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Developed with the assistance of:

                                                     
Telefilm Canada                     Cogeco                      Shaw Rocket Fund

     
                                                                 
     Astral Media - The Harold Greenberg Fund

  
 and

 
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

 

Distributed By:

                    

 


     

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the trailer


NEW! Please click the play button below to view exclusive interviews with Iron Road's lead actors.


A CANADA-CHINA COPRODUCTION Starring
Peter O'Toole as Relic
Sam Neill as Nichol
Sun Li as Little Tiger
Luke MacFarlane as James
Tony Leung Ka Fai as the Bookman
Kenneth Mitchell as Edgar
Gao Yun Xiang as Wang Ma

Director
David Wu

Writers
Barry Pearson, Raymond Storey

Producers
Raymond Massey, Anne Tait,
Barry Pearson

Executive Producers
Arnie Zipursky, Tiger Hu,
Han Sanping

Story idea from an opera by
Chan Ka Nin & Mark Brownell
Produced by Tapestry New Opera Works


 

News

PRODUCER ANNE TAIT wins Lifetime Achievement Award from FeFF
Tribute to Anne’s career -  March 18, 2011 at the Novotel Hotel, Toronto.

The Female Eye Film Festival’s Maverick Award for Lifetime Achievement recognises innovation, creativity and perseverance in the Film and Television Industry.  

Award-winner Tait says “As a casting director, I have championed the talent of hundreds of women, and my film Iron Road has as its heroine a feisty Chinese woman disguised as a guy, who triumphs against great odds while helping to build the Canadian railroad.  It took us 10 years to get Iron Road on the screen and I hope this Maverick Award inspires other women to be tenacious in pursuing seemingly-impossible projects like this one.”


IRON ROAD Garners 4 Major Gemini Noms and a surprise WIN !
November, 2010

The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television has honoured IRON ROAD with four Gemini nominations in these major categories:

BEST DIRECTION                             David Wu       

BEST ACTRESS                                  Sun Li

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN         Linda del Rosario      

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE                 Lawrence Shragge

The Academy jury and voters chose SUN LI as Best Actress in a Miniseries – a surprise win for the talented superstar from Beijing.

ANNE TAIT accepted the award at the ceremony at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto.


Iron Road Article in the Toronto Star - June 12, 2009
Iron Road goes to dark past
Shakespearean love story stars Sun Li and Peter O'Toole

By: Nicholas Keung

For Chinese railroad workers and early migrants to Canada, the new movie Iron Road rivals in significance to what The Pianist means to Jews living with memories after the persecutions during World War II – both dramas give a face to those nameless and voiceless who perished en masse in history.

Premiering at York University's Price Family Cinema Sunday, Iron Road does that in a Shakespearian fashion – through the romance between a young Chinese woman, Little Tiger, who, disguised as a boy, goes in search of her railroad-worker father in British Columbia a Canadian playboy James Nichol, whose father runs a company that builds railroad.

The movie – with a budget of more than $10 million and an international cast that includes American stars Peter O'Toole and Sam Neil, Canada's own Luke MacFarlane and Charlotte Sullivan, and China's Sun Li and Tony Leung Ka Fai – is the first big based on that dark era of Chinese-Canadian history at the turn of the late 18th century.

The events shamed Canada and forced Ottawa to issue redress and an apology to the effected community in Parliament in 2006.

The movie title, a literal translation of "railroad" from Chinese into English, symbolizes the interface of the underdog lured by the "Gold Mountain" dream who ends up abused and exploited as cheap labour. The antagonist is a growing Canada in need of labourers to do the dangerous job of building a transcontinental railroad.

"It's an amazing story of bravery and courage and a cross-cultural love story set against historical facts that many people do not know about," says producer Anne Tait.

"It touches the audience's heart and helps them go through the experience. And you do that through stories, especially love stories that pinpoints the dilemma of cross-cultural connections. That's the way to show attraction and problems."

The crew spent 31 days filming in "Chinawood," Hengdian World Studios, five hours from Shanghai. They also shot for 10 days across in Kamloops, Kelowna and Lynn Canyon, B.C. The beautiful natural landscapes are juxtaposed with human hardships – constant verbal abuses, inhumane living conditions, life-threatening jobs to set explosions to break ground for the rails and isolation from families and loved ones.

