Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters (dir. Ban Zhongyi)

Ban Zhongyi’s documentary Gan Shanxi and Her Sisters, an important documentary about an extraordinary woman forced to serve as a sex slave during World War II, will screen at Asia Society this Friday, April 9, 2010 as part of the society’s “China’s Past, Present, and Future on Film” program. dGenerate Films’ Karin Chien will introduce the screening.

You can use discount code asia725 to buy tickets at the $7 member rate. Tickets can be purchased at the Asia Society website or at the Asia Society box office.

Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters (Gai Shan Xi He Ta De Jie Mei Men)
BAN Zhongyi. China. 2007. Documentary. 80 min. Digibeta.
Friday, April 9, 6:45 pm

The screening of Gai Shanxi comes on a wave of resurgent interest in the Japanese Occupation of China during WWII, as well as the treatment of women during the Occupation, as depicted in at least two recent notable films. How does Gai Shanxi compare? Read on, and watch a clip, after the break.

The recent release of Lu Chuan‘s City of Life and Death has rekindled global awareness of the Rape of Nanking.  It also has stirred no small degree of attention and controversy, as detailed extensively on our site. There is also a new Japanese documentary that delves into this dark history that’s still downplayed or denied by many Japanese.  Japanese activist Tamaki Matsuoka spent years making Torn Memories of Nanjing, interviewing hundreds of Japanese veterans about their wartime experiences. According to ABC News, the documentary ”breaks new ground with interviews of both aggressors and victims — an elderly Chinese woman tearfully giving details about being sexually assaulted as a girl then a Japanese veteran admitting that he enjoyed rape.”

However, these details – as well as a Japanese soldier’s confession of partaking in sex crimes – are already covered in Ban’s Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters. From a review by Joe Bendel in the Epoch Times:

Gai Shanxi ought to be called the Saint of Shanxi. Frequently abused to the point of physical trauma, she still served as the younger girls’ protector, often taking their place with particularly abusive servicemen. As a fittingly tragic conclusion to her story, Gai Shanxi died before Ban could find her, yet that provided further impetus to document her story.

Indeed, Ban preserves the historically valuable first-person accounts of several of her former “sisters,” conveying a horrifying sense of brutish reality they endured… Though many in Japan still persistently deny “comfort women” were systematically sexually assaulted, Ban found one Japanese veteran who essentially confirms on-camera the nature and regularity of such crimes (though he understandably tries to minimize his own culpability). That alone makes Ban’s film quite an important cinematic investigation.

More information about the film can be viewed on our catalog. View clips from the film:

Relevant Classroom Use

City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan)

Lu Chuan’s controversial Nanjing Massacre movie City of Life and Death picked up the Best Director award at the fourth Asian Film Awards, held during the Hong Kong International Film Festival. While the film continues to gain attention following its successful theatrical run in China and international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last year, it has yet to be shown theatrically in the US, following an aborted spring release with National Geographic.

Meanwhile, it’s generated a bit of a quarrel among film critics. Shelly Kraicer, who reviewed the film earlier on our site, issued a lengthier critique in Cinema-scope. The review has drawn the ire of Asian film stalwart Tony Rayns (who happens to co-program the Asian film selections at the Vancouver Inernational Film Festival), who issues seven bullet-pointed rebuttals to Kraicer’s review.

On the Cineaste website, dGenerate’s Kevin B. Lee has his own take.

An excerpt:

The imperative to honor the longstanding domestic account of the tragedy, offset by the desire to avoid fraying international ties, and further complicated by the desire to appeal to a global audience with its own expectations of art-house entertainment, makes for one of the most compelling filmmaking gauntlets to be found. These three agendas—political, cultural, commercial—wage a battle within City of Life and Death that’s as compelling as the one the film depicts. The film certainly qualifies as an “incoherent text,” to borrow Robin Wood’s phrase, informed by competing social ideologies and commercial ambitions that result in a work of fascinating dissonance.

