Animation helps bring a China news hack to life
Daniel Nelson
Eternal Spring is a documentary about an ambitious and daring plan to hack into a Chinese TV news programme and broadcast a subversive spiritual message to millions of viewers.
It uses a powerful combination of film footage and animation to dramatise the hack, which was carried out in 2002.
The filmed interviews, including footage that shows comic book illustrator Daxiong recreating the faces and memories of the small group of activists responsible for the raid, provide an authenticity that animation alone could not give: the animation provides powerful images of scenes that could not otherwise be shown, including the heist planning, the deed itself, the police chase and the brutal prison scenes.
You don’t need to know much about the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, which claims to be an offshoot of Buddhism, to understand the documentary. You don’t even need to decide whether you regard Falun Gong, which boasts millions of followers, as a moral movement or a sect. That’s because the film is a thriller, which sees the non-violent activists scaling a telegraph pole to cut TV transmission cables and affixing a box that starts transmitting a film praising Falun Gong.
As in any good heist movie there’s a hitch that nearly wrecks the plan, one of the activists leaves evidence in the form of blood from a cut, and there’s a pell-mell chase scene as police try to round-up the culprits.
And though you might know little of the background, you’ll certainly form a view of the ruthlessness of the police and the lengths to which the Chinese state will go to suppress any challenge to its total domination of power, which is why the film is part of the 2022 Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
The film claims more than 20,000 people were arrested in the subsequent crackdown, deaths occurred from torture and beatings, and 15 of those involved in the hijack were jailed for up to 20 years. Four of the organising group fled abroad. As Daxiong has commented: “History has taught Chinese people a lesson: dare to stand up to the Party, and you will suffer.”
Reaction and intimidation continued as striking and unusual documentary took shape. Director Jason Loftus has said that Chinese authorities approached his business partners at Tencent, a Chinese media company that was forced to cut ties with his company in the midst of a video game launch. A mobile publishing deal was also axed with another Chinese distributor. In addition, he says, Chinese public security officers contacted his wife’s family in China “and warned them that the regime knew what we were up to overseas”.
The name of the film? Loftus says it comes from the plum blossom flower, which flowers in winter and symbolises the idea that even in the midst of difficulties or suffering Spring is not far away.
“And I think it’s this spirit of hope that inspires the characters you’ll meet in our film - Big Truck, Liong, Mr White - who sacrificed even their well-being.”
* Eternal Spring is showing at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London (17-25 March), online and in-person. Info: https://ff.hrw.org/london#festival_films