Going global
Chinese student’s film wins international award
A Chinese student has won an international award for her film about a US missionary who set up a refugee camp at Ginling Women’s College during the Nanjing Massacre in 1937.
Luo Yiyun, 26, who majored in Creative Producing at Columbia University in the United States, won the JCS International Young Creatives Award for The Peacemaker from Nanking.
Nanking refers to Nanjing, now the capital city of Jiangsu province. She will receive her prize at the International Emmy World Television Festival Nominee Medal Ceremony in New York on Nov 18 along with two other winners from Kuwait and Chile.
The one-minute film, which was shot on a cell phone, tells the story of Lu Yi’an, a Chinese student from Nanjing, who goes to Iraq to be a volunteer during her summer vacation. Luo linked Lu’s journey with the story of Wilhelmina (Minnie) Vautrin, who came to China as a missionary and teacher in 1912 and was working as the acting dean of Ginling Women’s College when the Japanese army invaded in 1937.
“Vautrin’s sanctuary saved my grandma, 6 years old then, and many other lives during the assault of Nanjing and the subsequent massacre,” said Luo, whose grandmother was one of the refugees who stayed in Ginling Women’s College, which served as a refugee haven, harboring up to 10,000 women in buildings designed to accommodate between 200 and 300 people.
“Minnie Vautrin will always be my heroine, not only because she bravely stood up against violence and saved 10,000 lives. As a student from Nanjing, to make the history of war known to the world is my responsibility.”
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, in which more than 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese invaders when the city was occupied in December 1937.
Luo went to the US in 2007 when she was 16 and went to high school near the Mexico border. She describes it as a time of “having no friends” as she was the only Chinese student in class.
Most of Luo’s classmates had never been to China, or anywhere in Asia. She said many of them thought China was a country where everyone did kung fu, like Jackie Chan in the movies they had watched.
Luo said at that time she realized the power of film to “tell people stories of other cultures, to promote harmony among diversified communities, and to help people to better understand each other”.
She now plans to expand Vautrin’s story into a fulllength feature film.
“The film was made to inspire young people to learn the lessons from the history and avoid the repetition of evil, and encourage them to do the right thing at difficult times,” Luo said.
“Yi’an is motivated by Ms Vautrin, and I hope we all can be.”