first film, the first film to unveil the event. Eighty-two years of changes, history will never sink. On June 14, the truth finally came to light. "
A fan wrote this sentence on social media after grabbing a ticket for the world premiere of " The Sinking of Lisbon Maru" at 10 a.m. the day after tomorrow.
What kind of documentary film is this?
What kind of documentary movie will it be? How to uncover the historical truth that was submerged 82 years ago?
A piece of history that cannot be forgotten
In 2013, when the filmmaker Fang Li was filming the movie "The Future of the World" in Dongji Island, Zhejiang Province, he heard about "Lisbon" from the fishermen of Zhoushan. Maru Rescue Incident", I was deeply shocked and could not let it go.
On Christmas Day 1941, thousands of British soldiers defending Hong Kong were forced to surrender after seventeen days of fierce fighting with the Japanese army and became prisoners of war.
At the end of September 1942, the Japanese army took these British prisoners of war 1,816 of them were sent to the cargo ship "Lisbon Maru" with the intention of transporting them to Japan to become laborers.
When the ship was traveling near the East Pole waters of Zhejiang, it was misjudged as a warship by the US submarine "Perch", and was fired by the latter. Lightning struck.
During the 25 hours from when the ship was hit to the time it sank, the Japanese army sealed all the British prisoners of war in the bottom of the ship and nailed the hatches with wooden strips and canvas. The British prisoners of war bravely rescued themselves and escaped.
In times of crisis, fishermen in Zhoushan, Zhejiang risked their lives and rescued 384 dying British prisoners of war in the water on their sampans. They mentioned that the Chinese fishermen not only witnessed the whole process, but also rescued them from danger, otherwise there would be many dangers. More prisoners of war died for no reason.
Despite this, 828 prisoners of war either drowned, were shot by the Japanese army, or were trapped in the ship and failed to escape. Their remains are still sinking in the East Pole waters today.
"Lisbon. In the "Lisbon Maru Rescue Incident", Chinese fishermen showed their self-sacrifice of great love for others and their heroic and fearless international humanitarian spirit.
In 2015, General Secretary Xi Jinping specifically mentioned the "Lisbon Maru Shipwreck" incident when he visited the UK and met with Queen Elizabeth. He pointed out: “The friendship forged between the Chinese and British peoples during the war will never fade and has become a precious asset of China-British relations. "
In 2022, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the sinking of the "Lisbon Maru", General Secretary Xi replied to Winnie, a descendant of the "Lisbon Maru" prisoner of war, saying that the rescue incident was a historical episode of the deep friendship between the two peoples.
©CCTV News
Moved by the heroic feats of Chinese fishermen, and unable to let go of the more than 800 British prisoners of war who were forgotten at the bottom of the sea, Fang Li was determined to shoot an English documentary film for a global audience, telling the story of the "Lisbon Maru" and salvaging this piece of history. The story of salvaging more than 1,800 forgotten prisoners of war.
A sword in seven years, cross-narrative
From hearing about the "Lisbon Maru" in 2013, to leading the team to locate the location of the sunken ship for the first time in October 2016, he obtained the underwater three-dimensional shape of the sunken ship and drew it. Sonar map, three years have passed, and Fang Li's identity has changed from a film producer to a geophysicist and marine technology expert.
Fang Li looked through historical documents and photos
From February 2018, he went to the UK for the first time to meet with British military representatives. From reaching a cooperation agreement, to conducting the first survey in Zhoushan in March, interviewing the only surviving fisherman Lin Agen (94 years old), and then leading the team to complete the filming of "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru" in 2023,
has gone through these seven years. , Fang Li's identity has returned to that of a filmmaker. He is the producer and director of "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru"
Fang Li (middle) was interviewed by BBC
In the past seven years, this team has made connections with nearly 380 family members of prisoners of war. Contacted, visited more than 100 British towns, collected tens of thousands of historical photos, interviewed nearly 120 descendants of prisoners of war face-to-face, traveled to China, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Japan and other places, and studied more than a million words of English and Japanese materials .
Seven years later, they delivered the documentary film The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru.The film is based on reality and uses film language as its narrative. It can be said to be a real-life documentary that is better than a movie - a real-life documentary is combined with high-quality animation special effects to tell the story in a cross-cutting manner to reveal this sunken past.
Sonar located and discovered the shipwreck on the seabed
In the investigative part of the documentary: After hearing the Zhoushan fishermen talk about the "Lisbon Maru", Fang Li used sonar detection technology to exclusively locate and discover the shipwreck on the seafloor. Because of a mysterious descendant of a British prisoner of war, Fang Li The phone call started a journey to find out the truth.
