REFLECTING HISTORY
CHINA A NEW OLD EMPIRE FROM IN AND OUT

THEY CHOSE CHINA

Canada/USA, 2005, 52 min., English, China

Director: Shuibo Wang
Producer: Claude Bonin
Script: Shuibo Wang
Cinematography: Shuibo Wang
Editing: Ragnar van Leyden
Music: Peter Chase
Production company: National Film Board of Canada, 13 Production, Arte France
Print Source:
Madeleine Belisle
National Film Board of Canada
3155 Cote de Liesse
Ville St. Laurent, Quebec H4N 2N4
Canada
Tel.: 514 283 9805/6
Fax: 514 496 4372
e-mail: festivals@nfb.ca
www.nfb.ca


They Chose China

It’s January 1954. The Korean War is over, but in the United States Senator Joseph McCarthy’s intense anti-Communist rampage is raging in full swing. The UN Soldiers held in POW camps in Korea are free to return home and are given 90 days to make the journey to the US, but not all of them leave. 21 American soldiers among those captured decide defiantly to speak out against McCarthyism and to stay in China. Back in the states their families and the government wonder if they are a by-product of Chinese Communist Indoctrination, brainwashed by the would-be Red super power? Why did they turn against their country and chose China? Some of the 21 men married and made their home in China permanently, while others eventually returned to the US with their Chinese families in tow to face the onslaught of treason accusations. In candid interviews with the surviving POWs, dubbed turncoats by the American media, and their multi-cultural families, Oscar-nominated director Shuibo Wang recounts the fascinating stories of these forgotten American dissidents who bravely fought for, and then profoundly cut ties with, the USA.

Shuibo Wang was born in Shandon Province China, in 1960. Raised during Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, for the People's Liberation Army in the late 1970s, and joined the Communist Party in 1980. He studied visual arts at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, graduating in 1985. Then he taught at the same school as an assistant professor. Wang came to Canada as a graduate student at Montreal's Concordia University in the fall of 1989. He began his career in film assisting world famous Canadian animator Fredric Back on his last film, the Academy Award-nominated The Mighty River. In 2006 Shuibo Wang was honored with the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Filmography:

Fu Meng (2006), fiction;
They Chose China (2005);
Swing in Beijing (2006);
Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square (1998), nominated for the Academy award for the Best Documentary in 1998

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4 AT 1:00 PM./GALLERY THEATRE

SCREENING WITH THE NANJING MASSACRE: MEMORY AND OBLIVION

SUNDAY, APRIL 8 AT 7:00 PM./CHOPIN THEATRE

SCREENING WITH THE NANJING MASSACRE: MEMORY AND OBLIVION