Helen Deng

“NANKING,” a film documenting wartime atrocities by Japanese troops in China, was screened again in Shenzhen yesterday, weeks after it completed a lukewarm run in the city.

The film’s China distributor, Central Newsreels and Documentary Film Studio, said it would send 130 prints of the film to major cities including Shenzhen starting Sept. 3.

The film can be seen in major theaters before Sept. 18. The final run will come in December, when the Nanjing Massacre is commemorated.

The movie, which premiered in July, was well-received by critics but rejected by audiences. Critics said it was touching and shocking, but most audiences chose the blockbusters “Transformers” and “Harry Potter” instead.

The U.S. production “Nanking” is one of a clutch of movies about the Nanjing Massacre being released this year in the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the fall of China’s wartime capital to invading Japanese troops Dec. 13, 1937. It is the only Nanjing Massacre film made outside China.

Described as a “Schindler’s List”-style movie about foreigners setting up a safe zone for refugees in the war-torn city, the film weaves grainy images of stacked bodies of infants with tearful accounts of rape and torture committed by Japanese soldiers from Chinese witnesses.

Hollywood actors, including Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway, do staged readings of diary entries kept by the Westerners in the safe zone, and retired Japanese soldiers confess to participating in mass killings.

The movie’s producer and AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis bankrolled the film with US$2 million after drawing inspiration from the late Iris Chang’s book, “The Rape of Nanking.” He invited the Academy Award-winning writer/director team of Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman to co-direct it. Guttentag and his crew visited six countries over a period of eight months to collect video, audio and written materials.

Despite the warm response it received in the U.S. market, the film did not attract a great number of Chinese moviegoers, sparking fears that the Chinese may be forgetting the tragic story of the Nanjing Massacre.

“Nanking” was screened 150 times in Shenzhen’s New South China Movie City, and 5,600 people watched it, an average of 37 people per viewing.

At another Shenzhen theater, Golden Harvest, the film was screened 98 times in one and a half months, and viewed by 4,510 people. On average, 46 people viewed the film each time, of whom one-third were students.

“Most of the audiences were employees of State-owned companies and government organizations which bought group tickets for them,” said a theater manager surnamed Pan.

The number of viewers was not small for a documentary, said Zhao Min with Golden Harvest. She added that the figures, however, paled in comparison to blockbusters like “Harry Potter.”

Liu Dian of the Central Newsreels and Documentary Film Studio attributed the film’s poor box-office performance to low-key publicity. The film did not arrive in China until 10 days ahead of the screening. “We had to scramble out a whole set of sales program within 10 days,” said Liu.

But Liu said he was not worried about “Nanking.” “Documentaries are becoming increasingly popular in China… There is an emerging middle class who, well-educated and sophisticated, are willing to watch this high-quality film,” said Liu, who expects the total box office of the documentary to reach 10 million yuan by the year-end. “It will be the highest box office for a documentary in China.”

However, representatives of Golden Harvest and New South China Movie City said they were yet to receive a notice from the distributor.

Zhao Jun, general manager of China Film South Cinema Circuit Co. Ltd., said the documentary’s release had been poorly timed, as it had been pitted against big-budget blockbusters.

The distributor of “Nanking” should not have chosen the summer season for the film, when it had to compete with many blockbusters, he said.

Zhao said he had reminded the distributor to avoid the summer season, but his suggestion was not adopted. “It’s natural for documentaries to have a lower box office than commercial blockbusters,” he added.

To encourage more people to watch the film, many companies, schools, and government organizations have organized group screenings.