Finding KUKAN

In July, after more than five years of work on the film, we offi­cial­ly wrapped prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy on Find­ing KUKAN. Hooray! With the sup­port of the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts we were final­ly able to col­lab­o­rate with the cre­ative genius­es behind Shad­ow­Light Pro­duc­tions and Blind Design to pro­duce and film the gor­geous shad­ow the­ater recre­ations for our film. The month we spent in a dark­ened stu­dio ware­house space in Oak­land was an expe­ri­en­tial les­son for me in break­ing through fear and frus­tra­tion to cre­ate mag­ic – the kind of mag­ic that can only occur by work­ing with oth­ers. You can view some behind the scenes pho­tographs of our work process HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Cast & Crew for FINDING KUKAN Shad­ow Scenes

The fall brought anoth­er major gift – being accept­ed as one of the four doc­u­men­tary fel­lows at the NALIP ARC Female Film­mak­er Res­i­den­cy in North Troy, VT. Besides get­ting to see the fall col­ors and gor­geous VT land­scape, I was able to work­shop an ear­ly rough cut draft of Find­ing KUKAN with a group of super tal­ent­ed and sup­port­ive female film­mak­ers of diverse back­grounds. Their feed­back and encour­age­ment con­tin­ues to inspire me to take this film to a new level.

2015 NALIP ARC Res­i­den­cy Par­tic­i­pants (pho­to by Adele Pham)

Thanks to the sup­port of hun­dreds of peo­ple, we are on track to pre­miere Find­ing KUKAN in 2016 to cel­e­brate two major anniver­saries – the 75th anniver­sary of the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, and the 75th anniver­sary of the Acad­e­my Award doc­u­men­tary cat­e­go­ry. Much work on the film still needs to be done: music com­po­si­tion, visu­al effects, sound design, col­or cor­rect­ing, and licens­ing our archival ele­ments. But we are tak­ing a lit­tle hol­i­day break to cel­e­brate a very reward­ing year and toast to the many adven­tures ahead.

I’m wrap­ping up 2015 by post­ing our mid-year newslet­ter first: I was thrilled to return to Chongqing this past April with FINDING KUKAN’s producer/editor Shirley Thomp­son and our translator/advisor Dax­ing Zhang to com­plete an his­toric trans­fer of KUKAN to Chi­na 74 years after it was first released in America.

Zhou Yong and Robin Lung com­plete his­toric trans­fer of KUKAN to China.

After my July 2014 trip to Chongqing, Pro­fes­sor Zhou Yong, head of The Chongqing Research Cen­ter for the War of Resis­tance, imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the great his­toric val­ue of KUKAN. He began work­ing with us to acquire a copy of the film, and after 9 months of detailed email exchanges back and forth, we final­ly suc­ceed­ed in reach­ing an agree­ment. The trans­fer helps bring a big part of miss­ing his­to­ry to Chi­na by mak­ing it pos­si­ble for peo­ple all over Chi­na to watch KUKAN for the first time and to study it and write about it for many years to come. In Chongqing and Bei­jing, we watched KUKAN bring tears to people’s eyes as they viewed it. It was a mov­ing tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of film, and I have to thank our many sup­port­ers for that expe­ri­ence. Click HERE for more pho­tos from our trip.

Shirley Thomp­son, Dax­ing Zhang, and Robin Lung

While in Chi­na we received news that the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts award­ed FINDING KUKAN with a Media Arts grant. We are very proud to receive this hon­or which places us in the same group as hal­lowed insti­tu­tions like Lin­coln Cen­ter and The Met. The award meant that we could final­ly pro­duce and film the his­tor­i­cal mon­tages we’ve been plan­ning with our cre­ative part­ners Shad­ow­Light Pro­duc­tions and Chris Do of Blind design stu­dio. Check Part 2 of our 2015 wrap up for a report on our July adven­ture into shadowland.

After four months, I’m still try­ing to digest all the new expe­ri­ences and things I learned on my first trip to Chi­na in July – a study tour focused on World War II his­to­ry. Cur­rent­ly the aver­age high school world his­to­ry class in the Unit­ed States spends less than 15 min­utes a year teach­ing about World War II in Asia. Back in my day, it was even less than that. So this trip was a real eye-open­er even though I’d been study­ing up on the sub­ject for the past few years. A fel­low­ship from the New Jer­sey chap­ter of The Alliance for Learn­ing and Pre­serv­ing the His­to­ry of World War II in Asia (ALPHA) and a gen­er­ous dona­tion from Dou­glas Ho and the Beat­rice M.H. Young Foun­da­tion made my whole trip pos­si­ble. I’m grate­ful to them and all my trav­el­ing com­pan­ions who enhanced my experience.

