Kukan

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Movie
Original title Kukan: The Battle Cry of China
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1941
length 90 minutes
Rod
Director Rey Scott
script Yutang Lin (preface)
Ralph Schoolman (adaptation)
Rey Scott (screenplay)
production Li Ling-Ai Herbert T. Edwards
music Edward Craig
camera Rey Scott
cut Charlie Bellante
Sam Citron
occupation

Kukan (Subtitle: The Battle Cry of China ) is a 1941 documentary by Li Ling-Ai and Rey Scott . The film focuses on the Chinese resistance against Japan during World War II . The film was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1942 . The film was considered lost for many years. In 2009, however, a copy of the film was found, which is currently in a multi-year restoration phase at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . The documentary filmmaker Robin Lung is making a film about the search for the film. The film titled Finding Kukan was funded through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com . [outdated]

background

Li Ling-Ai is the producer and source of ideas . The cameraman was Rey Scott, a journalist from St. Louis who was the Foreign Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph . Encouraged by Li Ling-Ai, he set off for China in 1939 to shoot the documentary. Equipped with a 16 mm - hand-held camera and color film material he traveled from Hong Kong in the provisional capital of Chongqing , then over the Burma Road to Lanzhou . From there he traveled to Tibet and returned to Chongqing. The film documents the trip and provides information about the heterogeneous ethnic groups in China, such as the Miao in the mountains of Guizhou , the Muslim Chinese in Lanzhou, the Buddhists in Tibet, the nomads in the Gobi desert as well as the Han and Manchu - Chinese. The US entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and began to support China against Japan with substantial lend-and-lease shipments.

The last 20-minute part of the film shows the film on 19./20. August 1940 air raids by the Japanese Imperial Air Force on the city of Chongqing. About 200 tons of bombs were dropped. Scott filmed the bombing from the roof of the US Embassy, ​​which was right next to the center of the attack. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was deeply impressed by these pictures in his film review and described what he saw as worse and more frightening than the pictures of the German air raids on England as part of the " Blitz ".

The film premiered on June 23, 1941 in a 90-minute version. A version shortened to 63 minutes followed in July 1941. The film caught the interest of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , who met director Rey Scott and producer Li Ling-Ai during a private screening at the White House .

In 1942 Scott received an honorary Oscar , which was given in the form of an award rather than a statue. Scott received the award because of the "extraordinary circumstances in the production of Kukan, especially filming with a 16mm camera under the most difficult and dangerous conditions". Kukan was one of two non-fictional films about World War II that won an Oscar in 1942. The other was Target for Tonight , which was produced by the UK Department of Information .

The film was considered lost for a long time, until the Hawaiian filmmaker Robin Lung discovered a damaged 16 mm version after about a year of research on Li Ling-Ai in late 2009, which she immediately made available to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . Phil Hall from the Film Threat website was one of the few who was able to view the (as yet unedited) version around 70 years after it was published, and he described his first impression in a meeting. He described the discovery of the film as "one of the most important events in the history of film preservation" and the film itself as a "turning point in documentary film" towards an "adult form" of film that no longer relied on agitprop , but tried instead to draw the most objective, real picture possible.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Only copy of KUKAN Arrives at AMPAS for Restoration . April 2010. Retrieved March 8, 2013.
  2. ^ Documentation website
  3. ↑ a b Time Magazine review
  4. ^ New York Times review
  5. ↑ Kukan on The Oscar Site ( Memento of May 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ “for his extraordinary achievement in producing Kukan , the film record of China's struggle, including its photography with a 16mm camera under the most difficult and dangerous conditions”, quoted from Oscars.org . Retrieved February 11, 2013.
  7. ^ "The Birth of the Documentary Oscars" by Ed Carter, AMPAS
  8. ↑ About the 1941 Oscar-Winning Documentary KUKAN. Retrieved March 8, 2013 .
  9. ↑ Phil Hall: Kukan. Film Threat, accessed February 11, 2013 .