PRESS

The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Review by Lenny Ann Low, April 2, 2005

As It Happened: The Adventurous Travels of Joseph Francis Rock, SBS, 7.30pm Saturday, April 2, 2005

This is a carefully crafted and ostensibly beautiful documentary about a lonely man who finally found his paradise. As a child, Joseph Francis Rock, an Austrian-born explorer and botanist who was brought up by his violent, religiously fanatical and widowed father, craved knowledge, freedom and the chance to discover the world. His father worked for a Polish count and Rock devoured books in the count's library. He taught himself a Chinese language and accompanied the count and his son on a trip to Egypt. Rock later studied, travelled and styled himself as a doctor and teacher when he reached Hawaii. So began his evolution to respected explorer and botanist on that island and, more importantly, in the south-west of China between 1922 and 1949, where he studied and befriended the Naxi people. Sandwiching original film footage and photographs from Rock's expeditions to China with modern images and weaving an extensively researched chronology via narration and excerpts from Rock's writings, the life of a man who wanted respect and accolades is powerfully revealed. That a man's life could be so intimately depicted from such old and formal visual evidence, albeit assisted by interviews with Chinese villagers who met him and Rock's lucid memoirs, makes this documentary all the more compelling.