After 8 1/2 years of researching, fundraising and producing her documentary, “Finding Kukan,” Hawaii resident Robin Lung is getting her world premiere. The film, about a Chinese-American woman’s struggle to chronicle Chinese resistance to Japanese aggression and the devastation wrought by the invaders, will screen at the 2016 Hawaii International Film Festival.
The “Kukan” in the title refers to a 1941 documentary, also known as “Heroic Courage Under Bitter Suffering,” made by Li Ling-Ai, who was born in Honolulu in 1908. Ling-Ai grew up in Chinatown but lived in China for three years, and her oldest sister worked as a physician in Nanking. She sold her jewelry to finance the film venture and coaxed Honolulu Advertiser writer Rey Scott to go with her to document the Japanese invasion in the late 1930s, according to Lung’s research.
The original 16-mm documentary chronicled Scott’s journey through Southern China as the Chinese fled from the invaders. Ling-Ai was listed as a technical adviser, marginalizing her role in producing the film, Lung said.
“She was really desperate because she wanted to save China. … She had a real personal connection to that country,” Lung said.
“It caused a sensation in America when people saw it,” she said, and “Kukan” won the first Academy Award given to documentary films. After World War II, “Kukan” was lost for decades, with no publicly known copy in existence.
“Finding Kukan” traces Lung’s efforts to rediscover and restore the film while emphasizing Ling-Ai’s role in producing it. Actors Kelly Hu and Daniel Dae Kim provide the voices of Ling-Ai and Scott, respectively.
The HIFF premiere is at 5:45 p.m. Saturday at Dole Cannery Stadium 18, with a second screening at 3:45 p.m. Nov. 11. For tickets, visit program.hiff.org. The 75-minute documentary also will be shown Nov. 15 and 16 at DocNYC in New York, the nation’s largest documentary film festival.
