On the morning of October 27, the nomination list for the China Film Golden Rooster Award was announced. "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru", produced and directed by Sichuan filmmaker Fang Li and co-produced by Emei Film Group, was nominated for the best documentary/scientific and

On the morning of October 27, the nomination list for the China Golden Rooster Award was announced. "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru", produced and directed by Sichuan filmmaker Fang Li and co-produced by Emei Film Group, was nominated for the best documentary/scientific and educational film. Currently, the film has received a high score of 9.3 on Douban, with a large number of viewers being young people.

On the afternoon of October 27, a special screening of "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" was held at the Fudan Cultural Lecture Hall in Shanghai. Fang Li had a conversation with scholars such as Li Fen and Wang Shengyuan. The audience was filled with young people watching the film.

From left to right are Fudan University professor Li Fen, director Fang Li, and Fudan University professor Wang Shengyuan

"Why did it take eight years to invest a lot of manpower and material resources, almost bankrupting the money, into a ship that sank at the bottom of the sea?" The story of British prisoners of war’s difficult survival?” Li Fen, a professor at the School of Journalism at Fudan University, asked Fang Li this question on behalf of the young students in the audience.

Fang Li's answer made the audience burst into applause. He said: "More than 800 young people sank to the bottom of the sea. Who were they? What happened? They were about the same age as my son and died in front of my house. . If I don’t do this, I will be sorry for this period of history.”

I am counting down how many movies I can make in my lifetime

On October 1, 1942, a torpedo launched by a US submarine completely changed the "Lisbon Maru". "The destiny of the people. At that time, Allied prisoners of war in Hong Kong were escorted into the Japanese transport ship "Lisbon Maru" for transfer. The ship violated international law and did not erect any signs for transporting prisoners of war. It sailed to the waters of Dongji Island in Zhoushan and was hit by a torpedo launched by a US submarine...

During the screening of the film, the sound of choking and sniffling came from time to time in the darkness; At the end, when Fang Li and his entourage walked into the hall, the audience stood up and applauded to welcome his arrival. In the ensuing dialogue, in addition to sharing how he traveled to three continents and six countries and unearthed heartbreaking stories, Fang Li frequently mentioned two things, namely "no rest" and "money."

The entire audience stood up and applauded Fang Li.

"It's so rare to come to this world, how can I rest?" Fang Li, who was born in 1953, has a sense of urgency for time, partly due to the obvious aging of his waist and legs. He lamented that "there are only more than 30,000 days in a person's life." Life is so short that even when he concentrates on meaningful things, it still cannot satisfy his curiosity about the world.

Just like in "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru", he seemed to express urgently that he was already very old and that if this story was not filmed, he would never have another chance. At the post-screening meeting, Fang Li had already received applause from the audience. , non-stop wanting to rush to the next goal: "I am counting down how many movies I can make in my lifetime."

And another keyword is "money". This is actually an issue that he has to be concerned about - "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" took 8 years to film and almost cost Fang Li his fortune. How “expensive” a shooting project is this? In addition to relying on a large number of professional equipment such as sonar to search for the hull, in order to find the descendants of Allied prisoners of war, Fang Li placed advertisements in newspapers such as The Guardian and The Times for about a month, costing an average of 2,000 pounds per newspaper, and finally found More than 380 descendants of Allied prisoners of war, as well as one surviving veteran living in Canada. The current box office of the film is 44.9 million yuan - this is the best box office performance of a domestic documentary in the past two years, but it is not enough to recover the cost.

Picture source Fang Li gave a speech

But Fang Li said that compared with the gains, what he lost was almost insignificant, because "most of their children and descendants do not know what their fathers have experienced." In the video, Fang Li He held a camera and interviewed random passers-by on the street, but no one had heard of the "Lisbon Pill". A little boy looked at the camera with an innocent and puzzled expression: "Why are you looking for a sunken ship?"

"Don't say 8 years, I will finish it in 18 years."He said that the more than 2,000 broken families, the 828 souls sealed in the cabin... He has a promise to them that will not stop until it is completed: ""The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" is not a loss, it fills the gaps in history. , and also fulfilled the wishes of more than 2,000 families. ”

From Lisbon Maru to Malaysia Airlines, salvaging lost historical memories

The “sinking” of this memory is not only about the descendants of Allied prisoners of war - some tombs are even empty; it is also about nailing prisoners of war to cabins or shooting them Or the descendants of the Japanese soldiers who picked up prisoners of war, and the descendants of the American soldiers who fired torpedoes at the "Lisbon Maru". They don't know what their fathers experienced, and what happened to the sunken "Lisbon Maru" Story.

The children of Shigeru Tsuda, the captain of the "Lisbon Maru" who transported more than 1,800 Allied prisoners of war to Japan, said in an interview, "My father never mentioned the name of the ship, so we were completely unaware. This was our first I heard about it once. "Survivor Dennis Morley said: "I don't want to remember anything now... Whether it is my daughter or my great-granddaughter, they don't know what I went through during the war. That thing is too far away, on the other side of the world. "

Interview with survivor Dennis Morley

Li Fen, a professor at the School of Journalism at Fudan University, mentioned his feelings when talking about the war with his Japanese friends. He said that younger Japanese friends would use "this was something of the previous generation" as a Attitude towards history.

“Silence is a double wall. " Wang Shengyuan, a professor at the School of Foreign Languages ​​and Literature at Fudan University, said that when the fathers who had experienced the war returned home, the trauma of the war made them reluctant to mention this sad event; the father did not talk about it, and the children did not want to ask, which led to A piece of historical memory is "disappeared".

However, "human emotions are all connected. "Fang Li clearly remembered that when he told the story of the "Lisbon Pill" to the European media, one of the hosts shed tears. Several British soldiers had red eyes and raised their hands to ask if they could provide anything. Help.

What moved him even more was that during more than 100 consecutive road shows, many young audiences gave him positive feedback. "All the tears I didn't shed during the summer were given to this movie" has also become a hot search topic. Topic: “In the past, we often said that this was an era of fragmentation and short videos, but in fact it was just the opposite. As long as the movie is heartfelt and emotional rather than gimmicky or sensational, everyone will resonate with us. "

Zhang Lifen concluded that this is a film that has set a record for Chinese documentaries. But obviously, compared with commercial films, the box office of "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" is bleak, and it is not proportional to the current excellent reputation on the Internet.

“This comes from the fact that many viewers don’t understand ‘documentary’ yet. Fang Li mentioned that many domestic audiences have not developed the habit of going to theaters to watch documentaries. Many third- and fourth-tier cities have almost zero film schedules. Some theaters even deleted the hard drives within three days after receiving them. When the online reviews increased, he realized that the hard drive could no longer be found.

Fang Li said that this was also the first time he had seen the public promote a Chinese documentary through the power of the Internet, which also made him think about the issue of "how to spread documentaries." It becomes very important. “How do we define it? Does the UK call it a ‘documentary drama’? Or ‘non-fiction’? But there was no such proposal in the industry before. "

He is already preparing for the next documentary, which is still extremely difficult and still ambitious. He hopes to find the missing Malaysia Airlines 370 and salvage this lost historical memory: "This time when searching for the Lisbon Maru, I stood on the deck. Going up, thinking that there are more than 800 living lives buried under my feet... (Malaysian Airlines) As long as no one finds it, I will definitely look for it."

Red Star News reporter Mao Yuchuan Ren Hongwei Shanghai report editor Su Jing