Full review here.

For an alternative view of the Japanese occupation of China and the story of “comfort women” – women who were forced to sexually serve Japanese soldiers – check out Ban Zhongyi’s extraordinary documentary Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters – screening at Asia Society on April 9.

Relevant Classroom Use

City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan)

The New York Times reports that the Film Forum, one of the leading specialty theaters in New York City, has removed City of Life and Death, a movie about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre directed by Lu Chuan from their spring calendar.  According to the article, National Geographic Entertainment, the North American distributor of the film, could not guarantee that a print of the film would be available in time for its scheduled release.

Film Forum will fill the empty slot on their calendar with The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom, by Ritu Sarin and Tenzig Sonam. The film chronicles a year in the life of the Dalai Lama. Ironically, it was this film that caused Chinese authorities to pull City of Life and Death from the Palm Spring International Film Festival in January when both films appeared on the program.

Although City of Life and Death is unavailable to view in the United States for the time being, dGenerate Films offers another film that probes into the tragic history of women forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army occupying China. Watch a trailer of Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters by Ban Zhongyi below, and find out more about this groundbreaking work of investigative filmmaking.

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Sun Spots (dir. Yang Heng)

18 films by Chinese directors or with a Chinese theme will be presented at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs from January 27 to February 7. Among these films include Oxhide II, Liu Jiayin‘s follow up to her debut feature Oxhide (recently voted one of the top ten Chinese films of the past decade). Sun Spots, the second feature by Yang Heng (whose debut Betelnut is a dGenerate Films ttle) will be in competition for the VPRO Tiger Award.

City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan‘s controversial big-budget feature depicting the Nanjing Massacre, has inspired a sidebar of related films, several of which date back to the time of the historic tragedy.

The full lineup of films can be found after the break.The Annunciation (Hsu Ronin, China 2010) Moving, atmospheric social realism by the young Chinese debutant is about a simple newlywed couple who have moved to the city like so many others looking for work. He really wants a child, she wants to make him happy. But how does she convince him that his sperm isn’t helping?

City of Life and Death (Lu Chuan, China 2009) Impressive chronicle in beautiful black & white about the horrors inflicted by the Japanese in 1937 after they conquered the former Chinese capital Nanjing. Lu Chuan does not only show the random nature of executions and rapes, but also the horror of a well-intentioned Japanese soldier.

Condolences (Ying Lian, China 2009) Burial rites become the mise-en-scène in which politicians, the media, a monk and an infuriated neighbour vividly portray the aftermath of an accident.

Dangerous encounters: 1st kind (Tsui Hark, Hong Kong 1980) Notorious raised middle finger of the Hong Kong New Wave, about three stupid young men who accidentally run over and kill a pedestrian and then, blackmailed by the crazy female witness, use violence to save their skins in the urban jungle.

The Eight Hundred Heroes (Ying Yunwei, China 1938) 800 soldiers of the 88th regiment against what feels like the whole of Japan’s Imperial Army – think Thermopylae, Chinese version. A splendid, visually amazing gem.

Goodbye (Song Fang, China 2008) Delicate short fiction. After an accident, Li Xin ends up with her deceased school friend’s parents. Her stay rips open old wounds.

Kun 1 Action (Wu Haohao, China 2008) Kun1 Action is a wake-up call for young people in China. With his collage of interviews, archive material and reconstructions, the film maker Wu Haohao hopes to ‘save local film from degeneration’. Self assured, crazy and naughty.

March 14 2009, Hong Kong Coliseum (Hsu Chia-Wei, Taiwan 2009) In an empty concert hall, star singer Fish Leong shares her deeper thoughts on the pan-Asian tour, in which every show follows a fixed pattern.

Night & Fog (Ann Hui, Hong Kong 2009) Ann Hui’s dark realistic Night & Fog starts at the end of the story, with the brutal murder by a man of his wife and daughters. Hui gradually unmasks the idyll of the peaceful family and that of Hong Kong as the promised land for gold seekers.