2014 ALPHA Study Tour group on the Shang­hai Bund
(pho­to by Louis Au)

Toron­to ALPHA orga­nizes the study tour to help high school teach­ers cre­ate cur­ricu­lum mate­r­i­al cur­rent­ly miss­ing from class­rooms. Although we did pause for pho­to-ops and many great Chi­nese and Kore­an meals, much of the tour was spent in study and reflec­tion on seri­ous top­ics, and once-in-a-life­time meet­ings with sur­vivors of the war.

Shang­hai was our first stop and a good prepa­ra­tion for what was to come, shat­ter­ing many pre-con­ceived notions that I had about Chi­na and main­land Chi­nese peo­ple. First of all, I was not inter­ro­gat­ed by immi­gra­tion or strip searched by cus­toms offi­cials or “shanghai’ed” by the taxi dri­ver.  In fact, as the taxi took me to our hotel from the Pudong Air­port late Fri­day night, Shang­hai seemed dis­ap­point­ing­ly west­ern.  The miles of tall apart­ment build­ings lead­ing into the cen­tral part of the city remind­ed me of the sub­urbs sur­round­ing NYC. The bill­boards adver­tised west­ern lux­u­ry brand goods and fea­tured Hol­ly­wood movie stars like George Clooney. As soon as we neared the cen­ter of the city we also hit NYC-style traffic.

Shang­hai is a vibrant mix­ture of old and new, east and west

Since I’m a lazy blog­ger with a poor mem­o­ry, I refer you to fel­low trav­el­er Don Tow’s excel­lent wrap-up of our trip and my room­mate Debra Maller’s day by day blog to get a bet­ter idea of all the sites we vis­it­ed and peo­ple we spoke to.

My study tour room­mate Debra Maller with our tour doc­u­menter Louis Au out­side the Shang­hai Jew­ish Refugee muse­um. Proud that the Chi­nese took in Jews dur­ing WWII when oth­er coun­tries turned them away.

For me, learn­ing of the abus­es of women dur­ing the war was par­tic­u­lar­ly emo­tion­al. The real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion hit home for me when we vis­it­ed a for­mer “com­fort sta­tion” in Shang­hai, the for­mer res­i­dence of the Chen’s, a wealthy fam­i­ly who fled Shang­hai when the Japan­ese mil­i­tary invad­ed the city in 1937.

Out­side Shang­hai “com­fort woman” house with Bet­ty Ma and tour orga­niz­er Judy Cho (pho­to by Louis Au)

The Japan­ese mil­i­tary took over the house to use as a broth­el for their troops and forced women that they kid­napped to live there and pro­vide sex to the men.  About 40 women were kept in the house dur­ing the war.  It was a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence to be in the actu­al loca­tion where these women were impris­oned and abused. The place felt haunt­ed.  I could sense the help­less­ness of the women who were forced to ser­vice the men and the despair they must have lived with.

Court­yard of Shang­hai “com­fort women” house

Sec­ond floor room of Shang­hai “com­fort women” house (pho­to by Louis Au)

The fact is that sex­u­al slav­ery and the abuse of women still goes on all over the world.  How can we stop it?  On the last leg of our trip I was heart­ened to meet the Kore­an grand­mas in Seoul, sur­viv­ing “com­fort women” who had become activists to help oth­er women suf­fer­ing sex­u­al abuse. Their abil­i­ty to sur­vive to find enjoy­ment and pur­pose in life made me real­ize that human­i­ty is also capa­ble of great good. Their activism and com­mit­ment to shar­ing very painful per­son­al sto­ries so oth­ers might not have to suf­fer was deeply inspirational.

Grand­ma Gil, one of the Kore­an “com­fort women” we met at the War and Wom­en’s Human Rights Muse­um in Seoul

86 year old Grand­ma Gil con­tin­ues to advo­cate for women in week­ly demon­stra­tions in Seoul. She was forced into sex­u­al slav­ery at 13 years old.

