through the prism of soccer; and ‘For Every Jew a .22’, a film by Jeff Daniels which examines the Jewish Defence League, the alleged US terrorist organization and its current links to the Ultra-Orthodox Settler movement in Israel.

In Arcimedia’s back list: “Troubled Minds”( the discovery of lithium as a treatment for manic depression - Film Australia & SBS); AFI Award-winning films “The Good Looker” (the story of Australian artist Joy Hester – ABC-TV), and “Rainbow Bird & Monster Man”; the Australian art series, “Eye to Eye with Betty Churcher” for ABC-TV, and the long-running ABC parliamentary program “Order in the House”.