Once Upon a Time Proletarian (Guo Xiaolu, UK/Germany 2009) Portrait of post-Maoist China in twelve commentaries by inhabitants of the country. Writer/film maker Guo Xialolu sketches a varied picture of a China that is still developing very rapidly, but which still doesn’t seem to have much room for individual needs. Those who can’t keep up can do little else but complain.

Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin, China 2009) The Chinese director shows herself and her parents in their apartment only with fixed camera positions, with which she revolves around the kitchen table. The rigorously minimalist story emerges in real time: the time it takes to prepare and eat Chinese dumplings together.

Protect My Country (He Feiguang, China 1939) Japanese soldiers take a Chinese village: babies get bayoneted, the elderly crucified, able men pressed into the enemy army. A classic piece of anti-Japanese agitation.

Spring Fever (Lou Ye, Hong Kong, France 2009) Impressionist film about a passionate homosexual relationship between the married intellectual Wang Ping and the transvestite Jiang Cheng. After Summer Palace, the Chinese director Lou Ye seems again to seek confrontation with the Chinese authorities.

Sun Spots (Yang Heng, Hong Kong, China 2009), nominee of VPRO Tiger Awards Successful Chinese example of minimalist cinema combines beautiful, very sharp HD images without camera movements with a story about a tragic relationship between a tattooed gangster and a hesitant girl suffering the pains of unrequited love.

Unforgettable Memory (Liu Wei, China 2009)
In China, few people want to be reminded of the events of 1989. The maker of Unforgettable Memory is still struggling with the past.

Wheat Harvest (Xu Tong, China 2008) Controversial documentary sketches the double life of the young Niu Hongmiao, who cares for her sick father in the countryside and works in Beijing as a prostitute. A picture gradually emerges of the Chinese sex industry. A world with its own language, rituals and rules.

Yasukuni (Li Ying, Japan, China 2007) The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo was established as a place of worship for the war dead. Some two million are enshrined there – including more than a thousand convicted and oftentimes executed war criminals. Among the most controversial documentaries of the decade.

The 400 Million (Joris Ivens, USA, China 1939) A partisan documentary film on the Chinese resistance against Japan. A classic of world cinema.

Relevant Classroom Use

City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan)

In the new issue of Cinema-Scope Magazine, our own Shelly Kraicer takes on last year’s Chinese blockbuster about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, City of Life and Death by Lu Chuan. Shelly ties the film to the legacy of “zhuxuanlu” or “main melody” propaganda films produced by the government-sponsored Chinese film industry:

A look at City of Life and Death’s genre and narrative strategies can demonstrate its importance in helping to establish what I’d like to call a nascent post-zhuxuanlu cinema. It is a full-out war epic, massively budgeted and vast in ambition. Huge sets of devastated Nanjing were built, and thousands of extras mobilized to illustrate the battle scenes that open the film. Lu films his striking set pieces in a beautifully modulated black and white, where cinematography, art direction, staging, music, and sound design all conspire to create massive, intentionally overwhelming images of violence, horror, and devastation.

Read more of Shelly’s review at Cinema-scope.

For an alternative view of the Japanese occupation of China and the story of “comfort women” – women who were forced to sexually serve Japanese soldiers – check out Ban Zhongyi‘s extraordinary documentary Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters.

Relevant Classroom Use

Filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam (photo courtesy of Friends of Tibet.org)

Chinese authorities have withdrawn two films from the Palm Springs International Film Festival (Jan. 5-18) in protest of the scheduled screening of a documentary about Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

The more prominent of two films, City of Life and Death (also known as Nanjing! Nanjing!), written and directed by Lu Chuan, is a critically acclaimed fictionalized account of atrocities committed by the Japanese occupiers in 1937. According to a report on The Desert Sun, a local paper at Palm Springs, CA, the festival director Darryl Macdonald “regards the film as one of the best unsung films in the festival, but said its merit isn’t enough to subvert the festival’s adherence to artistic freedom.” The other film is Ye Kai’s comedy Quick, Quick, Slow.

