Nanking - 2007 docu - WWII Massacre

Video Codec..........: DivX 5.x/6.x
Video Bitrate........: 1378kbps
Duration.............: 1:30:05
Resolution...........: 720*400
Framerate............: 23.976
Audio Codec..........: 0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3
Audio Bitrate........: 448 kbps CBR
Audio Channels.......: 6
Filename.............: Nanking.avi
Filesize.............: 1,241,165,196
Subtitles – English, hard coded

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The diaries and letters of Western observers, combined with the testimonies of still-living Chinese eyewitnesses, create an intimate and wrenchingly compelling depiction of the Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1937. Nanking focuses on the Safety Zone established by a bizarre combination of American missionaries and Nazi businessmen, a haven that saved the lives of over 200,000 Chinese too poor to flee the marauding army. The words of these missionaries and businessmen are read by a cast of famous actors, including Woody Harrelson, Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot), and Mariel Hemingway (Manhattan); this could have turned out unbearably precious, but the restraint and respect of the performances allows the voices of the writers to come through with understated power. The documentary is filled with gruesome details ("The dead covered the ground like a straw mat," declares a Japanese soldier) and the atrocities at times verge on unendurable; there's a reason this occupation is commonly held up as a definitive example of man's inhumanity to man. But throughout the horror are glimpses of astonishing courage and the deepest generosity, some of it driven by what can only be described as fierce pacifism. There are startlingly instructive moments (for example, while soldiers raped and looted the city, the Japanese army made propaganda films of soldiers giving candy to hungry children), but the culminating emotional impact of the documentary goes beyond anything didactic. The invasion of Nanking provokes controversy even now, 70 years later. Nanking is unlikely to lay denials to rest, but it's a potent and valuable reminder of the degradation of war. --Bret Fetzer



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893356/

Cast (in credits order)

Hugo Armstrong ... John Magee
Rosalind Chao ... Chang Yu Zheng
Stephen Dorff ... Lewis Smythe
John Getz ... George Fitch
Mariel Hemingway ... Minnie Vautrin
Michelle Krusiec ... Yang Shu Ling
Chris Mulkey ... Mills McCallum
Jürgen Prochnow ... John Rabe
Sonny Saito ... Higashi Sakai
Graham Sibley ... Miner Searle Bates
Mark Valley ... Stage Manager
Robert Wu ... Li Pu
Woody Harrelson ... Bob Wilson



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, refers to a six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 9, 1937. During this period, hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered and 20,000–80,000 women were raped [1] by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.[2][3] The massacre remains a contentious political issue, as various aspects of it have been disputed by some historical revisionists and Japanese nationalists,[3] who have claimed that the massacre has been either exaggerated or wholly fabricated for propaganda purposes. As a result of the nationalist efforts to deny or rationalize the war crimes, the controversy created surrounding the massacre remains a stumbling block in Sino-Japanese relations, as well as Japanese relations with other Asia-Pacific nations such as South Korea and the Philippines.

Estimates of the death toll vary widely. Aside from the absence of accurate, comprehensive records of the killings, other contributors to the wide variance in estimates of the death toll include differences in definition of the geographical area, time period and nature of the killings to be counted. The Nanking Massacre can be defined narrowly to count only those killings happening within the Nanking Safety Zone, more broadly to include killings in the immediate environs of Nanking, or even more broadly to include the six counties around Nanking, known as the Nanking Special Municipality. Similarly, the time period of the massacre can be limited to the six weeks following the fall of Nanking or it can be defined more broadly to include killings from the time the Japanese Army entered Jiangsu province in mid-November until late March 1938. Variations in estimates based on the nature of the killings revolve around the question of whether the killings of captured Chinese soldiers and suspected guerrillas constituted legitimate executions.

The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates 260,000 casualties; China's official estimate is 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Japanese historians estimate a lower death toll, in the vicinity of 100,000–200,000. Some claim the existence of only 40,000 deaths or even deny that a widespread, systematic massacre occurred at all, claiming that any deaths were either justified militarily, accidental or isolated incidents of unauthorized atrocities. These negationists claim that the characterization of the incident as a large-scale, systematic massacre was fabricated for the purpose of political propaganda.

While the Japanese government has acknowledged the crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the fall of Nanking, some Japanese officials have argued that the death toll was military in nature and that no such crimes ever occurred. Denial of the massacre, and a divergent array of revisionist accounts of the killings, has become a staple of Japanese nationalism.[7] In Japan, public opinion of the massacres varies, and few deny the occurrence of the massacre outright.[7] Nonetheless, recurring attempts by negationists to promote a revisionist history of the incident have created controversy that periodically reverberates in the international media, particularly in China, South Korea, and other East Asian nations.[8]