China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Director on movie mission
Chinese student hopes to use films to promote harmony among diverse cultures
AChinese student has won an international award for her film about a US missionary who set up refugee at Ginling Women's during the Nanjing camps College Massacre.
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, 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 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.
Vautrin guarded the college with the motto: “Whoever wants to go through this gate will have to do so over my dead body.”
Luo said her grandmother told her the story of Vautrin during her childhood, and this became her inspiration to make the film. She knew about how Vautrin turned the college campus into a refugee camp and protected countless women and children from the rape and killing that was going on in the rest of Nanjing.
She said the story should never been forgotten.
“Minnie Vautrin will always be my heroine not only because she bravely stood up against violence and saved 10,000 lives,” Luo said. “As a student from Nanjing, to make the history of war known by 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 Nanjing was occupied in December 1937.
Luo started to make the film in August using the most basic equipment.
“The film was shot with my cell phone,” she said.
Because her budget was so low, Luo invited her friend, Zhang Jiayi, who is also a student from Nanjing, to play the role of Lu.
“Jiayi and I shared the same ideas of telling the story of the tragedy in Nanjing to the world,” Luo said, and she thinks the way of telling the story of the war today should be different, particularly in the internet era.
Luo said that the film’s oneminute length proved a challenge, especially for Western audiences with limited knowledge of the history.
“We took two days to plan for the script, one day to shoot the clips, but a month to edit it.”
Luo said she had edited the film into 20 versions and showed them all to her friends and classmates who are not Chinese.
“At first many people think the story is only about a student who volunteers abroad,” Luo said.
However, she believes that the core of her film is about reminding people of the past. She then edited the story of Vautrin in the film as a parallel line, linking Lu with Vautrin and showing a story of “passing the spirit of peace”.
“Many of my friends in the US had never heard of Ms. Vautrin, but after watching the film they said the story is a Chinese version of Schindler’s List,” Luo said.
“To me she does not fall short against Schindler, and I think her legend should be told aloud to the whole world.”
She says the story of Vautrin, which shows a spirit that transcends culture, race and religion, is particularly relevant today “when the tendency to divide, to lean toward violence, to create rather than assuage conflicts among and between cultures, races, genders, and beliefs, seems to be again on the rise”.
Luo sent her film to the 2017 JCS International Young Creatives Award Competition, which is open to entrants between the ages of 18 and 30 and has a different peace-based theme each year.
This year the theme was “Women Peacemakers”.
After the first round of internet voting for more than 200 films from all over the world, six films, including Luo’s, entered the final round.
Professionals from the movie industry then chose the final three that won the awards.
Luo said she never expected the film, with such a low budget, to win. She believed it is the spirit of Minnie Vautrin that has gained recognition from people who voted for it.