Beijing Newspeak

Ted Leonis, producer of “Nanking”, wants one billion Chinese people to see his film. Wildly optimistic of course, although apparently it will be shown on CCTV in six months’ time. However, the way in which the documentary has been treated in Chinese cinemas has hardly aided his cause.

I saw the film a couple of weeks ago, six days after its release in ”Beijing, Shanghai, Wuxi and other cities” (Xinhua) on July 7. Even then, it wasn’t easy to find a cinema in Beijing screening the film at a time which did not clash with daylight working hours. Not particularly surprising when you consider there were only eight copies of the film distributed to the city’s cinemas. Nanking was also subject to bullying from those profit-guzzling blockbuster types - Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Transformers - sandwiched as it was between the release dates of both of them. A few days after I had seen Nanking, it had been swamped by everyone’s favourite childhood robots (call me fickle but, 20 years on, I have no interest in seeing this film). One of my colleagues wasn’t even aware of Nanking’s presence on the big screen saying he always checked the cinema listings to see if anything interesting was showing but hadn’t noticed it. A few pars from an article by my guardians appear to back this up, although the writer has chosen to quote a random Internet film forum user rather than phoning up someone in the know.

Meanwhile, the US documentary “Nanking” chronicling Japan’s notorious 1937 invasion of the Chinese city Nanjing, and which opened in China on July 7, was left trailing in the dust.

The 90-minute documentary “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.

“Transformers dominates the cinema screens, so it is natural to dominate the box office,” said one person named “movie worm” on an Internet film forum.

“Profit-driven cinema managers always abandon serious movies like ‘Nanking’ to make way for blockbusters like ‘Transformers’. It surely has a bad impact on the diversity of the movie market,” the netizen said.

The Shanghai New Century Cinema screened “Transformers” 30 times on July 15 but “Nanking” was only screened once on the same day at the same cinema.

My initial thoughts were that the government had missed a good opportunity to promote a film made outside China which corresponded with its own official line on the Nanjing massacre. A reminder to Japan that it is not just the Chinese who remember, or who were directly affected, by the events of 1937. Indeed, these are the reasons why Ted Leonsis and co-director Dan Sturman thought this film would be warmly received by the Chinese authorities, as reported by Associated Press and carried by the International Herald Tribune.

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.

I brought up this point at work and another Xinhua journalist titillated me with the words, “Here’s some inside information for you …”, going on to claim the government has played a hand in playing down the film - although I have no idea to what extent. Apparently, it welcomed interest from overseas about the events of 1937 but seeing as there are already a few films on the subject by Chinese directors, it didn’t want to give “Nanking” too much coverage. I’m not sure how seriously to take this line of reasoning, particularly given this line from another Xinhua story:

Zhang Pimin, a chief film censor from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), said the documentary, which remained untouched by the censors, will be shown in the major cities around China until the end of 2007.

It should be noted, however, that the article goes on to say, “He did not specify how many screenings of the film would be shown each week and in which cities.”

Another argument for the possibility of government interference is that it didn’t want to stir up excessive ill-feeling towards Japan by encouraging everyone to go and watch the film (I hope my good friend doesn’t mind me mentioning her post-film reaction of “That’s why I hate the Japanese”). Xinhua’s diplomatic desk is more than capable of doing that when told although the moderate language used these days (since Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister) is unrecognisable from the bitter reproaches I was touching up when I first arrived at Xinhua in early 2006 when the Yasukuni Shrine issue was topping the controversy list. What is certain is that the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television had the power to ensure ”Nanking” did not clash with the mainstream Hollywood offerings and distribute more copies around China.

The film wasn’t released in Nanjing at the same time as Beijing et al. In fact, the plan was to wait until August 15 - the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII - to allow more time for promotion but the main cinema in Nanjing, the Heping Theatre, managed to “borrow one copy from Wuxi” as Xinhua reported in this story. This is where I started to get confused.

The original story, as it came to me, told of Nanking’s popularity in China’s cinemas, directly contradicting the previous Xinhua report of it “trailing in the dust”. It had no real evidence to support this statement (which is what happens when an intern with no experience or training is asked to write news supposedly worthy of international attention) and was entirely focused on Nanjing. The writer said she had seen the previous Xinhua report but had chosen to ignore it.

Looking at the story more closely, it turned out private businesses had actually bought 5,000 tickets and given them away on the cheap as part of a promotion. These tickets accounted for one third of the total amount of tickets sold in the Heping Theatre. Companies had made block bookings until August - it didn’t say whether or not they were state-owned enterprises. According to the manager of the Heping theatre, the film had earned 400,000 yuan in two weeks, which doesn’t strike me as a particularly large amount.

Of course there is another major reason why “Nanking” has been overshadowed by the other foreign films:

Ma Weimin, vice president of the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio (CNDFS), which sponsored the distribution of the film in China, told Xinhua, “We thought the documentary would be less well received by audiences compared with commercial movies, particularly during the summer vacation period.”

Perhaps, many people just aren’t that interested in seeing the film. It is not exactly easy viewing. A colleague said a common feeling among some of her Chinese friends was that they didn’t really want to watch people from outside China recounting how they managed to save the Chinese people during the massacre. There is the feeling it makes the Chinese look vulnerable and weak, she said. I’m sure many would disagree with this thinking. And of course, in terms of entertainment value, Transformers wins hands down. When I saw Nanking, there were quite a few young people sitting near us. One couple chatted throughout, occasionally glancing at the screen and saying “that’s terrible” and then returning to their conversation. They left before the end, as did the couple in front of us who played with their mobile phones throughout much to the irritation of everyone else. These are just a couple of observations - they were in the minority.

A combination of the above reasons seems to have dulled the impact of “Nanking” in China. I find this regretful given the film’s effectiveness in portraying, simply and brutally, the horrors of the massacre of 1937 unlike the often clumsy rhetoric disseminated in news stories from state media.