‘Moving the Mountain’ and Opening Some Eyes : Movies: Producer Trudie Styler hopes the film about China’s pro-democracy movement will make the West feel a twinge of guilt.

The tanks rolled into Tian An Men Square in June of 1989, and for a generation of Chinese students, life would never be the same. The pictures of a lone young man standing his ground before an ominous tank is one few will forget. The barrage of gunfire that followed will forever haunt the students who were there and survived, especially the leaders of the pro-democracy protest.

Their story is documented in “Moving the Mountain,” a film which had its West Coast premiere at the Beverly Hills Music Hall on Friday. The guilt the survivors carry with them is one of the unique things about the Chinese culture, says producer Trudie Styler (“Boys From Brazil”). And Styler is hoping the West will feel a tinge of that guilt when they see her film--especially the United States as it bangs out a trade deal with China, Styler adds, while it “overlooks the human rights violations.”

Styler, wife of rock star Sting, took an enormous risk along with director Michael Apted when they went to China to secretly film “Moving the Mountain.” It took a year to plan, Styler says, because they couldn’t carry any equipment into the country. They arranged to meet the students under the guise of a typical Western ritual--a Christmas party. The result is an explanation of the incidents that led up to Tian An Men through the eyes and ears of the students. Many of those young men and women are still at risk today, some have been beaten by police in the years since Tian An Men, Styler says, and one is back in prison. Others escaped and live in the United States.

“I never set out to make a political, analytical film,” Styler says from her home in Wiltshire, England. “The young people went out into the streets to express their wishes and hopes. What happened after--the colossal bloodshed--is a human story. That’s what Michael [Apted] and I wanted to do.”

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Styler is not shy about bringing what she perceives as injustice to the attention of the world. Her activism, along with that of her husband’s, for human rights and the environment are known worldwide. She produces the Rainforest Concert each year, with headliners such as Bruce Springsteen, Elton John and, of course, Sting. She also oversees the programs funded by the Rainforest Foundation, which she founded.

So how did “Mountain” make her causes-to-conquer list? Like the rest of the television-watching world, Styler was glued to the set for several weeks as events unfolded at Tian An Men Square. All she knew at the time was that China was a Communist country and that the sort of demonstration the students were mounting was “completely unheard of,” she says. “I thought maybe changes would come in China.”

They didn’t. Instead, the tanks came and--by different accounts--many were killed. (Western estimates put the deaths at 1,000, Chinese students say 4,000, Chinese officials say 200.) The troubling thing, says Styler, is that after “people were killed and we were all appalled,” the incident was gone with the push of a remote control button.

Three months later, Styler and Sting were in New York and met Li Lu, who was on the most-wanted list from Tian An Men Square. “That caused me to think, ‘Why did my psyche not absorb [the incident] more?’ Then I couldn’t leave the thought alone. I thought I could try to do something about it.” So she optioned the rights to a book Li Lu was writing.

“He’s representative of that whole generation,” Styler says. “They didn’t [protest] just by chance because they were angry young students, it was a whole lifetime of oppression.”

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Styler didn’t start out wanting to save the world either, but her passion for people and justice propelled her beyond her career as a lead actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company. “As I’ve grown older, living in the West in a democracy, I’ve felt the ultimate responsibility is on us to speak out for people in oppressed countries like China. I’m just making a contribution, really . . . it’s not really carrying a torch,” she says, somewhat unsure.

Her activism also led to the creation of her own production company, Xingu Inc.: “1989 was a particularly black year for me,” she says. “I’d sort of stymied myself in all the work I’d done that year. I didn’t want to act anymore, I wanted to change directions.”

Styler is now working on her third film at Xingu, “The Grotesque,” starring Sting. It’s her first feature-length picture and--a bit of a departure for her--a low-budget comedy.

But the laughter may not last since Styler is already planning her fourth film. The topic: child slavery. She wants to base the story on a boy she met at the Reebok Human Rights Awards in November. He was there to receive an award for liberating 3,000 children from the carpet industry, Styler says. He had been sold into slavery at age 4, where children typically worked 16-hour days chained to the carpets.

“I think people in the West are ignorant about what they’re buying, particularly in stores that have carpets from countries like Pakistan and India.” She adds that 10 days before this interview, the boy had been murdered. He was 11.

With all of her accomplishments, Styler still puts “having babies” at the top of her list. She and Sting, together for 14 years, have three. The family divides its time between homes in Wiltshire, New York and Malibu.

When asked what she does for fun, Styler is taken aback and laughs. She does yoga, she says, but for the most part, “I’m a workaholic.”