A US documentary chronicling Japan's notorious 1937 invasion of
the Chinese city Nanjing will open in Chinese cinemas on July 7,
the 70th anniversary of the War of Resistance against Japan.
Director Bill Guttentag, Producer Ted Leonsis,
Co-Director Dan Sturman, Producer Michael Jacobs, and Co-Producer
Violet Du Feng came to Beijing Tuesday to attend the premiere of
the film, then they left for Shanghai to promote the film.
When interviewed by Oriental Morning Post
yesterday, Bill Guttentag said he first thought to do such a film
after he read the book Rape of Nanking recommended by the
producer Ted Leonsis. "I felt that was a forgotten massacre in
history, and the two words 'forgotten' and 'massacre' shouldn't be
put together. I hope we can tell people the truth. For the Chinese
audience, we hope you can respect such history from the bottom of
your heart!"
However, the film may miss the opportunity to be
screened in the very place where tragedy happened - Nanjing. In all
of Jiangsu Province, only Wuxi city has bought a
copy of the film. An official from the Oriental Cinema Circuit
explained to the paper that this is summer vacation, when people
will embrace blockbusters like Transformers.
The 90-minute documentary, Nanking (the
old spelling of the city's name), will be screened after the summer
vacation. Otherwise there will be few people who immediately want
to see this film, and the educational meaning of the film will not
be fully realized, he added.
Beijing's cinemas have already bought 8 copies
while Shanghai's bought 18 copies to screen. They are willing to
leave certain space for Nanking to screen even though
other blockbusters will rob the box offices.
In January 2007, the documentary Nanking
debuted at Sundance Film Festival where it received the Editing
Award. In April, it won the Humanitarian Award for Best Documentary
at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
But Japanese filmmaker Satoru Mizushima called the
film a "setup by China to control intelligence," and plans to
release his own documentary, The Truth about Nanjing, in
which the massacre is portrayed as merely political propaganda.
Besides, not one Japanese distributor has
approached the Nanking production team to express their
willingness to distribute this documentary in Japan.
When asked about the controversy, Guttentag said
many Japanese people still refused to look at the truth in history.
"I heard about the news when I was at Sundance. I felt very
furious. There were so many documents and photos out there, how are
they going to twist the history?" Guttentag said.
Nanking features interviews with Chinese survivors and
Japanese soldiers, along with pictures, letters, and diaries read
by actors portraying Westerners who helped save more than 200,000
Chinese refugees in Nanjing.
The documentary also includes film footage shot by
John Magee, an Episcopal pastor in Nanjing from 1912 to 1940, who
recorded the massacre and rescued many Chinese people.
On July 7, 1937, the intruding Japanese forces
assaulted Lugou Bridge and Chinese soldiers responded with gunfire.
This has been known as the Lugou Bridge Incident, or "July 7
Incident," which marked the beginning of the War of Resistance
against Japan in China.
The Nanjing Massacre occurred in December 1937 when
the Japanese troops occupied the then capital of China. More than
300,000 Chinese are believed murdered and thousands raped.
Ted Leonsis, the film's producer, said the decision
to put the Nanjing Massacre on screen was made after he read the
Rape of Nanking, written by Chinese American author Iris
Chang in early 2005.
Leonsis, also AOL vice chairman, said he was
ashamed of his ignorance of the atrocity and realized that most
Americans had no idea what had happened in China in the winter of
1937.
In the summer of 2005, Leonsis invited the Academy
Award-winning writer/director team of Bill Guttentag and Dan
Sturman to shoot the documentary.
To find the materials that would bring the story of
Nanking to life, Guttentag, Sturman, and their production team
collected thousands of pages of letters, journals, and diaries for
three months by trawling original sources and archives in the
United States, Europe, and Asia.
In China, they met historians, archivists, and
scholars who told them where to look for the best photographs and
footage in China and across the world.
The team also interviewed 22 survivors in the
cities of Nanjing, Suzhou, and Shanghai.
Filming in Japan was more difficult. The production
team said it was challenging to find former Japanese soldiers
willing to talk about their experiences in Nanjing. The Japanese
soldiers who participated in the film were found through members of
the Japanese peace movement.
Upon returning from Asia, the Nanking
production team began the final piece of the filming -- the staged
reading with actors. Filming took place in Los Angeles in August
2006.
The documentary was narrated by Woody Harrelson,
Stephen Dorff, and Mariel Hemingway.
The documentary premiered in Beijing on Tuesday; in
North America, it will be released by THINKFilm in December to
coincide with the 70th anniversary of the massacres in Nanking.
(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn by Zhang Rui July
5, 2007)
