Mika Mattila, born in Helsinki, Finland 1974. He graduated from Tampere School of Arts & Communications in 1998, majoring in cinematography. Since then he has worked as a cinematographer in projects of wide stylistic variety and content. He has gained experience in traditional puppet animation, talk shows, short films as well as in documentaries. As a director he has worked in corporate films, short film, music videos and a tv-documentary. Leaping Over The Dragon’s Gate is his first feature documentary. Exploration and attempt to open new directions has been a guiding principle in his career, rather than excelling in narrow field of expertise. Since beginning of 2006 he has been living and working in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. During these last three years he has been working in East-Asian region for reportages as well as several in-depth documentary projects.
China