New Chinese Film on Nanjing Massacre Now Showing in U.S. Theaters

A new Chinese film, “Dead to Rights,” which deals with the 1937-38 Nanjing Massacre by Japan, was recently released in the U.S. The Chinese title is “The Nanjing Photo Studio: The Life Behind the Photos.” It focuses on a story (probably true) about a young Chinese photo assistant who was forced to work with a Japanese war photographer during the Japanese takeover of Nanjing, who was taking pictures of the Japanese campaign, including the numerous atrocities. These photos were used to hype Japanese troops to even greater atrocities, but were by no means to be shown abroad. The story depicts how the young assistant, who was in charge of developing the pictures and of the archive, squirreled away the pictures in a safe place and replaced those in their official archive with other pictures. Ultimately, he was able to get the photos out to the world, which first informed the world about the massacre and, of course, raised a furor.