A report on the New York Times calls the dispute “a bona fide diplomatic incident,” observing that “while Chinese officials told the festival’s director that the filmmakers themselves had decided to withdraw their state-financed works, many China experts believe that it is the state sending a message, rather than the individuals.”

The report also reviews the recent history of “protest[s] by Chinese officials that the arts, and film specifically, are being used as a weapon to meddle in their internal affairs.”

In August, two American filmmakers were blocked from traveling to China to present their documentary about the more than 5,000 children in Sichuan Province who died when a 2008 earthquake caused numerous schools to collapse. Computer hackers and demonstrators took aim at the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia in July to protest its screening of a documentary about a leader of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, where some 200 people were killed in ethnic violence last summer. And at last fall’s Frankfurt Book Fair, a diplomatic struggle emerged over the fair’s invitation to two dissident Chinese writers to speak at its official program honoring China.

The target of this protest is The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom, directed by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. According to the program at Palm Springs, the film “follow[ed] [the Dalai Lama] over an eventful year, including the 2008 protest in Tibet, the long march in India, the Beijing Olympics and the breakdown of talks with China.”

More news, and a trailer of The Sun Behind the Clouds, after the break.

The Chinese officials reminded the festival programmers that the United States government had an official position to admit Tibet as part of China.  To this, Macdonald stated his position in detail in another report on Screen Daily:

I’m saddened that the Chinese film authorities have chosen to withdraw their films from PSIFF, as the festival is an international cultural event whose mandate is to present a wide cross-section of perspectives and points of view.

That said, we cannot allow the concerns of one country or community to dictate what films we should or should not play, based on their own cultural or political perspective. Freedom of expression is a concept that is integral both to the validity of artistic events, and indeed, to the ethos of this country.

The New York Times report also cites director Lu Chuan’s telephone interview with the Associated Press last Tuesday, in which he said, “The incident involves national interest. National interests trump everything. When it comes to national unity, I think the attitude of all Chinese is the same.”

Stanley Rosen, the director of the East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California,  interpreted Lu’s reaction otherwise to the Times:

“There is no way that he could continue having his films in international festivals and be successful in China” without succumbing to pressure to have his film withdrawn, given that the government financed the film and must approve all Chinese films that are exported.

On a related note, another documentary about Tibet met similar obstruction at home. Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen, whose arrest we mentioned in an earlier post, has recently been sentenced for a six-year imprisonment, after making a documentary critical of Beijing’s policies, Leaving Fear Behind.

From The Guardian:

The films featured interviews with ordinary Tibetans who expressed their love for the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader, and said the Olympics would do little to improve their lives.”The Chinese say they have made improvements in Tibet. But we don’t see any improvement at all,” Wangchen said in the documentary. “The truth is that Tibetans are not free to speak of their suffering.”

Reuters reports the same event:

Dhondup Wangchen’s sentencing took place on December 28 in Xining, Qinghai’s provincial capital, said a statement on a website (www.leavingfearbehind.com) promoting the film, which is also campaigning for his release.

The website said the film-maker had no access to outside legal help, and the government had barred a lawyer hired by his family from representing him.

According to another report on Tech.Blorge, the Great Firewall of China has made IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, the latest site to be blocked. Although there is no official comment, rumors on Twitter suggest that the block has been put in place due to a number of films detailing Tibet and its struggle for freedom being present on the site. In particular, Digital Inspiration claims the documentary When The Dragon Swallowed The Sun is the main reason behind the block.

Returning to the NY Times report on Palm Springs, we close with this comment by Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: “Tibet is an issue that is especially neuralgic for Beijing.”

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