Docu opens with thesp Olivia Cheng stranded in the first of several hokey re-enactments from Chang’s life, underscored by saccharine music, before informing that the author committed suicide in 2004. Talking heads — including Chang’s family, friends and colleagues — are less than probing, but the film gains disturbing momentum when dedicating substantial screen time to the overwhelming testimonies of Nanking survivors. However, the final reels, which consider the severe impact of Chang’s research on her own mental state, lack rigorous detachment and slide into sentimentality. Helming is pedestrian, but interviews and archival footage carry the narrative over rough patches. Tech credits are OK.

He calls the reenactment bits “hagiography” and says they are overly sentimental. I haven’t seen the film, but I can certainly imagine people making films that way — these subjects just lend themselves to that hokeyness, which is not to say it’s inevitable, but just that there are some people who, when making films, don’t know when too much hokeyness is too much.

The “Ideas Revolutionary” blog has an interview with the actress that plays Chang, Toronto (or B.C. based?) actress Olivia Cheng. It’s an mp3 that you can download. That blog also links to an Edmonton Sun article about Cheng as well. The National Post featured Cheng as a diarist, where she recounted the first week of the Iris Chang film shoot.

So it seems the movie was already released in Canada, and has been seen at several film fests. I’d love to hear from other people who have seen it and would like to a either leave a comment or else write a review for China Film Journal on this movie.

As so often, the index of censors’ dislikes provides a fascinating insight into the dark desires of the general populace. China is a deeply formal society, reserved, even prudish, on matters sexual, although growing openness in society has led to greater permissiveness. Directors must not produce films that depict hardcore sexual activity, rape, prostitution or nudity. “Vulgar dialogue or music and sound effects with a sexual connotation” are also out.Any content involving “murder, violence, horror, evil spirits and devils and excessively terrifying scenes, conversations, background music and sound effects” is banned. The list forbids films that “distort the civilisation and history of China or other nations … or … tarnish the image of revolutionary leaders, heroes, important historic characters, members of the armed forces, police and judicial bodies.”

Other banned subjects include the reconstruction of crimes or films that reveal police investigatory techniques. Movies that advocate nihilism, environmental damage, animal abuse and the capture or killing of rare animals will also be on the censor’s list.

Ah, what little the censors know about films and film culture. Just like having basketball courts open at midnight saved inner-city American youth from doing drugs and committing crimes, so quality movies — the kind that you tend to get more of when you’re free to make films the way you see fit — can keep Chinese teenagers from becoming nihilistic, capturing rare animals, and tarnishing the reputation of judicial bodies.

The two films in question, one a rape of Nanking movie helmed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Chow Yun-Fat and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and the other (Three Kingdoms：Resurrection of the Dragon that is) a historical action/drama with Andy Lau, have, according to this article not had to face the censors again, meaning that their same day release on April 3rd is still a goer.

Sorta related note: Did you know that “http://batgwa.com/story.php?id=706″>Chow Yun-fat is an amateur photographer and that some of his photographic works are on display at the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Hong Kong? Some of his pictures are, not surprisingly, behind-the-scenes looks at the movies that he’s been in.

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