Nanking Debuts In Beijing

Director Bill Guttentag (L) delivers a speech as (2nd L-R) Producer Ted Leonsis, Co-Director Dan Sturman, Producer Michael Jacobs and Co-Producer Violet du Feng listen during the premiere of the film 'Nanking' in Beijing July 3, 2007. 'Nanking', the U.S.-made film premiered in Beijing on Tuesday, as China and Japan struggle to rebuild strained ties. The 90-minute documentary, co-directed by Oscar-winning duo Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, will open in mainland China on general release on July 7. (Claro Cortes IV/Reuters)

The 90-minute movie, co-directed by Oscar-winner Bill Guttentag and producer Dan Sturman, will open in mainland China in general release on July 7, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Japan's full-scale invasion of China.

It is one of a raft of films about the Nanjing Massacre, commonly known as "the Rape of Nanking," planned for release this year in the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the fall of China's war-time capital to invading Japanese troops on December 13, 1937.

"The crime and hatred of Japanese militarism left a deep scar on the Chinese people... and the memory will never fade away," said Gao Feng, president of CCDS, one of the film's co-distributors in China, prior to its screening at a theatre in western Beijing.

China says Japanese troops slaughtered 300,000 civilian men, women and children in Nanjing, then known as Nanking. An Allied tribunal after World War Two put the death toll at about 142,000.
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