Eternal Spring Review Animated Inquisition Into Falun Gongs Chinese Media Hijack

Here is a disturbing and disturbing documentary that recreates how Chinese activists took control of state television in the northeastern city of Changchun in March 2002. The group was a follower of a banned spiritual practice called Falun Gong, called an "evil sect." the communist party in power.

Looking at archival footage of a Falun Gong meeting, it is difficult to understand what it was: hundreds of followers in the square silently practiced a sequence of gentle movements; It's like a tai chi lesson. But the growing popularity of Falun Gong worried the government enough to ban the group in 1999. On the night of the television hijacking, supporters replaced the evening news with a pro-Falun Gong message.

The film is structured like a typical documentary by Canadian director Jason Loftus. Follows 47-year-old comedian Daxiong (real name Guo Jingxiong) as he visits kidnappers who now live in exile in America and South Korea. While they are talking, Dasyun is drawing. And like in the Israeli film Waltz with Bashir, his unusual drawings come to life in 3D (with the help of animation director David St. Aman). Heist sounds like a heist movie, loud and stylized like a comic.

Daxiong himself was a Falun Gong member in Changchun. He disagreed with the kidnapping at the time, knowing it would lead to the persecution of his followers, so he didn't participate. Daxiong fled China in the early 2000s following a crackdown on the post-kidnapping group and lives in Canada. When she talks to a group of people who have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned and who are still living with the trauma, her opinion of the kidnapping changes.

Surprisingly, the film makes no mention of the recent controversy over Falun Gong's right-wing ties to the United States. However, it is a moving and important film, all the more important in light of China's repression of religious freedom and human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslims.