Thursday, January 25, 2007

Oh, is it the 70th anniversary already?

You know what time it is?

It's time for dueling documentaries, boys and girls! Yeah!

Let's introduce the contestants:

'Nanking' Documentary Rights Sold at Sundance
The Washington Post

by Thomas Heath - AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis announced today from the Sundance Film Festival in Utah that he has sold the international rights -- excluding China -- to his documentary film "Nanking" to Fortissimo Films.

...

Fortissimo has a record of distributing well-regarded documentaries, including "Supersize Me," "Capturing the Friedmans" and "Mad Hot Ballroom."

Nanking is told through interviews with Chinese survivors, archival footage and testimonies of Japanese soldiers, interwoven with filmed narrations of the Westerners' letters and diaries featuring Jurgen Prochnow, Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway.

VS.


Japanese director announces production of Nanjing film to deny massacre
Associated Press

TOKYO: When Japanese troops conquered the then-capital of China in 1937, historians agree they slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in an orgy of violence known since then as the Rape of Nanking.

A Japanese nationalist filmmaker announced on Wednesday he is working on a documentary with a very different message: the massacre never happened.

The film, to be called "The Truth about Nanking" and completed in August, will be based on testimony from Japanese veterans, archival footage and documents that proponents say prove accounts of the killing are nothing more than Chinese propaganda.


Gosh, all this and a feature film about the Nanjing Massacre based on Iris Chang's book coming out in 2008.

Stupid Query: how do you make a "feature film" out of a history book, at least one written after, let's say, 1850? History books tend to not be very, you know, filmable.

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