• New York Times:
"Yasukuni" team dealing with Death Threats
www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/awards_festivals/berlin/news/e3i8532207298029721543b7e881ee0e8af

BERLIN: The director and producers of a documentary about Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine have received multiple death threats from right-wing groups in Japan that want to prevent the movie's local release.

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The threats began about two months ago, when we started press screenings of the movie in Japan," the director told The Hollywood Reporter in Berlin, where "Yasukuni" is screening in the Berlin International Film Festival's Forum sidebar. "The threats have gotten worse and worse as we have gotten closer to the Japanese theatrical release of the film in April.


• Asahi.com: " Chinese filmmaker finds the swords of Yasukuni still sharp"
www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200803150077.html

'Yasukuni," a two-hour documentary by Chinese filmmaker Li Ying, is not a comfortable film for Japanese audiences. But not for the usual guilt-trip inducing reasons. The film rises above the seemingly endless denunciations by Asian leaders, to challenge viewers, through meticulous research and extensive use of archival footage, to take a hard look at themselves and their biases about the shrine.

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Shooting "Yasukuni" turned out to be more difficult for Li and his crew than anticipated. Officials at the Yasukuni compound developed the unfortunate habit of confiscating Li's cameras and film. "Once they learned that I was Chinese, all hell broke loose," he says. He says he also received threats from persons hoping to quash the film entirely.

"Nonetheless, sympathetic Japanese made it possible for me to get the film released. Many of my Chinese acquaintances were surprised that Japanese helped," he says, reiterating that the film is not anti-Japan.

"'Yasukuni' is not simply a movie made by a Chinese," Li says. He explains that the film was a joint Asian project, shot by a Japanese cameraman (who has a relative enshrined at Yasukuni) and edited by another Japanese.

Li says he is also grateful to the government-affiliated Japan Arts Council for sponsoring for "a potentially provocative film like this" 。。。


• Review from Berlin Festival
www.variety.com/index.asp

But "Yasukuni" is about chronicling disorder and the breakdown of societal structures, elements Li Ying finds in the attitudes of many Japanese people toward their nation's past, and which he transfers onto his images. People wander in and out of shots; the framing is untidy, bordering on chaotic.