Survivor Dennis Morley was interviewed
Why did the US military sink the Lisbon Maru?
Why did the Japanese army escape from danger but did not rescue the British prisoners of war?
Why did the Japanese army seal prisoners of war in the cabin of a sinking ship?
What happened when the shipwreck?
Chinese fishermen must have played more than just a role in rescuing people in the incident...
The film crew carried questions, investigated carefully, and found the core parties and their descendants in the United States, Japan, Britain, and China. Bitian pieced together the whole process of the shipwreck, and also discovered tear-jerking human stories.
Survivor Benny Field was interviewed
In the animation documentary section, through survivor descriptions, lifetime recordings and documents, film-level animation is used to completely present what happened in the 25 hours from the torpedo to the final sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Each thrilling moment vividly depicts the actions and choices of each party in this war tragedy, allowing the audience to feel as if they are on the scene and empathize with each other, and deeply understand the cruelty and absurdity of war through visual impact.
Comment now | Every step is difficult
If you want to briefly summarize the story of "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru", it probably only needs one sentence: In 1942, the Japanese-armed cargo ship "Lisbon Maru" passed through China carrying 1,816 British prisoners of war. It was sunk by a US submarine in the waters off Zhoushan, Zhejiang. At a critical moment, kind-hearted Chinese fishermen stepped forward and braved the hail of bullets from the Japanese army to go to sea and rescued 384 British prisoners of war.
The reason why this period of history is profound and precious is that it is an important testimony of China and Britain fighting side by side as allies in World War II and jointly resisting fascist aggression. It is also ironclad evidence that exposes another crime against humanity committed by Japanese fascists during World War II.
The descendants of British prisoners of war collectively observed a moment of silence in Zhoushan
If we wanted to briefly summarize the efforts of Fang Li and his team, it would probably only take one sentence: the production of the film lasted 7 years, and director Fang Li, a marine technology expert, visited China with his film crew. , the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Australia and other countries, searching for a large amount of information and conducting detailed historical research. Combining on-site interviews, precious historical images, and animations that restore events, the film will reveal a historical truth that has been hidden for 82 years.
But in fact, the difficulty of shooting and producing such a historical documentary cannot be easily summarized in the word "can be imagined".
The filming team is looking for survivors
For example, it has been about 80 years since the incident occurred, and the process of verifying historical data from that year is extremely difficult. Most of the historical data involves secret reports from the military from various places. Coordination is extremely difficult and requires all the detailed historical data collected so far. There is a logical series, and some contradictory historical data are repeatedly supported. There were very few eyewitnesses to the
incident. At that time, the only surviving prisoner of war known to the world was an old man who was nearly a hundred years old. There were very few channels for collecting authentic oral histories, so the film team had to race against time to conduct rescue interviews. When
was filming, there was only one 90-year-old fisherman participating in the rescue in Zhoushan, China. His expression and memory were relatively vague, which undoubtedly posed a huge challenge to the interview work.
Interviewing with descendants of British prisoners of war
For example, the Lisbon Maru incident is not well known to the British public, and the search for other descendants of prisoners of war is very difficult and requires a huge amount of manpower and material resources.
first spent a lot of money to place large-scale advertisements in mainstream British media. Later, more than 300 families contacted the filming team at the same time, and they had to coordinate the interview time, location, and The content... was extremely difficult for the filming team of about ten people, but in the end they overcame the difficulties and interviewed more than a hundred families of descendants of British prisoners of war.
After the interview, the production team found that the stories collected were very valuable. How to choose among these touching stories was also a great challenge for the director and editing team.
For another example, the shooting route of Lisbon Maru was very long, and the shooting team traveled to many places, which was time-consuming and laborious. The massive amount of material captured over the past six years requires very detailed sorting, arrangement, checking, and translation. The post-production process is extremely difficult and the work cycle is also very long. The
video contains a half-hour animation. At that time, historical data and images were extremely scarce. The team could only try their best to restore the scenes of the war by consulting written records, combined with oral recordings of some prisoners of war, and retellings of the experiences of their relatives by descendants of prisoners of war. The animation used The CG method involves massive modeling by the animation team, and the process from 0 to 1 also requires a lot of details. All of this requires historical materials as endorsement. Not only is the production difficult, but the verification process is also extremely difficult.
Thanks to Fang Li and his team for overcoming many difficulties and finally presenting us with a documentary film like "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru".
It will tell the true story of the joys and sorrows of dozens of Allied prisoners of war families, and it is also a thrilling historical truth that has been buried for 82 years.
New Performing Arts Studio
Author: Sun Jiayin
Pictures: Provided by the film producer, some from the Internet
Editor: Xiaokai
© Xinmin Evening News Department of Culture
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