Those human tragedies are painted subtly, with the close-ups of callused hands driving the spikes to secure the rails and the panning across the grave markers dotted along the railroads to signal the Chinese lives lost in the process.

The hostile chants – "Chinamen" and "We don't want you here. Go home!" – that greeted the railroad workers are haunting.

Tait, a Toronto-based producer and casting director, said she was initially inspired to make the movie by the Chan Ka Nin opera of the same title eight years ago. The music and lyrics imprinted in her mind's eyes "an image of a Chinese woman disguised as a guy setting dynamites in the rock cliff." She called her friend, scriptwriter Barry Pearson, to discuss a film story. Writer Raymond Storey was later brought in.

But the filming wasn't possible until May 2007 with the feature's executive producers Arnie Zipursky, Tiger Hu and Han Sanping lined up, as well as funding from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Canadian Television Fund, Film Initiative British Columbia, Ontario Media Development Corp., Astral Media, Cogeco Cable Fund and Shaw Rocket Fund.

So, is the movie a chick flick?

"Yes, a bit," said Tait with a chuckle. "But an epic, historical chick flick."

Sun Li awarded Best Actress, miniseries, for Iron Road at the Roma FictionFest, July 2008


Chinese star Sun Li with director David Wu, accepts best actress award at ceremony in Beijing.
    

Iron Road Wins Four Awards
At the Leo Awards, held by the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Foundation of British Columbia:

Best Cinematography in a Feature Length Drama -- Attila Szalay
Best Production Design in a Feature Length Drama -- Linda Del Rosario
Best Costume Design in a Feature Length Drama -- Maya Mani
Best Make-Up in a Feature Length Drama -- Joanne Kinchella


Iron Road Wins Audience Favourite Award at the Dominican Film Festival


Star Charlotte Sullivan and Producer Anne Tait (right and left of center) at the 1500-seat Teatro Nacional with representatives of the Chinese Community in traditional costumes.

Photos From The Set


Just before the cameras roll, the IRON ROAD cast and crew hold a traditional Chinese
ceremony to invoke good luck for production by burning joss sticks, and offering a
suckling pig and other delicacies to the film gods.  Pictured are: Kate Luoshan,
Arnie Zipursky, Luke MacFarlane, Peter O'Toole, director David Wu, Raymond Massey,
Sun Li, Cinematographer Attila Szalay, and stunt choreographer Paul Rapovski.



Sun Li [Little Tiger] with the costume designer Maya Mani (right)



Peter O'Toole as the dissolute Mr. Relic with director David Wu
Shooting Begins on Iron Road
By Clifford Coonan, Variety.com  April 22, 2007

BEIJING -- Lensing has begun on a Chinese-Canadian co-production in China's Hengdian Studios,
a love story set against the building of the railroad through the Rocky Mountains, starring rising
thesp Sun Li, Peter O'Toole, Sam Neill, Tony Leung Ka Fai and Luke MacFarlane.
Helmer is David Wu.

"Iron Road" will be a feature pic and a two-part mini-series and will shoot in China for five weeks
and British Columbia for two weeks. It is the first film in 22 years to be made under the China-Canada
film co-production treaty. Producer Raymond Massey said lower production costs in China
allowed him to do a lot more with the budget than it would in the West.

"But the main reason we're shooting like this is because this is a natural co-production between
the two countries. It's a chapter of Canadian history that hasn't been told and in a way it's our
apology to China for what happened," he said by telephone from Hengdian.

Sun Li, who starred in "Fearless" and "Jade Goddess of Mercy", plays a street urchin named
Little Tiger, and is the character on which the drama of the whole pic hinges.

Helmer David Wu began his career in China as John Woo's editor and among his credits are
"Merlin's Apprentice", "Son of the Dragon" and "Plague City- Sars in Toronto".

Pic was inspired by an opera by Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell, and scribes on "Iron Road"
Screenwriters were Barry Pearson and Raymond Storey.

It is scheduled for feature release in Asia and Europe, and broadcast on CBC
(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Network in 2008.

