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.

Relevant Classroom Use

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