China's scissor-happy censors quickly approved without edits a U.S.-made film about Japan's mass slaughter of Chinese citizens in the World War II era, but the movie has gotten the cold shoulder in Japan, the filmmakers said Wednesday.
Film about slaughter of Chinese in WWII raises concerns with Japan (newsgd.com) Russia's Sochi to host Winter Olympics in 2014 BBC journalist Alan Johnston released after 114 days of captivity Putin visits Bush's family for landmark talks American regains Coney Island hot dog eating title Nanking, an American documentary about the rape and slaughter of thousands of Chinese at the hands of Japanese soldiers beginning in the fall of 1937, premiered in Beijing on Tuesday and will have a staggered released in cities across the country later this week. The film's producer, Ted Leonsis, said China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or SARFT, approved the movie for theatrical release within 48 hours of its submission last week and made zero changes.
The film will reach an even broader audience when it is aired in about six months on Chinese Central Television, he said. Leonsis and co-director Dan Sturman said they thought SARFT let the film through untouched because it agreed with China's official version of what happened in Nanjing after the city fell to the Japanese. They said China also realized it might be politically useful to have a third party corroborate their version of history.
I do think politically, the Chinese say 'OK, someone else is saying that this incident happened. It's not our word against the Japanese word, ' said Leonsis, who is also vice chairman of the American Internet company AOL. The film, which was partly shot in the former capital of Nanjing, tells the story of a handful of Western expatriates who used the U.
S. flag and the Nazi arm band to shield huge numbers of Chinese in a safe zone when the Japanese took over the city. It mixes archival footage and dramatic readings of original diary entries and letters by actors, including Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway.
Historians generally agree the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women in the rampage in Nanjing in 1937 that became known as The Rape of Nanking, using the name by which the city was known in the West at that time. I suspect that (China's censors) recognize that there is value to having a film that was made without, you know, having any interference from them, Sturman said. It has an integrity, it's more unassailable.
China's scissor-happy censors quickly approved without edits a U.S.-made film about Japan's mass slaughter of Chinese citizens in the World War II era, but the movie has gotten the cold shoulder in Japan, the filmmakers said Wednesday.
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