Six decades after China's victory in the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, Chinese filmmakers wake up and long for the birth of a good homegrown war movie before long.

"Little Soldier Zhangga", a 1963 film about a teen guerrilla fighter, remains the repertoire as China began releasing a string of war movies ahead of the Aug. 15 anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945.

The black and white film, popularly known among domestic moviegoers as a masterpiece among Chinese war films, is largely unheard of to the international audience.

Films are not schoolbooks. Good ones, however, are more impressive even than schoolbooks. "Schindler's List", a 1993 Oscar-winning film, tells the world about Nazi's towering crimes with the story of a German businessman who rescued more than 1,000 Polish Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.

Many Chinese moviegoers now ask: when can we expect a more influential, "Schindler's List" type of movie to replay in dramatic forms the nation's wartime plight and courageous fight against the Japanese aggressors? A gold mine of wartime stories

"China has a gold mine of intriguing and inspiring wartime stories," said Prof. Su Zhiliang, a historian with Shanghai Teachers' University. "Any one of them can move our playwrights and directors to tears."

Over the past 13 years, Prof. Su has been studying the issue of "comfort women", a euphemism used in Japan to describe women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese aggressors during World War II.

"I can hardly hold back my tears when I hear those women's bitter, humiliating experiences," he said.

Prof. Su said he once escorted a surviving "comfort woman" to Osaka, where the old Chinese woman, surnamed Yang, told her untold sufferings to the Japanese public. "She was raped by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing when she was only eight, and later became a sex slave. She was injured badly in the genitals and had to be diapered all during her life."

But to his regret, no one has screenized here tragedies. "I was once asked to preface a publication on 'comfort women' but I turned down the request because the book was more like a fiction than a true account of the tearstained history," said Prof. Su.

Earlier this year, China Federation of Literary and Art Circles gathered together a group of veteran playwrights, filmmakers and critics to discuss how to put wartime history on the screen.

"The younger generation of playwrights should exploit China's wartime resources," said Hu Ke, a veteran playwright in his 80's.

"We're not making full use of our ample material evidence about the war against fascists and Japanese aggressors, compared with many other countries," said Li Zhun, a noted literary critic. "We are spent lavishly on sitcoms and detective films. Why don't we leave war films some more space for development?" Long overdue

On his China tour during World War Two, renowned 20th century poet W.H. Auden described the Holocaust and Nanjing Massacre as two extreme infamies of the Fascists.

Yet the world people today know much less about Nanjing Massacre in December, 1937, than the Nazi concentration camps.

Many scholars say a major reason for the world's ignorance about the massacre is the lack of artistic work with far-reaching influence.

"The West has turned out a host of other movies like 'Schindler's List'," said Liu Jun, a researcher with Beijing Film Academy. "This has to some extent urged Germany to apologize for its wartime crimes."

Japan, nevertheless, has repeatedly enraged its Asian neighbors by whitewashing history and with prime ministers' visits to the wartime shrine that honors 14 Class-A war criminals responsible for the country's aggression upon China and other Asian countries.

"It's high time for China to unravel the truth to the world," said Liu. "In fact, many countries outside Asia, particularly the Western nations, have not fully understood that part of history and the feud between China, Japan and the Republic of Korea." Forging ahead

"If China shoots a 'Schindler's List' type of wartime movie, I'll undoubtedly recommend it to the Japanese audience," said Tadao Sato, a noted Japanese film critic, in an interview with Xinhua.

Tadao said he was very moved with earlier Chinese wartime films including "Along the Songhua River", "The Spring River Flows East" and "Hong Gaoliang" or "Red Sorghum," a late 1980s masterpiece by Zhang Yimou.

These human interest movies, he said, are very enticing but there're just too few of them.

"The Qixia Temple 1937", designed to be a Chinese version of the "Schindler's List" debuted at the eighth Shanghai International Film Festival in June. It tells how an abbot at the temple in Nanjing and his disciples fought the Japanese aggressors and saved tens of thousands of refugees during the Nanjing Massacre between December 1937 and January 1938.

The film was among a series of wartime movies released to the public prior to the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in 1945.

A researcher in Shanghai says China should refer to international award-winning movies in its own production of war films.

"Most Chinese wartime movies highlight hostility more than humanity," said Chen Qingsheng, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. "Films carrying the theme of humanity, however, tend to win more international recognition."

The theme of war can well be conveyed in musicals and affection films, according to Chen.

"China abounds in wartime stories and ace directors," said Chen Jiajie, a Fudan University student and a film fan, "but needs to foster high-caliber playwrights to write better scenarios."

In fact, Nanjing Massacre has entered the eyesight of elite international filmmakers and Hollywood stars including Brendan Fraser.

Fraser indicated at the recent Shanghai International Film Festival he will star a wartime film about a British young man who devoted himself to saving Chinese kids from Japanese assault during the Nanjing Massacre.

But he gave no details about the producer, investment or timing of the movie.

Source: Xinhua