As well as Massey, other producers include Anne Tait, Barry Pearson and Zhao Haicheng.
Executive prods are Arnie Zipursky, Han Sanping, Massey and Tiger Hu.
Worldwide distribution is by Alchemy and CCI Releasing.



O'Toole, Neill board 'Iron Road'
By: Archie Thomas, March 2007 MIP

LONDON - Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill will star in "Iron Road," a television miniseries and feature film
about the building of the North American transcontinental railroad.

The romantic action-adventure sees a poor Chinese railroad worker become romantically entwined
with the son of a Yankie railroad tycoon.

"Iron Road" is produced by Mainland Productions and Iron Road Productions, in association with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and with the participation of the COGECO Program Development Fund.
Further coin came from Shaw Rocket Fund and the Canadian Television Fund.

London-based Alchemy Television is distributing in all territories other than China and Canada.


Steam Onto Screen

May 04 2007

By Laurel Smith, Staff reporter

Kamloops is riding the rail to the little screen.


In June, the Kamloops region will be the central focus of a CBC two-part miniseries and movie,
booked to be aired in 2008. The $10-million Chinese-Canadian co-production, titled Iron Road,
will feature several local areas and the historic 2141 steam-powered train. Iron Road,
written by Barry Pearson and Raymond Storey, is the first Canadian-Chinese co-production
in 22 years.

The story, inspired by an opera by Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell, is one of love and the
construction of the railroad in the 1880s.

Actress Sun Li plays the part of Little Tiger, a street urchin dressed as a boy, who falls in love with
a railroad tycoon's son, James (Luke MacFarlane).

Other stars include Peter O'Toole, Sam Neill (who will be in Kamloops during filming), and
Chinese heart-throb Tony Leung  Ka Fai.

There is the possibility of 65 extras needed per day for 14 days, according to the Thompson-Nicola
Film Commission, and an estimated 30 to 40 local hires as crewmembers over a two-week period.

Part of the movie will be filmed in China for five weeks, and in B.C. for another three weeks.
Vicci Weller, executive director of the Thompson-Nicola Film Commission, has been scouting
locations for three months for the movie around the Kelowna Pacific Railroad between Armstrong
and Kamloops, Brodie Loop, and Razor Mountain.


Kettle Valley Railroad beds, tunnels and cliffs were all inspected by Weller, who said that
Kamloops is considered a prime location for directors and producers due to its short trip into
the wilds of Canada and beauty of landscape. After taking numerous photos of locations,
Weller uploaded them to a website for Massey and Wu to peruse. Brenda Pollock, operations
manager at the Kamloops Heritage Railway, said some filming will take place onboard the historic
2141 stream engine.   Pollock said a crew of four will run the engine while filming takes place,
and that there will be no change to the regular schedule. She said few demands had been made
from the director, except that a few modifications had to be made to the 1912 engine so it would
fit the look of a steam train in the 1880s. And he requested crewmen grow mustaches and
beards
and wear costumes to suit the role of railroad men in the 1880s.  "We're all really looking
forward to it and we are really excited," said Pollack.


The shooting time onboard will take six days, starting June 9. Anyone curious to see the train
decked out, or catch a glimpse of the movie set, can still purchase tickets for the Armstrong Explorer.
which travels from Campbell Creek to Armstrong and back.


Content Management Powered by CuteNews


 

    

THE MAKING OF IRON ROAD was presented at
            The University of Toronto Presidents’ Circle
            The Arts and Letters Club, Toronto
            The Women’s Art Association of Canada

 

SCREENINGS of  IRON ROAD – the Feature, distributed by UNION PICTURES:

Toronto      July 21st, 2009   at The Royal -  sold out, standing room only

Vancouver July 29th, 2009   at the Fifth Avenue   - sold out

Calgary      July 30th, 2009    at the Plaza Cinema

Winnipeg   July 23rd, 2009   at the Cinematheque

Kitchener-Waterloo  July 30th, 2009  at the Princess – sold out

 

Preview Screening by invitation only, at UBC, Vancouver, followed by a youth response to the movie and a Q&A panel with Producer Rayond Massey & Executive Producer Tiger Hu, July 16th, 2009

CBC Radio Interview with director David Wu   July 21, 2009 www.cbc.ca/metromorning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Chinese Story | Chinese Meet the Characters


Story

 

        a story of disguise and forbidden love,
        set against the building of the railroad

This is the story of three lives brought together in the high mountains of the west.
  