Don Tow, Robin Lung, and Judy Cho at memo­r­i­al to Kim Hak-Soon, the first woman to pub­licly tes­ti­fy to being a sex­u­al slave to the Japan­ese mil­i­tary dur­ing World War II

Many of the World War II atroc­i­ties we learned about on the tour are com­pi­la­tions of per­son­al his­to­ries that have almost been lost and are only now being able to be told due to the dili­gent work of indi­vid­ual schol­ars or brave indi­vid­u­als who have gone pub­lic with their sto­ries despite the pub­lic shame or gov­ern­ment dis­ap­proval that has come with it.  As our learn­ing ses­sions con­tin­ued, I began to see that every coun­try and every gen­er­a­tion with­in each coun­try has a dif­fer­ent way of remem­ber­ing his­to­ry and using his­to­ry to forge a path to the future. There are also forces in every coun­try that cause large chunks of his­to­ry to be sup­pressed or for­got­ten. Amer­i­ca is no excep­tion. How much of our own his­to­ry has been lost or for­got­ten? And why?

Our group after tour­ing the Nan­jing Mas­sacre Memo­r­i­al Hall

The Nan­jing Mas­sacre Memo­r­i­al Hall is built near the site of a mass grave of 10,000 vic­tims and dis­plays some of the remains exca­vat­ed near the site. A grue­some reminder of the hor­rors of war.

At the John Rabe House study tour leader FLo­ra Chong and Judy Cho greet Nan­jing Mas­sacre sur­vivor Ding Zheng Lan who was shel­tered in the Safe­ty Zone cre­at­ed by Rabe and sev­er­al oth­er west­ern­ers who remained in Nan­jing dur­ing the mas­sacre in 1937.

Noth­ing like restora­tive noo­dle soup after study­ing about wartime mas­sacres. One of my favorite Chi­na meals was at the Nan­jing airport.

Why would you eat at the air­port McDon­alds when this is available?

The high­light of my trip came after the offi­cial study tour was over and I trav­eled to Chongqing, the wartime cap­i­tal of Chi­na where much of KUKAN was filmed. I was able to stand at the very place that Rey Scott filmed scenes of the bomb­ing of Chongqing that made KUKAN famous.

View of Chongqing from the south bank of the Yangtze

I also screened KUKAN for a group of about 30 his­to­ri­ans in Chongqing.They were clear­ly moved by the scenes of their city being dec­i­mat­ed by the Japan­ese bombs. They had nev­er heard of KUKAN before even though many of them had spent their aca­d­e­m­ic careers study­ing the war. The film rep­re­sent­ed the most com­plete record of the bomb­ing of Chongqing that they had ever seen and con­tained a trea­sure trove of images from all the loca­tions in Chi­na where Rey Scott filmed.They applaud­ed Li Ling-Ai and Rey Scot­t’s hero­ic effort in mak­ing the film and my effort to bring it to their atten­tion. As a strug­gling film­mak­er, know­ing that a piece of work can have an impact beyond one’s life­time helps keep me moti­vat­ed when the chips are down.  I hope to have more news about a return trip to Chi­na soon.

Schol­ars in Chongqing view the 1941 KUKAN — screened in Chi­na for the first time.

Chongqing’s cen­tral shop­ping square is anchored by the Peo­ple’s Lib­er­a­tion Mon­u­ment, built in 1945 to com­mem­o­rate the vic­to­ry over the Japan­ese in WWII. It was renamed in 1950 to com­mem­o­rate the Com­mu­nist con­quest of the area. Even mon­u­ments change to fit the pop­u­lar mood of the times.

I’m so thrilled to announce that with one week to go in our “10K in 10wks Keep This Film Alive” cam­paign, we’ve raised 85% of our goal — $8,515 raised with $1,485 to go. The funds will allow us to start edit­ing a rough cut of the film on Novem­ber 12! To cel­e­brate, we are going to give away TWO FINDING KUKAN SOUVENIRS – a large can­vas tote bag fea­tur­ing an image of Li Ling-Ai (the un-cred­it­ed pro­duc­er of KUKAN); and a 18”X24” repli­ca of the orig­i­nal KUKAN poster, suit­able for framing.

FINDING KUKAN Sou­venir Can­vas Tote Bag

18″ X 24″ KUKAN Sou­venir Poster

To enter the draw­ing for these Oscar his­to­ry col­lectibles sim­ply “LIKE” our page on Face­book HERE.  If you are already a Face­book fan, you can enter by shar­ing any post on our Face­book Page that is titled “SHARE THIS”.  If you are not a Face­book per­son, you can enter the draw­ing by shar­ing this link in a blog post or email to a friend (make sure to copy info[at]findingkukan[dot]com).  We will pick the lucky two win­ners on Novem­ber 12, our first day of editing.

This sto­ry is empow­ered by the peo­ple who share it.  My heart­felt thanks to all of you for help­ing to keep this sto­ry alive.  Alo­ha, Robin

p.s.  you can still make a tax deductible con­tri­bu­tion to our 10k goal by click­ing HERE.