World Exploration

This film recounts the life of Joseph Rock, an explorer who lived in China between 1920 and 1949. Upon arriving in the Celestial Empire, he heard about a mountain higher than Everest and at the foot of which lived Goloks, a formidable Tibetan tribe led by a queen who forbade all access to her territory! So, for years, Rock organized insane expeditions into the vast Tibetan spaces of Western China. The accounts of his numerous and astounding adventures in unknown Chinese regions were published in the National Geographic between 1920 and 1930. At the time, his photos and writings fired the imagination of Americans and Westerners and are at the origin of the myth of Shangri-La, a paradisiacal valley where everything is only harmony and happiness! It was described by the novelist James Hilton, in his work entitled "Lost Horizons". He ended his life in China, in northwestern Yunnan, in Lijiang in the company of the Naxi. Rock was the first to examine the mysterious writing of the Naxi and to photograph the strange ceremonies of their shamans. He also frequently stayed with the Mosuo who live in a grandiose setting, on the shores of Lugu Lake. Here, women, who enjoy great sexual freedom, practice "walking marriage". This superb region is known as the "Land of Women". This film is also a dive into the heart of past or still living traditions of these two Chinese minorities who are today confronted with China's rapid modernization. In twenty years, prodigious tourism development has made Lijiang one of the most visited cities in the world!