Shi Lihong

Roles: Director

Shi Lihong is an environmental activist and filmmaker. Beginning in 1996, she worked with her husband Xi Zhinong on a documentary about the endangered snub-nosed monkeys in the mountains for Yunnan province. Their work exposed plans for logging in the monkey’s habitat and launched the first of a series of national campaigns to protect endangered wildlife. The film also marked the beginning of their company Wild China Film, based in Beijing.

Beginning in 2004, Shi Lihong began filming a grassroots environmental movement in China that united farmers and urban activists, ultimately halting the construction of a massive dam along the Nu River. The result, a short documentary titled Voice of an Angry River, revealed the desperate poverty of farmers along the Mekong River displaced 20 years earlier. Footage from her work appears in Waking the Green Tiger: The Rise of a Green Movement in China. She co-directed China: Searching for Sacred Mountain (2014).