Lured by the myth of "Gum San", the Gold Mountain where fortunes are made, thousands
of desperate Chinese workers leave their homeland with a dream – to make their fortune in
North America by laying a coast-to-coast railroad through the treacherous mountain passes.
  
They learn that railroads only bring fortune to the few.  They learn that building a railroad
means explosives and iron, rock and wood. Every foot is purchased with muscle and sweat. 
Every mile is bought with courage, fear, and death.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, completed in 1885, was the last of the great iron roads
built in North America and left behind a mythology that lives today as part of our heritage.

Iron Road is the story of the hard-won triumph of a Chinese street urchin named Little Tiger,
whose quest for her long-lost father takes her from a fireworks factory in China to a remote
construction camp in the Rockies.  She falls in love, survives prejudice and treachery,
and achieves a bittersweet fulfillment of her quest.

It’s the story of the transformation of James Nichol, the irresponsible son of a railroad
tycoon, a night traveler without a star, into a man of character and purpose.

And it's the story of a Book Man, the Chinese overseer of Little Tiger's crew -- proud, scarred,
a rebel hunted down by his enemies, struggling for revenge in that perilous world.

Their story is a window into the neglected history of how Chinese workers helped forge the
railroad that held Canada together.

It begins in Southern China in a fireworks factory where Little Tiger ekes out a living, disguised
as a teenaged boy.  A handsome North American playboy named James Nichol is about to walk
into her life and change it forever. 

The IRON ROAD story

It's 1882 and Alfred Nichol, the tycoon building the railroad through the massive Rocky
mountains, faces  bankruptcy!  His banker, George Grant, would call his loans, except that
his daughter is crazy about Nichol's playboy son, James.

Desperate, Nichol dispatches James to China to hire a crew of "Chinks" to blast a track through
the rock, at rock-bottom wages.

When James arrives, he’s accosted by a street urchin nicknamed ‘Little Tiger’, whose fierce
ambition is to get to North America, where his father died mysteriously, working on the railroad. 

In a fight with a Chinese gang lord, Little Tiger saves James's life. James is grateful and agrees
to hire the kid on his crew sailing to the new world.  

He never suspects the truth:  that Little Tiger is actually a beautiful young woman who has
disguised herself to work in a man's world … and that she's falling in love with him! 

As their railcar approaches the camp, Little Tiger sees grave-markers along the track – signs of
the Chinese who have died on the cliffs. And once they arrive, she’s in for more shocks:  the white
bosses are racists, the work is back-breaking, and her tyrannical Chinese boss, The Book Man, is
involved in some kind of scam to pocket the wages of the dead Chinese workers.

At the same time, her attraction to James mounts until, under the moon at a secret mountain pool,
she decides to reveal her secret to him.  

When the Book Man and his cohorts discover that Little Tiger is about to expose their scam, they
plot a fatal "accident" for the kid on the sheer rock face. 

Now everything is at stake -- Little Tiger's life, James's love for her, and her search for the truth
about her father.  

 

 

 
 

Cast
PETER O'TOOLE
SAM NEILL
SUN LI
LUKE MACFARLANE
TONY LEUNG KA FAI
KENNETH MITCHELL
IAN TRACEY
GAO YUN XIANG
CHARLOTTE SULLIVAN
SERGE HOUDE
ZHANG NAI HUA

Director
DAVID WU

Producers
RAYMOND MASSEY
ANNE TAIT
BARRY PEARSON

Executive Producers
ARNIE ZIPURSKY
TIGER HU

HAN SANPING

Writers
BARRY PEARSON
RAYMOND STOREY

 

 
 

E-mails

ANNE TAIT
anne@annetaitproductions.com

RAYMOND MASSEY
raymond@masseyproductions.ca

BARRY PEARSON
barrypearson.thewriter@gmail.com

ARNIE ZIPURSKY    
azipursky@ccientertainment.com

TIGER HU            
tigerhu1968@126.com


 

     

     

 

      

 

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