As box office sales of Nanking, a US-made film documentary depicting the massacre of Nanjing in 1937, continue to be dwarfed by Hollywood blockbuster Transformers, private enterprises have been giving away tickets at bargain-bucket prices to Nanjing residents.

Seven private businesses bought 5,000 tickets and sold them to readers of the Nanjing Daily for only 10 yuan each as part of an online promotional campaign set up by the city's Heping Theater and the newspaper.

Ma Renbin, the theater's sales manager, told Xinhua on Wednesday that more than 15,000 people - including the 5,000 who took advantage of the deal - had watched Nanking, and that he had received more requests for group showings.

Ma said the box office revenues hit 400,000 yuan (US$52,840) over the past two weeks. Transformers amassed more than 200 million yuan in two weeks throughout the whole of China.

Zhang Pimin, a chief film censor from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), said the documentary, which remained untouched by the censors, will be shown in the major cities around China until the end of 2007.

He did not specify how many screenings of the film would be shown each week and in which cities. The Shanghai New Century screened Transformers 30 times on July 15 but Nanking was only screened once at the same cinema on the same day.

Ma Weimin, vice president of the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio (CNDFS), which sponsored the distribution of the film in China, told Xinhua, "We thought the documentary would be less well received by audiences compared with commercial movies, particularly during the summer vacation period."

The film was released in early July in a few cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuxi. It was not put on Nanjing's screens as CNDFS wanted to continue promoting the film in Nanjing until August 15 when it would debut on the same day as the 70th anniversary of the massacre.

"We started in early July to try out the film in a few cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuxi," Ma said, "none of the 60 copies issued by us reached Nanjing."

However, Nanjing residents demanded to see the film at the same time as residents in the larger cities so Heping Theater borrowed one copy from the adjacent city of Wuxi and released it to the public.

"We will continue to show Nanking until the last person wishes to see it," Ma Weimin said.

Based on a non-fiction best-seller written by late American author Iris Chang, the documentary featured interviews with Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers who were involved in the six-week massacre. All the pictures, letters and diaries were collected by the camera crew from six countries including China, Japan and the US.

"My goal was to have one billion Chinese see my film," director Ted Leonsis told the US-based National Public Radio.
 
(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2007)